Doing Things Wrong

Body - Plywood/Wood

Plywood faces over solid wood sides is a relatively uncommon way of building a guitar body. It is similar to plywood over plywood, except the sides have a nice wood grain that can be left exposed.


This body is maple plywood over a hollow pine core, double-bound. It came out very lightweight, too light to balance even a guitar neck. This was originally going to be the 12-string, but I realized that it would never balance. So I shuffled parts and bodies between some other projects - a planned six-string got canceled and became the twelver. That left this body free. I thought about it a while and decided it would make a good mandolin.


This bass is a 21" scale, with a piezo saddle mounted in an adjustable bridge. The soundhole is just for looks. The strings are metal-wound Kalas. The fretboard is cut out of the ugliest piece of wood I ever received. For such a small neck, I managed to cut around most of the ugly, and the result isn't half bad.


This was a box of junk I got on eBay, originally a vintage Convertible. I replaced the front and back with cabinet-grade birch plywood, as the original mother-of-countertop material is no longer available. I rebuilt it as something like a Companion, which is a very rare model. The neck and sides are vintage, the rest is modern.


These were my first two tries at a 325 bass. Both are plywood over pine hollow-bodies. The one on the left - #1 - used an experimental neck mounting that I didn't like. The one on the right - #2 - suffered a router mishap. I took all the good parts and built the solid-body, and both of these spent years on the scrap heap.


These were my first two tries at a 325 bass. Both are plywood over pine hollow-bodies. The one on the left - #1 - used an experimental neck mounting that I didn't like. The one on the right - #2 - suffered a router mishap. I took all the good parts and built the solid-body, and both of these bodies spent years on the scrap heap.


There is a lot of nonsense that gets floated through the guitar industry about neck mountings, mostly invented by marketing departments to justify outlandish prices. 'Set' and 'through' necks are simply luthiery baggage from the middle ages, literally, as in 500 years ago before screws had been invented, or at least were in common use. Any difference in tone or sustain is purely imaginary on the part of the sucker who paid an extra thousand dollars for it, and has no choice but to believe the BS or admit he was had.