This topic is dedicated to a great (underrated) Yamaha classic guitar range called Super Axe. Specifically the early Super Axes – SA20, SA30, SA50, SA60, SA70 and SA90.Buying a guitar is easy – so I ended up with a few Super Axes.
Restoring a guitar is much harder and more time consuming – I restored an SA30 and a Yamaha FG230.
Building a guitar was the next challenge – so I decided to build one from scratch with the SA30 as a template. My tribute to this classic shape.However, my lack of guitar building skills required that I kept it simple. So no arched top, just flat, and a bolt on neck. This is my practice run for eventually building a real archtop guitar.
My thinking was that making the neck was the hardest so I should start with that. If I could build a playable neck then I would continue with the body.In the mid nineties I cut a medium sized Kanuka tree down into planks and stored them under the house for making some furniture one day. Kanuka is a hard wood and very strong and dense. So one day a few months ago I pulled a plank out and the neck building had started.Here some pics. Oh, and you will notice that I don’t have too many tools, so there is a lot of elbow grease involved! Doesn’t look much…

One side done…

Nice plank, nice grain…

Very professional… First mistake, cut the head stock angle too shallow.

Anyone who’s build a neck before…. yes, I found out the hard way that this is not the correct order of doing it!
Shaping of the neck happens at the end not at the start. Anyway, I managed the hard way.

Here I am hand sawing the neck to about 48 mm width at the nut end and about 60mm at the other end. This leaves plenty of room for errors and finishing. A standard SA30 has a neck width of 43 mm at the nut.A simple truss rod slot was cut on the saw table. Truss rod is a 5mm bit of steel you can buy at any hardware store. I don’t know what sort of truss rod an SA30 has so this has to do.

Here a pic of the headstock. To correct the shallow angle, I glued the cutoff onto the back of the headstock and cut another piece off of the front. I am happy with the result as the pieces match quite well with only a very thin joined visible.

A couple of pics of shaping the neck with some basic tools.

And finally closing off the truss rod channel with a strip of Kanuka timber. The locations of the tuners have also been marked.

Next the fret board.

Thu Oct 18, 2012 7:29 am

Thu Oct 18, 2012 7:48 am

Time for a test drive!
With the fretboard in place and all fretted up it was time to test my neck building exercise. I wasn’t going to start on the body until I knew I had something that was playable.
So I cut bone nut and drilled the tuner holes. I had some spare Gotoh tuners that could be used for the test drive. Here a pic of the headstock with tuners and nut. Note the zero fret.

The neck needed a simple body for the bridge and tailpiece. A piece of 5 ply board was used, holes were cut for mounting the hardware and a single volume pot and humbucker.

I strung her up with 11’s flat wounds and put a DiMarzio Humbucker from Hell in (borrowed from a mate). This humbucker is designed for the neck position, and man, it is a great humbucker. So below a photo of the LOG as I called her. (You know where that came from don’t you?)

Summary of the test drive:

In short, I was VERY HAPPY with how the neck performed, the notes were in tune and the intonation was nearly perfect. Action was acceptable and could not be tested as I could not lower the (floating) bridge. I was so happy with playing THE LOG that I did not disassemble her for a few weeks. It was amazing what an enjoyable sound I could get out of that simple guitar! Must have been the humbucker!.

Oh, she was light as – you could have played her standing up for hours without getting a sore back… (remember this statement please…)

Sat Oct 27, 2012 9:44 am

Some more progress… I finally finished the neck! I used several coats of a stain/varnish which I rubbed in by hand. Then finished it with micro cloth for a smooth feel. Also made a truss rod cover from a bit of cow bone. Came up nicely IMO. Tried a bone inlay and cutting it wasn’t too bad. The rebating is the hard part. A bit scruffy but I am pleased with it anyway, especially when not eyeballing it too closely. Also changed the tuners to Grover Rotomatics.

There are a few other ‘stuff ups’ here and there, but overall this is one hell of a sturdy neck! Here some pics.

 

Mon Dec 03, 2012 8:44 am

Mon Dec 03, 2012 8:51 am