I am working on a Silvertone copy for myself. I’ve made four or five necks for these Silvertone guitars, working from measurements taken from three of the originals, and compiled the dimensions which may be of interest to other builders. Of the three originals I studied, none was exactly the same as the others, and even the scale length had to be guessed at. The dimensions shown here are those that I now use when I want to make one of these necks. In particular, mine are about 3/16″ wider at the heel than the originals, which were barely wide enough to capture the outside of the high and low E strings on the fretboard. Pictured above is an original, top, and my version, below. I also scale down the headstock by about 15% because the originals are oversize to my eye. These are the specs I use :
The guitar I am working on now is loosely based on the Jupiter model – I made it a hollow-body with a sort of ladder-truss arrangement down the middle to support the bridge and take the string tension. I used Spanish Cedar for those parts to keep things light. In the cutaway I used a small mahogany block so I didn’t have to try to bend the sides around the horn. The neck block is light mahogany. One of the things I like about these guitars is how light they are, and this one, even though it has 3/16″ hard maple for the top and back, is still pleasingly light.
With the neck pocket cut out, and the neck ready for finishing and frets – I used as much curly maple as I could find, including a piece of big leaf quilt for the headstock overlay. Also needed a piece of highly figured bubinga for the fingerboard.
At the finishing stage now – having trouble selecting my material as always. Probably going to use Lollar gold foil pickups.
