I had some scraps left over from my neckthrough maple walnut RD build. When I cut the neckthrough section I was able to get ahold of some time on a bandsaw to save the scrap. It was enough to build another guitar with a paddle headstock. I could have done a scarf neck but I'd rather do a neckthrough with a paddle. The cut-off pieces from the body were pretty small but my friend was just showing me a couple of Vox Phantoms that he had bought and it struck me that I actually had enough wood left over to make one.
Here's my concept. It's a Vox Phantom body, 25.5" scale, widened Supro headstock and a melody maker pickguard. I call it the Phantom Melody:
The first thing I did really screwed everything up. I roughed out the neck shape with a jigsaw. I was cutting from the backside and the blade wandered in 2 places just about a millimeter into where the neck will be. I like the 55 Les Paul neck profile, sort of a roundish V neck so it should be easy to taper the fretboard/binding to accomodate the error. My binding is about 1.5mm.
I'm going to carve the neck first and then build the fretboard with binding to make sure it'll all work. I'm going for 42mm at the nut, 55mm at the end of fretboard.
I sharpened up my hand plane and made a ton of shavings. I picked up a Stanley #51 spoke shave today for $12. I need to sharpen it before I can shape the neck.
After I got the fingerboard plane all leveled out I clamped a board to the headstock and body part of the neckthrough and used the edge guide with a 1/4" Dremel router bit to make the truss rod channel. I'm using a 2-way Bezdez rod from ebay.
Perfect snug fit. Only took 10-20 minutes to make the channel with the Dremel. Maybe 6 passes.
I remember now that I see the paint job. Pretty awesome!
