Hey all,

Having been building bass and guitar bodies for a couple of years I was recently brave enough to tackle my first neck.  The build was inspired by a small electric I built for my son using a recycled neck.  I liked playing it so much I built one for myself as a travel electric.

It's a 500mm scale and although it has a truss rod the neck relief out of the box is 0.25mm so I haven't had to test it.  My son's version is strung with 0.09s, but as it can't stay in tune I went for 0.12s on mine.  It can't stay in tune either so both of them are tuned to A and hold it well. 

This version has a maple neck and fretboard and the body is laminated scraps from other builds: walnut in the middle, flanked by maple and then ash.  On such a small body I think standard size pickups and controls look a little awkward and out of scale so I decided to have as little as possible showing.  The pickups are a pair of piezo transducers, one under the bridge and the other in the neck pocket.  I couldn't hide the jack, so I recessed it into the side.  I opted for no controls as it can all be done off the amp and means as much wood as possible is visible.  The sound is quite good when plugged in and overall I'm pretty happy with it.  I didn't properly think about my fret levelling and crowning and foolishly used a black marker, so there was some bleed into the maple, so don't look too closely!

Cheers!

Ken