Set neck vs. bolt-on neck

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The good tone people play just as many or more bolt ons as set necks.  Many play both.  Maybe it ain't the neck construction.

 

[greywolf]

Let's step back a minute from Guitars and Basses , and look at what are considered to be the finest stringed instruments ever built .. Stradavarius..  along all others in the classical domain use set necks .
If you want to talk acoustic transfer , they are hard to beat.

Bolt on's were concieved and continue because they are ease to service , and require less labor to build.  There are many fine examples of wonderful bolt on neck instruments . 

They were never concieved for sonic superiority.  Leo Fender wasn't a musician , he was an engineer.

 

[swarfrat]

ER's family perhaps said it best in their announcement and plea to the online community to be civil about their now gone loved one.

I don't recall the exact words, but what I read between the lines was,  "Yes, we know he rubbed a awful lot of people the wrong way, but he was family, we loved him, please don't be ugly now that he's gone. 

All in all not a bad way to put it. He certainly never seemed to lack an enthusiastically held opinion.  There's a member here that constantly rubs me the wrong way. Quite often just because he says it I find myself wanting to disagree. But invariably I go looking up some wierd idea I get a bug for, and find this guy quite often has extremely similar ideas to mine in guitars. Which reminds me to 1) be gracious and humble and try not to get cranky when I see his words, and 2) make an effort to not come across in the same way.  (Most of my cranky sounding remarks are actually meant in jest)

On this subject, I feel whatever differences there is between screws and glue is swamped by choice of wood and variability from plank to plank.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Let's step back a minute from Guitars and Basses , and look at what are considered to be the finest stringed instruments ever built .. Stradavarius..  along all others in the classical domain use set necks .
If you want to talk acoustic transfer , they are hard to beat.

Bolt on's were concieved and continue because they are ease to service , and require less labor to build.  There are many fine examples of wonderful bolt on neck instruments . 

They were never concieved for sonic superiority.  Leo Fender wasn't a musician , he was an engineer.

Eli Whitney, besides inventing the cotton gin, patented the idea of component pieces, or what we would call interchangeable parts.  Stringed instrument construction predates that concept.  Had he been making violins now with modern materials and construction means, maybe he'd do it differently.  Didn't someone recently post about how when double blind tested, the older, more revered violins sounded like doo-doo?

 

[Jusatele]

just to stir the pot
if you have a neck thru, there is no joint
with a bolt on it is wood on wood
with a set neck there is glue between the 2 woods

I do not know but looks like the best would be neck thru, bolt then set,

anyone want to discuss that?

TEchnically, if you have a neck-through, you do have glue joints for the wings, but there's no joint along the string's sounding length.


Pedantically yours,


Bagman

I totally agree, but most guys argue the neck joint is what makes the tone/sustain, and set necks are best, but if we were to look closely, set necks have a hard artificial substance between the body and neck. And a neck trough has no joint between the pickup bridge area of the body and neck.
I think (personally) to much is credited to neck joints for these reasons. But then that is an opinion.

 

[bagman67]

I agree, Jusatele.  I was just being one of those annoying internet a-holes. Sorry.

 

[Johnny]

ER's family perhaps said it best in their announcement and plea to the online community to be civil about their now gone loved one.

I don't recall the exact words, but what I read between the lines was,  "Yes, we know he rubbed a awful lot of people the wrong way, but he was family, we loved him, please don't be ugly now that he's gone. 

All in all not a bad way to put it. He certainly never seemed to lack an enthusiastically held opinion.  There's a member here that constantly rubs me the wrong way. Quite often just because he says it I find myself wanting to disagree. But invariably I go looking up some wierd idea I get a bug for, and find this guy quite often has extremely similar ideas to mine in guitars. Which reminds me to 1) be gracious and humble and try not to get cranky when I see his words, and 2) make an effort to not come across in the same way.  (Most of my cranky sounding remarks are actually meant in jest)

On this subject, I feel whatever differences there is between screws and glue is swamped by choice of wood and variability from plank to plank.

Sorry, I don't mean to irritate you.  :icon_smile:

Seriously, I think even the choice of wood has only a minor effect compared to the electronics, so how the neck is attached falls way down on the list of variables when considering a guitars sonic performance. As a result, I'd rather have a bolt on for maintenance reasons but I did used to believe set necks were better because of all the hype.  Once I actually thought about it, I realized I was full of s#!+.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

Let's step back a minute from Guitars and Basses , and look at what are considered to be the finest stringed instruments ever built .. Stradavarius..  along all others in the classical domain use set necks .
If you want to talk acoustic transfer , they are hard to beat.

Bolt on's were conceived and continue because they are ease to service , and require less labor to build.  There are many fine examples of wonderful bolt on neck instruments . 

They were never conceived for sonic superiority.  Leo Fender wasn't a musician , he was an engineer.

In several Stradavarius instruments, he used a nail/nails to hold the neck in place as well as glue.  While I won't speculate on why that guy did anything, it is apparent that he used the convention, and wasn't afraid of making it better with a new idea.  According to references, the violin builders stole the idea of a spike to help the neck from the lute builders.
Patrick

 

[greywolf]

I think bottom line , you can have a beautiful and beautiful sounding instrument regardless of neck construction. 

If a client doesn't specify , I'll always build a bolt on

 

[Jusatele]

I agree, Jusatele.  I was just being one of those annoying internet a-holes. Sorry.

And I am Not?
arty07:

 

[-CB-]

You really can't glue on a neck that's designed to be bolted on, no matter what glue you use. You would end up with what's known as a "lap joint", which by itself usually isn't the strongest of joints, and it would have too small an area for the amount of force it's expected to withstand. Long story short, the neck would come off with very little effort, kinda like a Gibson headstock.

A neck that's going to be glued needs a lot more surface area for the joint interface, and possibly some interlocking cuts to prevent movement. So, you usually see very large dovetail or mortise and tenon joints. Nothing holds the neck on but glue, but there's lots of it. Not very tight, but generally pretty strong.

Some info:

The Gibson neck joint is not held to anything at the bottom.  Its a sides only affair.  The bottom is void, not wood on wood.  Even the "old joint" is clear on the bottom by a good bit of room... about 1/16".

IMHO (qualifier), the reason you can't just glue a bolt on neck to a bolt on body is not the glue joint strength, but the strength of the materials and the way in which it would shear along the grain.  If you could somehow have a neck pocket that was holding the neck from the sides, the shearing forces would not be in the same direction as those which would cause the neck or body to want to self destruct.

Think of it as layers of grain being added to more layers of grain....they would want to delaminate along the length of the grain.  Just my thought (from a half fast engineering perspective).

 

[-CB-]

Probably should add too, the the "traditional" set-neck woods were mahogany glued into a mahogany body - with exceptions of course.  The typical bolt on neck is maple into ash or alder.  Then again, the typical set neck guitar, has humbuckers, while the typical bolt on has single coils.  Scale length and bridge differences too.... straight vs angled headstocks... lots of differences besides the neck joint.

My ash thinline Tele with a goncalo neck was way way too dark, with a current version Gibson P90 and a Gibson BB#3.  I erred in the choice of materials.  Changing to a maple neck put the bright back in.  The neck is #1 tone shaper next to the pickups.  Similarly I've tried goncalo and maple necks on the same solid Telecaster (maple body) and had similar results.  The all "eastern" maple Tele I built a long time ago actually has a sort of "caricature" of the classic LP tone.  An amazing guitar with 57Classics in it.

 

[Torment Leaves Scars]

I'm not reading through three pages of debating, but I saw a video somewhere of a bolt-on neck vs. set neck vs. neck through in terms of sound, and there was very little difference in terms of sustain and tone.  The bolt-on is the cheapest way of doing a neck and like a hatch-back car, people associate a bolt-on neck with being "cheap."  Fender has been using bolt-on necks since Day 1 and continue to do so today.  They use bolt-on necks on $8,500 Custom Shop guitars.  Hardly cheap.

That being said, I love the access to the high frets from a neck-through design.  I also love the solid feel of a neck-through designed guitar.  They also just fit my body differently.  While I prefer a neck-through design to a bolt-on design, a bolt-on designed guitar is obviously NOT a deal-breaker.  I'm yet to find a better playing guitar than my Warmoth.