Free guitar building course · Part 4
The neck,
and perfect
fretwork.
Nearly three hours, and the longest video in the course for good reason. This is the stage that decides whether the finished guitar plays like an instrument or like a plank.
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Chapter markers coming — paste the timestamps from the video description into the chapters field in videos.py and they become clickable here.
What this covers
- Neck blank preparation and truss rod installation
- Fretboard radius, and why it affects playability more than most people are told
- Slotting — depth against tang size
- Radiusing fret wire, pressing versus hammering, seating frets properly
- Levelling with a beam, crowning without flattening, polishing
- Carving a neck profile that fits your hand
Why this stage is unforgiving
Everything before it is recoverable. Bad fretwork is not — it buzzes in specific places, chokes bends, and no amount of setup will fix it. You have to go back and do it again.
The good news is that it is a patient job rather than a clever one. Go slowly, check constantly, and a first attempt can play better than plenty of factory instruments.
The check that saves you. After every few frets, lay a short straightedge across three at a time. Finding one high fret now takes thirty seconds. Finding it after all of them are in, glued and trimmed takes an afternoon.
Measure every slot from the nut, never by adding one gap to the next. Cumulative measurement compounds small errors, and by the twelfth fret you are audibly sharp with no way back.
Written companion in progress — this is the video most worth a full transcript.
Watch the builds on YouTube
Full build videos, start to finish, including the parts that went wrong.
Build series · New video most monthsTools and pages that go with this
Work out your slot positions before cutting anything — the fret calculator gives them to the thousandth of an inch for any scale length.