Neckthrough vs laminate top sustain

[Jumble Jumble]

I think you can actually buy the paper from the Guild of American Luthiers.

All I can find is this:

A test instrument was built using neck through construction. Audio recordings were made of this instrument using a uniform picking mechanism. The neck was sawed off and then attached with screws (bolt-on configuration) and audio recordings were again made in the same manner. The neck was then glued in place (set neck configuration) and allowed to dry, and audio recordings were again made. Spectrographic analysis was performed on these recordings and averaged sound clips were produced for listening evaluation. Sustain for each iteration of the instrument was measured. Listening evaluation did not indicate any difference in sustain among the three instrument iterations. Measured sustain values indicated that the bolt-on neck iteration produced the greatest sustain.

Which is a data set of 1, as far as I can tell. It's one more than any study that has proved the opposite though. I'm sure people think that glued-in has more sustain because Les Pauls have so much sustain. Why it'd be the neck joint and not one of the 500 other things that make up a Les Paul I'm not sure.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

7/8" side jack though, oh boy, sustain for days...

Especially gold ones. Goodness gracious they're shiny! The sustain is nearly infinite!

This is why you rarely get black hardware.  Absorbs too much.
Patrick

 

[Cagey]

In my experience a lot of these "scientific" experiments, when conducted people who don't have a background in science, end up being severely or fatally flawed in one way or another. Or else broad conclusions are drawn based on limited data from a single test with no independent confirmation. Or sometimes the person conducting the experiment has a great deal of knowledge and experience in one area, but lacks sufficient expertise in another area that is necessary to properly gather or interpret data.

Having said that, even imperfect tests can be interesting...

There are certainly a lot of faulty experiments out there, particularly in the stringed instrument realm. Typically, there's no control. Too many variables get changed at once, then the one point they're interested in gets credited or faulted for the result.

But, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do good "scientific" work. All you need to do is control things so the results are predictable and reproducible based on finite causation.

The frustrating thing about electric guitar dogma is that very little of the data is produced that way. It's mostly just beliefs derived from irrelevant sources, wildly incomplete data, or emotional responses.

 

[Cagey]

Which is a data set of 1, as far as I can tell. It's one more than any study that has proved the opposite though. I'm sure people think that glued-in has more sustain because Les Pauls have so much sustain. Why it'd be the neck joint and not one of the 500 other things that make up a Les Paul I'm not sure.

It's amazing what variables people will credit for certain characteristics. Most of the time, it's simple physics. And I don't mean doctorate-level Large Hadron Collider theoretical understanding of How Things Work, I'm talking about early stuff, like Newton's laws. Stuff like inertia and entropy. The sort of thing most of us should have tripped to by about 7th or 8th grade, if not earlier from Roadrunner cartoons.

Les Pauls have a great deal of sustain because they're very solid. The body is heavy, the neck is short and thick with a deep connection to the body... attach some lightweight steel strings under tension to such a thing and make them vibrate, and where are those vibrations going to go? The structure has too much inertia to absorb them, so they simply continue on until entropy has its way.

 

[Cagey]

7/8" side jack though, oh boy, sustain for days...

Especially gold ones. Goodness gracious they're shiny! The sustain is nearly infinite!

This is why you rarely get black hardware.  Absorbs too much.
Patrick

Oddly enough, the blackest guitar I have is a Gibson Melody maker with a black finish, black hardware, black pickups, etc... you wanna talk about a dead instrument? I'm debating having "ZOMBIE WOOF" inlaid in large letters on the face of the thing. I don't think it could be deader if it were made of Balsa.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Ideally, you wouldn't want a guitar to sustain so much it doesn't resonate, and resonate so much it doesn't sustain. 

When you start having stubborn insistences that keep you from playing the instrument, they become excuses for lack of ability.  I think it's one reason (other than hardware and electronics upgrades) mainstream guitar construction hasn't changed since the 50s.  It's not that those guys got it right, it's that it wasn't that hard to get right in the first place.  One piece, 2 piece, glue, bolts, they all work good enough.

...and we all have preferences.

 

[LushTone]

Hey I just saw this: http://www.rondomusic.com/customquote.html

I know you want a neck through and these Agile guitars are highly rated, and this allows you to have a semi-custom one for deals.

 

[LushTone]

It appears that you can get it for around $500, with the thru neck and the basics for other options. But, there's the option for pickup upgrades, chambers, 7 strings, and floating bridges for additional fees.

Btw, I'm looking at the Lp style guitar, which is the cheapest.

 

[LushTone]

Ohhhh wait...

That price would be the initial deposit, and then you pay an additional $285 when it ships.

Not too cheap, but still a relatively good deal with hard to find options for the cost.