Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm working on an old completely trashed M3 round neck National. I had an earlier post about resoldering the body. This one has virtually no value to anyone but me, so I'm not concerned about originality too much. Still, I want it to represent somewhat of its originality. I now have the fretboard off ( rosewood on a maple neck) and , with the exception of classicals, all of my guitars have had radius fretboards. Were radius fretboards ever found on pre WWII round necks? I'm probably going to slightly radius it anyway, but just curious.

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

FYI with some research I answered my own question. Apparently sometime in the 30's National toyed with 10" radius boards. No player likes them! I'll go with my regular 16" radius.

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

My personal preference as a resonator player is for very slight radius - 20 inch or less, both saddle, nut and fretboard. I have an '32 round neck dobro with a perfectly flat neck and I play it both lap style (with a nut extender) and Spanish (without). I also have a 1980 Duolian with a 16 inch radius and frankly I hate the neck on it - it is very difficult to play clean slide barres and still be able to fret it. When I build a reso intended for Spanish style play I put the same radius that I use on all my other acoustics - 20 inch.

I guess the answer would be, as a player if you intend to do most of your playing fretted, put is whatever radius you are comfortable with. If you intend to play mostly slide then put in whatever works best with your style slide (cylindrical or radiused). If you intend to play it lap style then the F/B doesn't matter but both the nut and saddle should be flat.

just finished my build an El Trovador, and I gave it a 16" radius, as do the new El Trovadors from National.