I've been told in the past that I have a feel for wood; whatever the heck that means... I do love a little double entendre now and then but that being said, I think deep down everyone has a 'feel for wood'. If we didn't, humans would never have developed simple tools in the first place. Mind you, I guess you could have had a better 'feel for bone' than a 'feel for wood', but inherently I think every person has some hidden sense for shape. It`s how we pick out what we like - what chair we want to sit in; what bike we want to ride; even the people we want to sleep with to some extent.
Having finished building the Frankenjaguar and moving on to another guitar project; my lovely new Jagmaster that I'm retrofitting, I've had a chance to think about what I've really been doing for the last several months. Mostly I've been touching things; touching things and deciding if I like how they feel.
I think that's basically the one major job you have when you are building a guitar, at least after you make sure that everything is lined up properly. The profile of a neck can make or break an instrument. It can make you fall in love or want to give up playing altogether.
What I've found, having profiled a few necks now, it that it's not knowing what shape the neck has to take from the start, but feeling and removing the impedances that stop that neck from being playable.
I don't think I would ever want to profile a neck for another person. I think everyone's hand tells them exactly what shape a neck should be and what is the single best playing shape for one person can be a disaster for another. So my advice for neck profiling would be to know your hands. Know what feels comfortable to them, and do your best to shape a neck to fit that level of comfort. Go back and reshape over a period of a couple weeks. When it feels like it's almost right, put it down for a couple days then go back and see if there are any little spots that don't feel entirely, perfectly comfortable, then grind those beasties off.
This is a difficult thing to do when you don't feel entirely confident, but if you trust in that sense of your hand, the confidence will come. It can be a bit scary to grab a bastard file or a rasp and just start scraping away on something you've just sunk your savings into, but it feels amazing when you've finished and put a little bit of yourself into what you play. It definitely pays off. That being said, if you can find a junker guitar for a couple hundred bucks and go to town on that one first, your confidence will grow very quickly, and you may decide you like that junker guitar better than the one you just payed $1000 for. These things do happen...
I think it would have been easier to write about the guitar building process as I was doing it, but looking back at how it went together is kind of fun. I get so involved in building things and working on them, that most of the time I forget to document them. So goes my head I guess. Building a guitar is a lot like making music. Sometimes the best moments can't be documented and have to just be experienced right then and there.
