Thickness of neck & tone

[Doughboy]

Does the thickness of the neck REALLY add that much to the over all tone?

The reason I say this is that all my guitars have wizard contours & are pretty damn thin. They sound good, but having just got a Les Paul with a THICK neck, it just blows everything else away tone wise. It's so fat & thick.

Now, I know that Les Pauls are all mahogany guitars with PAFs, but I have a Wrmoth strat that is all mahogany with PAFs & it doesn't sound nearly as fat & has a wizard contour. Both weight almost the same as well. Around 8lbs.

I'm debating moving up a size from Wizard to Slim in the hopes of better tone. Will this bring about the desired result or is it wishful thinkng?

 

[Steve_Karl]

a wizard to a standard thin is not much of a change but every neck is going to be different so you might get lucky.
' 59 roundbacks are the beginning of thick

I've got 2 w strats.
One with a standard thin (mahogany body) and one with a '59 roundback ( black korina body )
Same exact electronics different bodies.

Plugged in they sound almost exactly the same. I couldn't blind listen and know for sure.
The one with the mahogany body sounds warmer and louder unplugged.

The real perk of the '59 for me is that my hand doesn't get tired as quickly as it does on the thin.

I've got a boat neck on order and my next after that will be a fat back.
The thing I know for sure is that bigger is easier for me to play.

Make sure your pup hight is the same (or lower) on your strat as the LP to eliminate that possibility.
Also, you might want to measure the LP with calipers. You might find it's closer to a '59 or a fat.

 

[drewfx]

Of course this is all really speculation, as proper controlled testing is somewhere between difficult and impossible, but:

My experience is that - all other things being equal - bigger, chunkier necks generally have a fatter, meatier tone. Whether someone else thinks this is a good thing or not is a different question.

And on bass necks, when rocked hard the open low E will sound HUGE on a big chunky neck in a way I have never ever ever heard from a thin neck. But the low action, skinny neck, light touch types will probably claim there is no difference (and to be fair, for them there might not be).

 

[ihavenothingprofoundtosay]

From an objective, scientific perspective, sustain & resonance has a lot of influencing factors, and the amount of mass that in the object that carries the bulk of the tension (ie - the neck) is probably the single biggest.  It's not a direct equivalence of "x more mass = x more sustain", because the grain structure (varies by species) & grain direction of the wood make a difference (ie - flatsawn vs quartersawn), but there is a LOT of the tone carried by the wood in the neck. 

As to how much that actually shapes the overall sound is extremely subjective - you'd have to compare 2 different necks by recording yourself playing the exact same chords on the same body & pickups, then measure it with a visual eq analyzer to get something approaching definitive.  But controlling for all the other factors is tough.  And then there's individual pieces of wood that defy the trends, and the infinite range of personal preferences.

I've discovered I love fatbacks, not so much for the tone as the comfort - if you have larger than average hands and/or long fingers, moving to something bigger could feel much better.  But then, I'm VERY excited to get my fatback 1 7/8" firebird neck attached & plug it in.  :toothy10: arty07:

 

[Superlizard]

If a fat neck produces a fuller tone than a skinny neck, this would generally be considered an advantage.

Just as thicker strings produce a fuller tone over thin strings; again, it would generally be considered an advantage.

So, the answer to the question is an emphatic "no", because as we all know, everybody is equal... this includes
their guitar equipment. 

If any piece of gear had an advantage, it wouldn't be fair.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

There are a couple of factors competing with each other with the neck.  The more structure, wood, whatever, the increase in the influence of the wood on that guitar, and there is an increase in strength vs the same wood in a smaller neck.  However, the more wood the more mass has to be vibrated in order for that neck to influence the overall tone.  With electrics it is not so much of a big deal, but the acoustic builders tend to worry about it with respect to sustain.  To muddy the waters a little more, the differences between one piece of wood and another of the same type of wood can also influence the sound as well because of the natural variations in the wood.

There are several people on the boards that like the fatter larger necks.  I am not one of them.  For me, they cramp my hand.  I have determined that this tends to not be much fun, and it translates to my playing.  You will probably find one profile that works the best for you, and that will ultimately give you the best tone for the guitar because of the ease of playing.  Well, that is my opinion.
Patrick

 

[Tonar8352]

I agree bigger necks tend to produce consistently better sounding guitars but that really will not matter if you use a heavily processed signal chain and heavily distorted amp.  If you go clean for the blues/country/classic rock you will notice it.  Steve Vai and Joe Satriani will not notice a big difference, Robben Ford or Matt Schofield will. 

 

[Justinginn]

Here's my take:

If a guitar feels like it should be more powerful to you:
1) Placebo effect, it will sound more powerful to you because you're expecting it to sound better
More importantly:
2) Feeling like you're holding a more powerful guitar will affect your playing. The more powerful feeling will cause you to play with more energy, which unmistakably sounds more powerful and that better feeling might make playing easier/more efficient which will also enhance the way you sound.

I'm pretty convinced that the main way guitars affect the tone is by affecting the player.

 

[Steve_Karl]

Your jedi mind tricks don't work on self actualized players. 

 

[bagman67]

Your jedi mind tricks don't work on self actualized players. 

These are not the boatnecks you seek?

 

[Steve_Karl]

All kidding aside Justinginn has a valid point of view and one that I often share.
Sometimes I think that the only thing I have is my subjective perception.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

+1 for the '59 Roundback.  It isn't thick or thin, just comfortable.  Moving from a thick or thinner neck, the '59 isn't an awkward transition.  IME too, a different nut width on the same neck profile can make them feel like completely different necks.  Even just 1/16" is a world of difference in your hands.  (that's what she said)

 

[swarfrat]

While I wholeheartedly agree with the concept, an objective scientific comparison doesn't give a fig about intuition or how stuff seems, but has large sample groups, control groups, and an objective measurement. There is no tonal unit of fatness.

 

[Steve_Karl]

Yes. Science is good.

 

[tfarny]

While I wholeheartedly agree with the concept, an objective scientific comparison doesn't give a fig about intuition or how stuff seems, but has large sample groups, control groups, and an objective measurement. There is no tonal unit of fatness.

You could do the studies - sustain is measurable, as is volume and resonant peaks in a waveform. There is just no real interest in doing real scientific research on classic guitar tone.

 

[Strat Avenger]

I say NO.  I've played guitars with thick necks that didn't sound great at all, and guitars with thin necks that sounded awesome.
Get what is most comfortable for the size of your hands and playing style.

 

[swarfrat]

You could do studies, you could look for phase alignments of the cepstrum, and do cross correlation between the log spectra  of classic guitars out the wazoo. But without some defined measure it's all an utter waste of time and someone's money. The kind of thing you might get a good grad thesis out of if you have the gift of gab in addition to an analytical mind.

 

[drewfx]

You could do studies, you could look for phase alignments of the cepstrum, and do cross correlation between the log spectra  of classic guitars out the wazoo. But without some defined measure it's all an utter waste of time and someone's money. The kind of thing you might get a good grad thesis out of if you have the gift of gab in addition to an analytical mind.

Getting a bit OT, but all of the relevant measures for any type of audio exist and can be easily measured - it's just frequency, amplitude, phase, frequency response, distortion, noise, etc. Though, for whatever reason, some people will always try to invent "new" qualities that "can't be measured objectively".

The really hard part with things like guitars is not what to measure; it's isolating the effect of individual components and accounting for things like wood variances so that you can take measurements and draw meaningful conclusions from them.

 

[Corey P.]

The last two posts remind me of Don Cheadle's sales pitch in Boogie Nights where he makes up reasons a stereo is better (it has more quarks), has the customer on the hook, then drives them away by playing country music.

As far as neck volume, I'm going to take a bravely non-commital stance; there's definitely some placebo effect but I really do feel you get more response and sustain with a thicker neck.  I personally benefit a ton from a wider neck for chording since I have sausage links for fingers.  Thankfully not literally, or I'd probably have eaten them by now.

 

[RobR]

I have always believed that thicker necks displace more air........