foreright
Well-Known Member
Hi all,
I'm in the process of planning / starting a new 6-string build and have some questions regarding neck, or more specifically, headstock design. I've built a few straight headstock necks (ie. "Fender style" without a scarf / headstock angle) and aside from my last build where I went with a 5+2 tuner configuration, I've always needed to use string trees to maintain correct pressure over the nut on the longest two strings.
I'd like to go with a straight headstock for this build but with no string trees as I'm planning to do some carving / shaping in the area where string trees would need to go. See the drawing below:
This is a side profile of the headstock (obviously) with some sensible(ish) values for nut height and tuner hole height. As far as I can tell the "short" staggered Hipshot tuners are approx. 18mm above the base so that would in this instance mean that the hole for the longest string is 4mm above the surface leading to an approx. 3.5 degree break angle over the nut. This will likely be a reversed headstock and therefore the longest string will be the low-E so winding the string around the post a couple of times would lower it further but even with the string on the headstock face I'm looking at 5 degrees max which I don't think is enough to dispense with the string tree(s), or is it?
Clearly I can drop the entire headstock a couple of mm and get more angle (and that's pretty much what I did on my 5+2 build) but I think it's pretty ugly to do that.
TLDR; Is a 3.5 degree break angle over the nut enough to be able to dispense with a string tree or should just ditch this idea and go with an angled headstock? Is it even possible to design a 6-inline headstock with no trees?
I'm in the process of planning / starting a new 6-string build and have some questions regarding neck, or more specifically, headstock design. I've built a few straight headstock necks (ie. "Fender style" without a scarf / headstock angle) and aside from my last build where I went with a 5+2 tuner configuration, I've always needed to use string trees to maintain correct pressure over the nut on the longest two strings.
I'd like to go with a straight headstock for this build but with no string trees as I'm planning to do some carving / shaping in the area where string trees would need to go. See the drawing below:
This is a side profile of the headstock (obviously) with some sensible(ish) values for nut height and tuner hole height. As far as I can tell the "short" staggered Hipshot tuners are approx. 18mm above the base so that would in this instance mean that the hole for the longest string is 4mm above the surface leading to an approx. 3.5 degree break angle over the nut. This will likely be a reversed headstock and therefore the longest string will be the low-E so winding the string around the post a couple of times would lower it further but even with the string on the headstock face I'm looking at 5 degrees max which I don't think is enough to dispense with the string tree(s), or is it?
Clearly I can drop the entire headstock a couple of mm and get more angle (and that's pretty much what I did on my 5+2 build) but I think it's pretty ugly to do that.
TLDR; Is a 3.5 degree break angle over the nut enough to be able to dispense with a string tree or should just ditch this idea and go with an angled headstock? Is it even possible to design a 6-inline headstock with no trees?