Slightly More Info

After handing off the guitar to Justin over an excellent dinner that he paid for, I realized that my somewhat lax description of the finished Coffin should probably be added to. For me, it's kind of like recording an album - after being immersed in the details of creating something for several months or more, the tendency is to not want to think about it as soon as the creation is finished. Fortunately for me, Justin posted quite a few pics with good captions - here it is: http://siemprelaluna.com/index.php?itemid=609. Look to your right, above Bruce Lee and you'll find the link to his excellent site, Siempre La Luna. I'll make a few additions or clarifications:

So the neck shaft is actually domestic ash, and the fingerboard is Indian rosewood. Many luthiers would be hesitant to use ash because it is light, a bit punky, and not nearly as strong as maple. I used it for many reasons: tonally it's amazing; for the woodworking challenge of the massive differences in density between early and late-wood grain; and it looked right the way the bare wood absorbed the stain deeply in the visible porous grain lines and almost not at all in the wider portions. In regards to strength, I was fairly confident that I'd be able to end up with a very straight neck after carving the shaft, gluing on the fingerboard, truing the fingerboard in preparation for receiving the frets, and installing the frets. All of these operations can quickly make a neck unplayable if not done right. Also, I used a double-acting truss rod made by Stew-Mac, in my opinion it is an extremely effective one. This was shown to be the case when all it took was a very slight tightening of the rod from the neutral position to balance the tension of the strings, giving the neck proper 'relief' and excellent playability with low 'action' or string height above the fingerboard.

The scale length is the same as Justin's Ibanez's, at 25.5", I'm glad he thought it was shorter. I take that to be the difference between factory (admittedly pretty good) fretwork and a really dialed neck with accurately leveled frets. It makes for excellent playability with an easier feel. Justin is right about the frets - they're .045" tall and .103" wide, still in the "jumbo" category but just a tad smaller than the ones in the S series. Can a good player tell the difference? Hell yes. On the next guitar I may experiment with a hypo-allergenic fretwire that contains no nickel, lead, or other really nasty metals and happens to be 25% harder than typical nickel-silver wire. For someone like Justin, who has excellent technique, plays very light strings, and use no more fretting pressure than necessary, the typical nickel-silver wire is still probably the better choice. That's all for now, if you've made it through this somewhat nerdy discussion, I congratulate you and recommend a future in guitar-building.