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Hi I'm looking for a bit of advice RE neck joints.

I'm just starting to build my first guitar based on the plans which come with Kinkeads book (so far I've made the braces !!) but have decided to do the Cumpiano hardware neck joint.

The HW neck joint uses a 2" headblock whereas my plans have one which is quite a bit smaller. So the larger headblock would interefre with the upper transverse graft.

Since the design has a very substancial upper face brace and then the 3mm thick upper graft I was thinking that it would be ok to adapt the upper graft to leave room for the larger headblock (this would leave it at about half its original width )and maybe make it alittle thicker (4mm for example).

The other option would be to use a smaller headblock.

What woul you suggest?

Thanks in advance

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Richard

Richard,

You can tackle this a number of ways. For one thing, 2" might be more than what you need for the thickness of the neckblock. If your tenon is 1", and you leave an 1/8" behind it, you can get away with 1/2" of material or even less beyond that. So 1-5/8" is probably enough. That will save a little space.
You can also move the UTB a little more toward the soundhole, which won't hurt you. Then you can slender up the UTG a little. I can't see any reason to make it any thicker though.
The thicker neckblock does at more stiffness to the structure of the soundbox and helps to keep the fretboard extension from caving in the area north of the soundhole over time. Many folks are using an extended block under that area and bolt down the fretboard extension (John Mayes?), which further strengthens that area.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

You do not want the upper transverse brace to be thinned or broken in the middle The spand is then hlf on one side of you block and half on the other. Now in my opinion going with a split upper graft is no big deal. I know many tha do not use upper grafts

Another solution, if you are dead set in following the two sets of plans, is to cut a small mortise in the neck block so that it sort of engulfs the UTB. It wouldn't be that much material removed but would still allow you to use the thick UTB and thick neckblock.

Hey Paul, don't you mean the UTG not the UTB?

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

What's the G? I was thinking of the Upper Transverse Brace.

upper transverse graft (thin and wide) as apposed to the Upper transverse brace (tall and narrow)

Thanks guys !

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Richard