Electric Guitar Beginner Looking for Wide Neck

[Powerman]

Hello,

I just started playing guitar.  I want to learn and play on solid-body electrics.  However, I can't seem to find a guitar with a neck wide enough to accomodate my not-too-thin fingers.  So, doing a little investigation, it seems that an option might be to do the following: 
     
      1)  get a guitar that is compatible with a Warmoth  wide neck (either 1 and 3/4 or 1 and 7/8)
      2)  order the Warmoth neck
      3)  Have a guitar shop replace my guitar's neck with the warmoth neck.

Is this a reasonable plan?  If so, what kind of price range am I looking at for these wide Warmoth necks?  I can't afford to spend a ton of money.

Thanks for you advice!

 

[Nando Vallart]

Hello!
Why not just get a Warmoth body too?  :icon_scratch: ??
They are compatible...

 

[RLW]

Just go to the Warmoth website, in the showcase you can search for both nut widths you mentioned. From what I just saw, they're no more than any other width option.

 

[Nando Vallart]

Just go to the Warmoth website, in the showcase you can search for both nut widths you mentioned. From what I just saw, they're no more than any other width option.

There is the Superwide... I understood his question as from this neck...
http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/necks/necks.cfm?fuseaction=superwide_warmothpro

 

[bpmorton777]

hey! Welcome to the board!

How long have you been playing? The reason i ask is that you might want to stick it out with a cheap guitar untill you know for certain that you will play it all the time. A classical guitar has a VERY wide fretboard and you could pick one up for almost nothing. I learned on a classical when i was 11.

Brian

 

[Powerman]

First, thanks for the replies.

To NonsenseTele: 
      Good suggestion.  Given my ignorance at this point in my career (ie, many years before being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame  :laughing7: ), if I get a Warmoth body
      and a neck I guess that's pretty much the whole guitar, isn't it?  If I got both the neck and the body, would I just take that to some guitar shop and have them put in the pickups,
      the strings, and whatever else, to make it a complete guitar?  If so, how much will I have to pay for the neck and body combination (and, remember, I'm poor).


To bpmorton777:
    Just started playing a few weeks ago.  I'm definitely going to continue.  I'm 48, my daughter will be off to college in less than 2 years, so I'll finally have time to make this a major
    hobby of mine.  Good suggestion about a classical guitar, but I really want to play a solid body electric (I plan to make everyone forget about SRV  :laughing7


One thing I thought about after I made my initial post was:  I wonder if I could find a USED guitar that has a wide warmoth neck?  That way, I don't have to mess with figuring out what to order, etc.  Assuming that I find a good one, it might both save me some money and hassle.
I'll look to see if this forum has a classifieds section.  Do you folks know of any such guitar?

Thanks again for your replies!

 

[Buster Jones]

As a newbie, I needed the wider necks..no way I could play a Fender 'A' neck......fingers kept fouling other strings, especially with open chords....Nowadays the thinner ones are more comfortable.  I was pleasantly surprized how comfortable my Warmoth 1 5/8 standard thin was.  Like butta!

Play for a while, then order what you want. 

 

[Nando Vallart]

If so, how much will I have to pay for the neck and body combination (and, remember, I'm poor).
One thing I thought about after I made my initial post was:  I wonder if I could find a USED guitar that has a wide warmoth neck?

How much are you poor? Are you from USA??? If yes, don't come with this talk to me... I'm from south america...
Neck: from $167 to heaven :icon_biggrin:  They have even necks of $1grand
Body: from $140 (poplar) and $160 (alder) to a $1grand again... depends only of what you want an can afford

Looks like you want to play the blues...
I would say:
Alder or Ash body and maple neck with maple or rosewood/pauferro/etc fingerboard...
this is about $327
solid painting: +185
Neck painting: $100
Bridge: +56
Pickups: from $60 (GFS from guitar fetish, pre-wired pickguard) to $330 (Bare Knuckle Pickup + $90/130 to a pre-wired pickguard)
Tuners: ± $60 (locking... very good)
dunno how much would cost the other parts... not more than $100/150, I believe...
Everything about $940...

You can get a cheaper guitar... yes... but dunno how much about a nice one...

 

[Powerman]

Thanks, NonsenseTele!
You've been a big help!

 

[OzziePete]

Hi Powerman...and welcome to the world of guitar playing.

Like others have said before, I'd suggest you play for a while on a used old guitar, and get used to feeling the neck and the stretch of your fingers.

I've been playing for most of my life now, (I'm 46 - playing since 13) and I still stumble around on the fretboard.

But the years of playing, does give me the experience to have a very good idea of what I want on a neck.

There are a lot of factors, that while small things, can aggravate the hell out of you in a neck design.

Things like fretboard wood  -some folks like the softer feel under the fingertips of rosewood, while others prefer the sustain and harder feel of maple or ebony. Get the wrong type and not only can it change the sound of the instrument from what you had previously (a little) but it could annoy you as you play.

That's just one example. But until you have played a while, tried a few different types of guitars out and get an idea of what affects the way it feels or sounds, you are just following what others tell you is good. And choice of woods, shape of the neck, nut width, fret size and neck scale, are all very much an individual's choice.

Here's a suggestion: go into a few guitar stores over the next few months, and play different types of solid bodies, and feel the difference for yourself. When you find what you like in a good neck, ask the staff at the store what it's specs are. Then try other guitars with similar neck specs and see if the original's neck was really the reason that the guitar felt good.

I'd hate to see you buy a Warmoth neck, spend your hard earnt cash on a super wide nut width, only to find it is annoying you a year or so later.

SRV, BTW, had really big hands and yet used the standard Fender neck until they needed refretting.

Have a Merry Christmas

Pete :cool01:

 

[stubhead]

I had to think about this one for a bit. I seem to end up giving the same advice about every question:

It's instructive to pay attention to what the very best professionals are doing, people who depend on instruments that allow them to play their best night after night and album after album. A (surprisingly) large number of my favorite guitarists both play concerts and record with both nylon-string and solidbody electric guitars. Off the bat, you've got Steve Howe, Steve Morse, John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola - all of whom are electric monsters, all of whom have toured and recorded with nylon-string classical and steel-string acoustics in solo and group settings.To the best of my knowledge, they're all playing "conventional" instruments - i.e., wide, flat necks on classical guitars; regular, narrower, radiused fingerboards on electric guitars. These are people who could (and do) have any guitar they want built, yet the aggregate choices on neck size developed over decades is what they're playing too.

There are a lot of ways in which the geometry of electric playing is different from acoustic, the strings are much smaller in diameter, they're much easier to bend out of tune (this can be an advantage of course), because of the prevalence of barre chords in popular music having a curved radius on the lower neck (as Warmoth does) can be an advantage, etc. I'm 50 and have been playing 37 years; I have a 1 3/4" wide neck on my "#1" Warmoth, but I've cut the nut for more conventional 1 11/16th" string spacing because I hate strings falling off the edge & it's a scalloped-neck bendy guitar... I also play a Warmoth mutant Mustang with a 1 5/8" nut and 24" scale, it's really easy to play so I use it for scale practice and working out parts because I can play longer without getting tired. Having a guitar that's easy to play is important, a guitar with great tone that's sitting in the corner cause it's hard to play actually has no tone at all....  :sad1:

I would tend to agree, play everything you can first (there may be a teacher or store in your area who will even rent you a few guitars to try for a bit). If you live on the moon, the best ideas for what works really ought to come from looking at what the best guitarists use, and there's no big trend towards super-wide necks - I would hear about something like that, I'm pretty obsessive that way.  :help:

P.S. - Musicians are all crazy, so ignore the advice you read on guitar boards, except for mine - I'M YOUR NEW FRIEND....  ccasion14: say, what's for dinner?

 

[Powerman]

Thanks, OzziePete and stubhead, for the detailed info.

You, and the others on this thread, have given me confidence that I don't have to freak-out right away and rush off to get a super-wide neck.

I'm going to take a few lessons soon, and I'll hang in there with my standard width (1 11/16 or thereabouts) neck and see how it goes.

:rock-on:

 

[tfarny]

Good idea, powerman. Fitting your fingers onto the fretboard is a key skill, and as you get better it'll get easier. Those wide fretboards would slow you down as you got better, unless your hands are indeed giant or you are playing real fingerstyle stuff, in which case get an acoustic with a 1 3/4 nut. I watch Ebay for used wamoth parts sometimes, and a surprisingly large number of the necks on there (considering that wide electric necks are uncommon) are wide ones that somebody thought was a good idea at first.