[slodave]

Todd, please stop with the small custom guys. It's a different ballgame. You referenced how your current, new P-bass, sounded better than 3 vintage P-basses. Leo Fender was a radio guy and knew nothing about woodworking or building guitars. My earlier point was that it's possible that the old Fender products were not always up to specs. If you don't joint/plane the ends of the wood correctly, you get a crappy joint - fact. If the joint is load bearing, it probably will fail at some point. If the joint is bad and is painted, it's easy to use wood filler to fill the cracks. It's also easy to mix up a diluted wood glue and add sawdust and use it as a filler, which is stronger than putty, but still not a good joint at the end of the day.

As for the Fenders, when the blocks were glued together, quality control may have been lacking and while the glued piece may look good on either side, there could be many areas that are hidden, that are not making contact. That will affect the way a guitar/bass sounds.

Also, if you move too slowly on a jointer, you can end up with lots of waves. While the wave will be very minor and some may think that it is okay to glue and it kind of is for general woodworking, it really is not. None of us know what went on at the Fender or Gibson factories years ago. I was only giving you a suggestion based on many years of woodworking.

The guys you keep talking about don't pump out guitars to the scale of Gibson or Fender. They also will take 6+ months to get a guitar finished. Believe me, I know that it would be impossible for Gibson to do what I have been doing and meet their production goals. Their own custom department has had a heck of a time reproducing an accurate '59 reissue.

The routes I am doing for the control cavity were scrapped by Gibson, in favor for a metal plate and long shaft pots. Why, because these routes are a ****ing *****! It's easier and cheaper to do what they are doing now.

BTW, it's also far less expensive to buy long boards, and glue two pieces up to make the width you need. It's also harder to find the blanks needed for one piece bodies. I have done the same thing for furniture, for the same reasons.