The 16 feet neck on my 13" archtop seems heavy to me.

Juan, if you are making it for youself, go with the flat radius that you like. I have on at 12" and the archtop is at 10-16" or something. I don't notice the difference, but I don't play much, and never was a player.
As far as the longer scale. If you keep the same body, and bridge placement, you would have a longer neck, and more frets to the body. Is that a terrible thing? I don't think so. You could play around with the body, making it longer, scaling up everything, or seeing just how much lower the bridge would set, with a 14 instead of 12, or 16 instead of 14 feet neck.
The longer neck does mess with.The balance. The 16 feet neck on my 13" archtop seems heavy to me.
If you are playing classicals, maybe a shorter scale with bronze strings would be fine.
Maybe real players will chime in.

The advice I got from a jazz player with a long experience in retail was that a 16” radius will be most likely to sell to a flat top player taking his first dive into jazz guitar while most experienced jazz dudes will prefer a 12”.

Juan, just a couple of comments for what they are worth. First, I have only built two archtop style guitars - one is a 16 inch carved top acoustic inspired by the Gibson L5 but built with the help of Benedetto's book. The second is a 17 inch hollow body electric, which will approximately the same size as Bob's 17 inch guitars.



For both guitars I used Gibson "24.75" scale, both because I like it and because I'm set up to slot that scale. Both of my guitars have the neck to body joint at the 14th fret.

Assuming you will still have the joint at the 14th fret your bridge will move a hair under 1/4 inch farther into the lower bout. The head will move slightly more that 1/4 from the body. In theory moving the bridge will have some affect on the sound - I don't think you will hear it (and you don't have any reference). As you said, the points of the f-holes usually point to the scale location (ie the bridge) but I don't know of any reason that they need to be there. The f-holes do have a couple of functions besides letting the sound out, they very effectively weaken the top and let the center of the lower bout vibrate (you'll experience this as you do the voicing of the top). Moving them a quarter of an inch probably won't affect that much. You could always change the shape, many f-holes do not have the points. Our you could not move the holes but put the points back at the scale. One little thing the points are good for is if your bridge comes off while changing strings it gives you a starting point to put it back on.

Adding to the scale means the neck will be longer but should not be a problem with normal archtop cases. Mine is in a nice TKL case and there is 3 inches between the end of the head and the case.

As far as fretboard radius, just remember that if you are going to use a commercial bridge you might be locked into that radius. StewMac sells a couple of bridges, they are 13 and 15 inch radius. My necks are both 12 inch radius, they work fine with the 13 inch bridge. Compound radius necks can get more complicated because the flattening. The big advantage to compound radius is they don't fret out as badly on big bends - I don't think many archtop players do that. Otherwise use whatever you like.

Good luck with your build. If you have any questions let me know. I've got lots of pictures of the carved top guitar and its really a lot of fun to play.

Fingerboard stop: a mistery for me.

As much as I have tried, I cannot understand why the fingergoard stop that Benedetto explains in his book is necessary. I have read the description and seen the drawings more than ten times. I understand what it's for (to create a straight line between the fingerboard binding and the headstock binding). But I don't understand why it's necessary. Is impossible achive this straight line without it?

The fretboard extension looks excessively thick. If you thinned it down, that would bring the neck down closer to a target of 1".

Hello,

My archtop is groving erery day… a interesting adventure on unknown seas for me.

I’m measuring the neck angle before frettinng and binding. I’ve measured a neck angle of 5º and 1 2/16” between the straight ruler and the top on the bridge location (without frets). I think is too much. Any expert advice would be welcome!

It should be an 1" finished.
You still need to carve the bottom of the extension to the top and that will bring it down.You also might have to adjust the cheeks of the heel as well.

The 'cheeks' of the mortice joint are the flat areas on either side of the tenon that bear against the sides and establish the angles.

I'm much too late here because I think I see a radius at the nut there in your pic, but radius is personal preference. I wasn't prolific by any means, but I played in a jazz band throughout college. Radius isn't something I ever thought about, and prefer a 16-20' radius now on my steel strings.

Scale length is structural. Changes there will require forethought, understanding, and planning. I've only dreamed of building an archtop and don't understand the instrument at all in a way that makes me feel comfortable offering advice.

It’s a style. Larger pick guards are supported by a bracket on the side of the guitar. Those thinner ones aren’t supported. Of course, there is a block that attaches it to the neck extension that gives it rigidity.

If you like that style, they work fine. It seems like it wouldn’t be rigid enough, but it is. Personally I found that I didn’t need a finger rest on my guitar. If you are building for yourself you can always leave it off and decide what kind, of any, you want later.


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