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I am building a 12 string guitar for a customer who wants the neck width to be 1 and 11/16 at the nut. I seldom make necks that narrow when building 6 string guitars. He has a Martin 12 string guitar that he likes and I asked him to measure the nut width of that, and sure enough, he said it was 1 and 11/16.

Any of you guys make 12 string guitars. If so how wide do you make the nut?
Is there anyone who can confirm the Martin 12 string neck width.

My preference would be to make a neck that is about 1 and 7/8 inches but that seems to be way out of the ball park.

I appreciate any info you guys can give.

John

Wow 1 11/16 is very narrow for a 12 string. I make my 9 strings 1 7/8 and my 12 strings 1 13/16" or 2". you need to work out the string spacing you want to use at both the nut and saddle to determine the width of neck at the body joint but you know that.

I just checked the Martin web site and all their 12 strings are 1 7/8 at nut and 2 5/16 at the body/neck joint

Thanks Michael
I am really wondering what this guy is talking about.

John, I built a 12-string for a customer last year and had the same conversation that you had with your customer. We wound up settling on 1 13/16" and he is quite happy with the feel. He also asked if I could copy the profile from a Breedlove 12-string and use that. Worked out great, he's happy and that makes me happy.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

John, I wonder if your customer measured to the outside of the strings and not to the outside of the nut. That would make sense if the offset from the nut edge was 3/32 which would give an overall nut width of 1-7/8"

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Mine are 1 7/8ths as well

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Andy Z.
http://www.lazydogguitars.com

Well thanks again guys. I appreciate the info. I am wondering if in fact we were measuring the same things. His neck was bound and I told him to measure the width of the fingerboard where it touches the nut. He may have not included the binding. I cannot imagine Martin making a 12 string neck as narrow as he claimed his was.

John

John,

I just measured my 25 year old Suzuki 12 string. It is 1 7/8 at the nut and the string spacing is indeed 1 11/16 as Rod stated. The guitar is a DREAM to play and I don't have large hands.

Hope that adds some useful fuel!

Shane

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Canada

Thanks Shane
Useful fuel indeed. I am thinking that my customer and I did not communicate well at all.

John

James said he had a MUCH wider string spacing than any other builder. So much so he was commenting on how people thought he was crazy to use that much width, but the reason the topic even came up was that it was so easy to play if could be finger picked. I was so impressed by the playability that we started talking about it.
Sadly he told me the width but that was the first day of NAMM, and I remember little of the details about anything... I think Howard called it NUMB for a reason....

Find out his widths and start from there. You'll see why.
Craig L

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