Shaping the Navatone neck

Throughout the building of my LG50 replica, there’s been a real tension between my desire to make a faithful copy of the original and the need to keep true to my ideals as a luthier. This has resulted in some tweaks and sensible modifications, such as using a two-way adjustable truss rod or binding the fragile edge of the back. I like to feel that any changes that I’ve made would have been approved of by Mr. Matsuki! When it came to carving the neck, after much thought, I decided that I had to give it a “vintage” profile in keeping with the original Guyatone; essentially a deep vee shape. And that’s what I do in the latest video.

Guyatone LG50 Project: 9

I’m starting to feel like I’m on the home straight now. Some real progress has been made on the “Navatone”.  The neck has been fitted and glued on, the two-way truss rod fitted and the fretboard glued on, the pearloid position markers made and inlaid and last but not least fretted. And all that is condensed into this 10 minutes of video!

Guyatone LG50 Project: 8

In this instalment, I make and modify the various plastic plates for both guitars. I have the original pickguard for the Guyatone which I was keen to use, but as its matching volume and tone control panel was missing, I’ve had to make a replacement.

Obviously, I’ve had to make both pieces from scratch for my replica. The choice of plastic is very important; although they may all look similar their properties can be quite different. Back in the day (out of ignorance) I would have used acrylic but really it’s far too brittle. The pick guard with its large holes for the pick-ups, rectangular holes for slide switches and many holes close to the edge for fixing screws would be prone to cracking as you work. Also you can easily crack it around the fixing holes if you overtighten the screws. Therefore, I chose PVC for mine, which is much more forgiving!