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To date I've been making my fingerboards flat and then adding just a bit of fall away after fret nine for the bass strings. I'm not convinced this is the best way and was contimplating building in a bit of relief between frets 1 and 14 say. I'm not real sure about this so any words of wisdom from the CG guys here?

Also if you build in this relief to your FB's how do you go about it?

Hey Ronn,

It depends.

I plane in a bass side contour as well, out to about the 7th fret or so. Not a lot, however. I feel it is necessary to reduce buzzes while keeping the action at a reasonable distance farther down the fingerboard. But this is a separate procedure from adding neck relief.

With the 6-strings I build, I don't add any reinforcement to the neck, so I find that just the pull of the strings is usually sufficient to give the proper amount of relief. But with the 10-strings I build, I use an ebony reinforcement strip, and often the resulting neck is so stiff, it doesn't bow at all, even with 10 strings pulling on it. So I've begun to spend a bit of extra time sanding down the fingerboard between the 2nd and 10th frets or so, concentrating on the 5th or 6th as getting most of the sanding attention, feathering things out to the 2nd and 10th. Not a lot needs to be taken off -- less than 0.010" I'd say.

A couple of guitars that I've built (10-strings), I found had insufficient relief after stringing them up. I didn't want to pull the frets, so I just lightly sanded the frets similar to above and recrowned them.

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

Thanx Michael

I just got an email back from a local builder that says he does the same or similar. .009 at the 7th fret then when fretted the neck becomes close to flat then with the string pull...


I'm going to give it a shot. I was thinking of a good way to do this and this is what I came up with, tell me what you think.

I use a 24" level with sandpaper along it's edge to get my FBs flat. So I thought why not put a shim (feeler gauge) under the FB at the 7th fret area to bow it just a bit then sand the FB flat. Voila! Instant relief.

Ronn,

That might work okay. Depends on your build procedure. I don't contour my fingerboard until it's installed on the guitar, so your approach wouldn't work for me.

An alternative that would work for me, and perhaps for you would be to do like I do for putting a slight contour into my water stone. I have about a 2" wide stick with 600 grit sandpaper stapled to it, but underneath the sandpaper, running down the center of the stick, is a piece of scotch tape. This added thickness is enough to put a dish in the surface of the water stone as I work the sandpaper from one side of the stone to the other, such that my plane irons have slightly rounded corners (prevents lines when planing). I think this same principle could apply with your sanding level. Measure the thickness of the tape and put down the required layers under the 7th fret area of the sandpaper. This will also work pretty well, I'm thinking, in terms of feathering in the relief. I think I'll give this a try on my next fb.

Best,

MichaelMichael McBroom38912.7113773148

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Live to Play, Play to Live

There is one luthier/supplier who has provided sanded, tapered ebony fingerboards for the past 25+ years but he does not have a website and that is Walter Lipton of Euphonon, whom several buy bulk strings from. His sanded, tapered, preslotted classical fingerboards have a consistent 3/32 taper from the 9th fret to the soundhole end of the fingerboard.

Way back when, when I was first starting out building it was worth 2 dollars more to have him sand the taper. Now I just sand relief on the bass side and for flamencos I do not add relief as I am trying to get the strings closer

Shawn,

What method do you use to glue down your tapered fingerboards?

I use a flat gluing caul the length of the fb, which is why I do not plane or sand a taper into the fb before its installed.

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

I use a flat caul for gluing down the fingerboard which is already slotted as well. I then measure what the deflection will be under load and then sand in the relief from there, mostly on the bass side. For flamenco this is very different from classical but because the neck is otherwise the same, I establish the clearance at this point as more and more Flamencos are ending up as "negras" either because classical players

Because this will mean that the fret slots may now be shallower than needed on that side I will go back over the slots with a fret saw to make sure that once I install the frets that none will stick up.

To measure the depth of the slots I use shim stock that easily fits in the slots that is already marked as to depth. It does not take much time to make sure that the slots are deep enough and then I install the frets.

Back when I started and was using fingerboards that were already tapered I would make a caul that matched the taper as the tapered fingerboards were consistently tapered by just shimming one end before sending them through a belt sander.