1-piece guitar

[Livingston]

Hi guys, my dad is interested in making a guitar from scratch after seeing my interest in ordering parts and putting one together from Warmoth.

He wants to make the entire guitar out of one piece of wood.

Does anyone know the implications of that?  Is having the neck a separate piece a functional thing, or a simple matter of usually not being able to affordably find a piece of wood so big?  Would it be harder to adjust the truss rod, action, etc., etc., etc.?

Thanks!

 

[Mor Paul]

I think it's probably doable, but won't be easy at all. There's tonal reasons for choosing certain neck, body, and fretboard woods. I don't think the truss rod will be adjustable, and it may be hard installing. The neck is separate for functional reasons, I think.

 

[Nando Vallart]

It could be done, but I don't think it's necessary... At maximum a neck-thru body...
I believe nobody here can REALLY tell what would happen in that project, as I believe nobody have done it, but some guys can imagine something...

I may be wrong, but to me looks way more difficult, non-necessary, very expensive and with high change of screw up everything and need to throw to garbage...
Don't believe it will be more solid than a neck thru, perhaps less solid ( I guess that would be easier to bend/twist/warp)

Better listen to the more experienced guys here, but I would suggest:
tell him to build a neck-thru body, 3 piece neck (if made of the same wood)... It's the most solid guitar you'll have...

 

[jackthehack]

Theoretically you could buy a slab large enough, but I don't know I've ever heard of anyone doing that, probably someone has somewhere.

A more reasonable design is a neck through body; neck and center of guitar body is one contiguous piece of wood with rest of body glued on as two "wings". You'd waste a whole lot less good wood that way as well.

 

[GoDrex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODlNgr2c2RQ

btw - I didn't watch this at all because I don't have sound at the moment. From the comments it looks like it's made from one piece of mahogany - -though I'm going to guess that the fretboard is some other wood - which if you want to get technical would make it not one piece. But it's still impressive I guess.  Should have made it out of maple hehehe

 

[Mor Paul]

It doesn't matter if you have sound. It seems that video has none.

 

[GoDrex]

No it does and the guy is partially full of balogna. He's talking baout all this sustain (which I'm sure it has a lot of) and he shows it off by hitting a note and letting the amp vibrate the strings. This to me, demonstrates nothing other than the fact that he's playing loud enough. My POS Ibanez plywood guitar with a bolt on could do the same thing. But it is a nice looking guitar he's got there.

edit - watched some of his other videos...  kind of hard to take after a couple minutes. :-\

 

[Xplorervoodoo]

The guy from Onyx Forge guitars built a 3/4 size strat style guitar out of maple I believe...

 

[dbw]

Yeah that guy's full of crap.  Still a very cool guitar!  Seems like he can really play, too.

I've seen one-piece basses before, but never guitars.