The Hidden Tone Control of Strats and Teles?

[pauln]

Some of you know about the "neck pop" procedure, but can reversing it tone down the brightness for jazz?

The "neck-pop"
Many have had the strange experience that after some kind of work on their guitar that involved removing the bolt-on neck, afterwards their guitar sounded dull and damped. This is caused by bolting the neck back on to the body and tightening it fully before putting on and tuning up new strings - the butt-end face of the neck is locked and may be left with little or no firm contact with the body-end of the neck pocket.

The simple fix for this is to loosen the neck plate screws gradually, moving from one to the next until the tension of the strings overcomes the friction in the pocket - at which moment the neck suddenly moves toward the body a slight amount and makes a "pop" as it makes firm contact with the body face of the socket. Tightening the bolts locks this firm contact in place and restores the brightness of the guitar.

Dulling or damping
This raises the idea of knocking down the brightness of a Strat or Tele for jazz by deliberately unbolting, loosening, and bolting the neck firm before putting on the strings to soften the contact, pushing the guitar's intrinsic tone toward a more dull damped sound.

In prep for an upcoming performance (yay!) I restrung and won't be able to experiment for a while, but am wondering if anyone has done this and whether the resulting tone was actually a good and useful sound for jazz?

[John A.]

Hmmm. I've never heard of this before. But I've not really messed around much with the neck bolts. Changing the neck pitch slightly via the micro-tilt has made a noticeable difference in playability and tone, though.

[73Fender]

Back when I was totally Tele obsessed, this subject came up on the Tele forum. If memory serves, some of the top techs or builders there advised against it. A quick search should bring up those threads.

[neatomic]

a good solid neck /body joint is always beneficial...just always be careful never to loosen the neck screws too much when the strings are on at full tension...a little too much and the string tension can take the neck off...strip the screw holes...

not good!!!


cheers

[Jim Soloway]

Much better idea to just back off the tone control I think.

[gitman]

You'd always want a solid neck/body connection , regardless of how much treble-content you prefer in your tone : the solid contact will ensure a proper "feedback-loop" for the resonance-transfer between the two parts, resulting in a much more balanced, stronger tone and better attack/decay (sustain)
ratio. If you want to tame the brilliance you could experiment with different bridges (material choice), strings, tone-cap and pot values. All safe and just as easy.

[pauln]

The tone controls, both guitar and amp, after picking technique, are the usual first choice... for tone control (frequency response).

The thing is, solid body guitars produce far more sustain than traditional hollow jazz boxes, but a more damped sustain profile tends to be favored for jazz. The "stronger tone and better attack/decay (sustain)" is desirable for most music genres, but the old jazz sound is more dull and damped... different from just a darker tone setting.

[ruger9]

I have heard from some people (Robben Ford for one), that "once you take the neck off a guitar, it won't sound the same anymore... it takes quite awhile for it to 'settle in' and sound like it did."

I was never sure if this was superstition (popular amongst musicians), or if there was any validity to it. I'm still not sure.