Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm doing a 'Paul-ish' build for a customer. Standard shape, set-neck and stop/tune-a-matic setup but with a German carve top treatment instead of the archtop. Anyway, I have a LP of his to work from but I'm still slightly confused about the top angles. I know there's the 4.4º slope from the end of the fretboard forward but there also seems to be a slope from just behind the stop to the end of the fretboard. Do I do this slope first and then figure my 4.4º off of that plane?





Body is Korina, the odd color is my attempt at getting better contrast on the top.

Yes, there is a 1.2 degree slope from the stop to the fretboard, then the 4.4 degrees neck angle.
In a perfect world, this will result in having 3/16" of maple remaining at the body join - matching the rest of the body at the upper bout.
Have a peek at my LP build in the doc-u-build section.

Nice build. I built a 'Bevelin' Jig' (similar, but crappier than yours) and did a 4º for the fretboard and a 2º for the pickups. After some rough measurements everything looks about right.
This is after a couple strokes with a hand plane to knock off the resulting edges.



This thing sure makes me appreciate my Tele-style builds.

yep gibsons are unneccesarily complicated, still stuck in the arch-top design mode....one more illustration of leo fender's genius. if the neck angle ain't right on first string-up, cut up a business card and shim the bastard

Very nice Mike!
What are you planning on for a finish?

Customer is still making up his mind, but likely some sort of mild burst. We're going with cream P-90s, gold knobs and cream binding with a black purfling line.

Sweet!
Looking forward to seeing the finished product!