# 27" Ibanez RG conversion neck (warning - lots of pictures)



## djohns74 (Aug 6, 2011)

So I built my first guitar last summer, thus fulfilling a sort of dream of mine that I've had for several years now. I enjoyed the process so much, and it turned out so much better than I expected, that I knew I would build more. I've spent a fair amount of time since figuring out exactly what to do and couldn't quite decide, so one day this summer I had a sudden inspiration to build a 27" scale conversion neck for an Ibanez RG (since I have a fair number of them lying around). This would give me more experience with neck building, which I knew I needed before embarking on a more complex project, as well as another 27" scale guitar, which I've been wanting but can't really justify buying.

I've always liked the look of a maple fretboard, and my first build used ebony, so maple was an easy choice this time. After searching around a bit, I found a nice Birdseye piece in the right size from Bell Forest Products (Exotic Wood, Birdseye Maple, Curly Maple & Tiger Maple | Bell Forest Products) and thought it would be a nice match for the flame maple blank I'd already selected. This would also be my first fret slotting job since I bought a pre-slotted board the first time. Also, partly to keep the first build simple, and partly because I like the look, I went with no inlays, so this time I felt I had to do some and decided to give offset dots a try. I went with 25 frets because it is a conversion neck after all and I didn't see a need for a useless gap between the 24th fret and the neck pickup. And thus, the concept was born, pretty much as a spur of the moment type thing one day while I was bored at work. 

Now, I am certainly no luthier, and in fact had only minimal woodworking experience prior to my first build. But my father, his father and his father before him were all at least hobbyist carpenters in their day, so maybe it's in my genes. We'll see, though my results so far have been far from perfect, but better than expected, and I think are getting better as I go along. Having completed a couple of projects, my next goal is to one day build a guitar for someone else. I will need a fair amount more practice before I'm ready to do that, but it's a goal. I wouldn't (almost certainly couldn't) do it for a living, and I'm not sure that I'd really even try to make money at it, but it would be very satisfying to have someone else make music with something that I built. Besides, I really enjoy the building and want to continue, and it's somewhat unreasonable for multiple reasons to keep everything I make.

Anyway, I decided to document this process somewhat in case I felt it was worthy of sharing with you guys. I think it turned out well enough, so here it is.








Stew-Mac comes through with everything I need again, including a Japanese fret saw with depth stop and miter box, bass neck blank, Hot Rod truss rod, wide/medium frets, side dot material and black pastic dot inlays. I wasn't sure if the guitar neck blanks would be quite long enough for my purposes, and this was to be my first scarf joint, so I figured a little extra material wouldn't hurt and went with the bass blank.






After working out a location for the scarf joint cut that would leave plenty of wood on either side, I drew in my angle (13 degress, I think?)






I used my bandsaw to make the initial cut, which was extremely rough. I was concerned enough about it that I didn't get any pictures of it. But after a serious amount of planing and sanding, the two pieces were lined up and ready to go.






Looks like it will work! Yes, the headstock area is REALLY long at this point. Oh well, better to have too MUCH wood.






My clamping system, a more basic version of a technique I'd seen a couple of times online. That's parchment paper out of the kitchen to keep the clamping wood from being glued to the neck.










All glued up. There appears to be a gap between the pieces in the first picture, but it's only near the edge of the wood which will be long since removed after shaping the neck as this blank is far wider than I needed.






Here I've got the shape of the neck and headstock drawn in.














My makeshift truss rod channel jig. I used it on my last build as well and was very pleasantly surprised with how it performed.






After a quick hole to get it started, I take the first pass.










And done, including the extra bit where the adjustment nut will protrude.










The test fit is good and the wrench should work fine.










The birdseye fretboard arrives after a brief shipping delay.






Draw in the shape and mark the fret lines.

[Continued]


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## djohns74 (Aug 6, 2011)

Draw in the full fret lines and get ready to saw.










My first slotting job appears to be reasonably successful.






Holes drilled for my chosen inlay layout. These are not exactly perfect as I was using my brand new drill press and was having a heck of a time getting it lined up perfectly, but I'm willing to live with it.






Fretboard cut down to size.






Everything appears to line up so far. Bonus!






Dots installed.






Back to the neck proper, it's now rough cut on the bandsaw.






Truss rod installed and protected from glue.






Here's my rather random assortment of clamps holding the pieces together. No radiusing or shaping of the neck has happened yet, so I can get away with applying the clamps directly to the neck. I'm sure a "real" builder will tell you that you need a lot more clamps than this, but this seems to work fine for me.










The glue is dry and the neck is ready to be taken to its final width with the router, using the fretboard as a guide...










... and done.










I appear to have missed a step or two here, but I used my headstock template and router to finish the shaping.






Next I had to figure out how to route the space for the locking nut, so I came up with another wacky assortment of wood for the router to ride on.










I guess it worked well enough.

[Continued]


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## djohns74 (Aug 6, 2011)

Now for what I thought would be a giant pain in the ass, radiusing the fretboard. I made the radius block by following the above technique, which was straightforward enough, but I was stunned by the effort required to sand the shape into the block. At the time, I was thinking, good grief, now I have to do this again but on maple this time?










Well, this ended up going really fast, I suppose since you're removing a lot less material for one thing. It may look a little uneven, but this was kind of the mid-point of the process as I wanted to remove some excess thickness from the board anyway.






Here we go with gluing in the side dot material. The excess was simply sanded off after the glue dried.










And now for the real fun of neck building. After running it through the bandsaw to get it closer to the final thickness, I attacked it with the spokeshave to begin the profiling process. I didn't have a real set goal in mind in terms of shape or thickness, I thought I'd just go to work and figure it out as I went along, much like my first build which turned out fine as far as I'm concerned.










Profiling complete and sanded and looking fairly decent I think.






I thought I'd wet the wood slightly to see how the flaming might look. Not bad!










No action shots of fret cutting or anything, but here they are installed prior to trimming. I actually have no idea why I had the nut installed at this point, not sure what that was supposed to accomplish. You can see also the slight misplacement of the 24th fret dots, which is disappointing, but not the end of the world I guess. My first inlays of any kind, so I guess you live and learn.






Frets trimmed






Started rounding the ends. Don't ask my why I didn't tape off the fretboard during this process, I was halfway through before realizing that I should have done so. Guess I was getting impatient to complete the process at this point.






Levelling...






... and crowning. Polishing came next and I took no pictures of the process. I have decided after this that fretwork is probably the thing that I need the most practice with as I'm only satisfied with how this one came out, not thrilled beyond belief.






Here, I have the nearly finished product lined up with an existing body. By this point that I had decided to go with a fabric finish on the headstock, and ultimately decided to match it to the body seen here as I have plenty of that fabric left over and I like the look of it with the maple fretboard.






Now to a process I'm more familiar with. First locate a good pattern in the fabric.










Apply and spread wood glue.

[Continued]


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## djohns74 (Aug 6, 2011)

Position and gently smooth out the fabric to avoid the glue squeezing through to the surface. 






Initial trim after the glue dries.










Now the entire thing gets a crap load of sanding sealer sprayed on in the garage. This was my first time using spray sealer, and I went with the waterbase stuff from Stew Mac, sprayed with Preval sprayers, which worked surprisingly well.














The sealer is building up nicely here.






Now that the fabric is stiffening up significantly under the sealer, it gets its final trimming and the tuner holes are cut out. Then begins the process of sanding the sealer as smooth as possible. 






I ended up adding some more sealer to the headstock so I had plenty to complete the sanding, and by the time I got down to the 2000 grit paper, it was pretty darn smooth. This is a step I've never really taken quite far enough on previous fabric projects, and the finished product has suffered for the lack of effort. The final clear coat is just about impossible to get smooth if the surface isn't completely smooth at the sealer stage. It sounds obvious in retrospect, but impatience has caused quality to suffer in the past and I'm trying to avoid that now.














And here it is, finished except for the final clear coat on the headstock. At this point, I've had it attached to a body and strung it up and it played pretty good! The only problem, if you can call it a problem, is that the fabric looks way, way nicer so far than the matching body. Enough so that it no longer exactly matches. So, the only reasonable solution in my mind was to make a new body! But I think I'll save that saga for another time.


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## Mordacain (Aug 6, 2011)

Wow! That's pretty incredible and pretty good work all around.


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## bostjan (Aug 6, 2011)

Excellent work!


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## skeels (Aug 6, 2011)

Awesome! Thanks for documenting- very informative! Love the use of the fabric to achieve the swirl look!


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## JamesM (Aug 6, 2011)

Damn son!


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## ROAR (Aug 6, 2011)

Damn that's incredible


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## BigPhi84 (Aug 6, 2011)

Nice Pic Story!


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## Adam Of Angels (Aug 6, 2011)

It looks lovely. I'm curious to hear a relatively unbiased opinion on how it plays.


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## djohns74 (Aug 6, 2011)

Adam Of Angels said:


> It looks lovely. I'm curious to hear a relatively unbiased opinion on how it plays.


Actually, I'm kind of curious about that myself!


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## Adam Of Angels (Aug 6, 2011)

Well, perhaps you can give it another shot when it's put back together again, and then give us another review.


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## TheDjentlman (Aug 6, 2011)

Looks awesome. The flaming is ridiculously awesome too.


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## BlackMastodon (Aug 7, 2011)

Very beautiful neck, even if I'm not a fan of maple fretboards. This was very informative and I will definitely use this a a reference when I make a neck. Just gotta remember to be patient and mask that fb before you work on the frets, though I totally understand the excitement of almost being finished a step and forgetting to take certain precautions.


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## Nyarlath (Aug 7, 2011)

Excellent work man. Shame about the inlays though


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## djohns74 (Aug 7, 2011)

Thanks for all the comments, guys!

The fact that there's obvious improvements I can make along with the fact that it really did come out pretty well overall just makes me want to build more, and soon. I'd like to do something with some more exotic woods, but I honestly don't know what would work well or look good together. Any ideas?


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## youheardme (Aug 15, 2011)

Awesome picstory man... enjoyed scrolling through it


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## Konfyouzd (Aug 15, 2011)

Wow... Very very nice, sir!


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## toiletstand (Aug 15, 2011)

now







seriously thats great work!


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## FretWizard88 (Aug 15, 2011)

nice job! I am not brave enough to do something like this. I would waste a wonderful piece of wood if i did.


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## djohns74 (Aug 15, 2011)

The matching body is currently in the process of getting massive amounts of sanding sealer dumped on it courtesy of my new compressor/spray gun set up. Another evening or two of that should bring me to the point of deciding on whether I'm going to attempt to spray a burst around the edges of the whole thing and what color that burst will be. 

My current intention is to burst it (and finish the sides of the body) with a green of some kind, probably something darker that hopefully matches one of the colors in the fabric. I'm a little skeptical of my spray gun's ability to create a nicely controlled burst, so I'll have to experiment with it a bit, but that's half the fun of something like this. I hope to be spraying clear top coats by next weekend after which there will be a bit of a waiting game while the finish cures. I'm strongly considering starting another project while I wait for that, but haven't decided what yet.

I do have progress pictures of the body, but they're at home, where I would really like to be right now as opposed to at my (currently) very boring job. But hey, it pays the bills that this somewhat expensive hobby tends to generate, so I guess I shouldn't complain.


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## russdogz_ (Aug 20, 2011)

would you make one and sell it me?


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## Ruins (Aug 20, 2011)

good job with the neck!!! at first i was skeptical about how will it turned out, maple and all that jazzz  but in the end i must say you made me want to try a maple neck my self one day!!!


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## BrianUV777BK (Aug 20, 2011)

Man, that is an awesome job! Great work! Wanna make one and sell it to me??


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## djohns74 (Aug 25, 2011)

Hey guys, progress has been quietly happening over the last little while. I got the sanding sealer on the body to a satisfactory point and began experimenting with finishes and busting. I couldn't seem to mix up a green that I was happy with, so I decided to just go forward with black since a black burst looks good with just about anything. I used the poor boys burst method found here, which I've done before with aerosol. 

For my new gun, the crucial component was to be sure to hold it far from the template, as the article suggests, a good 18" or so, only press the trigger about halfway or so, and move the spray pattern along quickly. Even at 35 PSI, you can move an impressive amount of waterbase lacquer quite fast, which will cause runs and worse if you linger in one place for too long. Everything required a bit of touching up afterward, but overall it went fairly smoothly, particularly on the headstock where the burst really turned out about as good as I could have hoped.

I am now in the middle of day two of clear coating, and progress is shown below just for grins. I expect one more full day of clear coats for sure, then possibly a fourth on the body, we'll see where it stands after three. After that, the whole thing will sit for at least a full week prior to sanding and polishing and then it will be assembled! To help pass the time, I do have my next project in mind, which I will probably be starting while this one cures. Building is rapidly becoming quite the addiction, I have to say.


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## BlackMastodon (Aug 25, 2011)

That's an awesome blackburst! Very subtle but it makes it come together really well.


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## scherzo1928 (Aug 25, 2011)

That's a sexy looking neck. The fabric was a nice touch.


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## Stealthdjentstic (Aug 25, 2011)

How do you do your swirls?


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## djohns74 (Aug 25, 2011)

Stealthtastic said:


> How do you do your swirls?


I fake 'em.  It's just a fabric I found a few years ago, the process of attaching it to the headstock and finishing it is at least partly documented on the first page. I don't have the know-how to do a real swirl, nor the patience required to learn by trial and error, so I thought this was a good compromise given that I already knew how to do a fabric finish. Plus, I figure it's both a fabric (a la the Jem 77FP) and a swirl, so it's kind of like a combination of two different Jems, in concept at least.


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## russdogz_ (Aug 26, 2011)

*mod edit: take it to PM*


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## Swyse (Aug 26, 2011)

*mod edit: take it to PM*


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## russdogz_ (Aug 26, 2011)

i'm just too lazy, and would probably f**k it up ahah


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## gilsontsang (Aug 28, 2011)

sweet!!!!!!!!!


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## Ruins (Aug 29, 2011)

don't be to lazy, you got business opportunity here and also something awesome to contribute to the forum besides this thread


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## Darkstar124 (Sep 1, 2011)

This is exactly what I'm looking to end up with! I have an RG7420 that really could use another inch and a half of scale, and this is what I was looking to do. Would you ever build and sell these?


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## djohns74 (Sep 1, 2011)

Darkstar124 said:


> This is exactly what I'm looking to end up with! I have an RG7420 that really could use another inch and a half of scale, and this is what I was looking to do. Would you ever build and sell these?


Yeah, I definitely would. It won't be any time soon that I'll be comfortable actually taking full custom orders or anything though, I still have a lot to learn and need more practice. 

That being said, I would definitely be willing to do some fairly basic builds for a few people that wanted to cover the cost of materials just for the sake of practice. I guess if anyone's seriously interested in something like that, they could PM me and maybe we could work something out.


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## Darkstar124 (Sep 2, 2011)

I'd be more than willing to guinea pig for you. but lets not anger the mods..to PM!


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## russdogz_ (Sep 2, 2011)

i have definately already pm'd! shotgun first neck!


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## djohns74 (Sep 6, 2011)

The project is finally complete! I had every intention of finishing it over the holiday weekend, and technically I guess I did (barely), but some crazy storms knocked out my power for pretty much the whole weekend, so I was out of commission as far as any guitar-related activities. Final assembly happened late last night, but I had no time to take any pictures or write anything up then, plus I was in a fairly horrendous mood after losing almost all of my holiday.

But enough of my sob story, and on to the finished product. The final specs, beyond the neck documented in this thread, are as follows:

Alder RG-style body with Jem-style output jack
Ibanez Original Edge bridge
DiMarzio Breed Bridge and Neck pickups
6-way "Free-Way" pickup selector (thanks to darren for turning me on to these)
Standard 500K volume and tone pots

Note that I am clueless when it comes to taking "glamour shots" of guitars and that the weather here has been fairly awful so outdoor shots are meaningless for the moment, but this should give you the idea anyway.










Being that it's an unabashed Ibanez clone, I felt it appropriate to get a shot of it next to what I call "Ibanez Row" too. 






In the background are my JS1200, Jem7VSBL, RG7620, RG770, RG550, RT452 (12-string) and my other home-made Ibanez clone, which, for some reason, I have utterly failed to document anywhere on these forums. I have three other Ibanez RG bodies and necks floating around that are, somewhat inexplicably, not fully assembled at the moment. I guess you could say that I have a fascination with Ibanez guitars, particularly the RG shape, which probably borders on the unhealthy, but what the hell, right?


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## theo (Sep 7, 2011)

Looking SO nice! where did you get the fabric?


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## djohns74 (Sep 7, 2011)

theo said:


> Looking SO nice! where did you get the fabric?


Thanks! I picked it up a few years ago, along with a similar blue pattern, at The Virginia Quilter. Unfortunately, it seems to have been a limited run type thing and don't carry anything quite like it any more. They have some other potentially interesting abstract and floral designs, but nothing that I'd call a swirl. I think I'm probably about done with fabric-topped guitars anyway, at least for a while as it's a rather labor-intensive process.


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## scherzo1928 (Sep 7, 2011)

came out great!

and that's a niiice collection.


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## BlackMastodon (Sep 7, 2011)

Showoff .
Haha I kid, came out really good man. Looking forward to seeing more from you.


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## Mysticlamp (Sep 7, 2011)

i wanna see it with the body


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## that short guy (Sep 7, 2011)

ever think about refinishing the body and putting that fabric on the front of the body to make them match?


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## djohns74 (Sep 7, 2011)

that short guy said:


> ever think about refinishing the body and putting that fabric on the front of the body to make them match?


Hmmm? The body shown above has exactly the same finish as the headstock, maybe I misunderstood your question?


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## theo (Sep 7, 2011)

I'm really keen on doing this to one of my guitars now.

Check out these fabrics, I think they would work really well

The Virginia Quilter - Quilting Fabric - Fingerpaints - Fingerpaints - Torch

The Virginia Quilter - Quilting Fabric - Island Batiks - Decorative Shapes on Blue Batik


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## that short guy (Sep 8, 2011)

djohns74 said:


> Hmmm? The body shown above has exactly the same finish as the headstock, maybe I misunderstood your question?


 
Lol sorry I misread a part post further up the conversation.


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## that short guy (Sep 8, 2011)

djohns74 said:


> Hmmm? The body shown above has exactly the same finish as the headstock, maybe I misunderstood your question?


 
Lol sorry I misread a post further up the conversation.


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## TomAwesome (Sep 8, 2011)

Looks great!


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