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I know that all the parts of a guitar are very important but recently I noticed that a fretboard with precisely studded frets is essential.Guitars have different sounds, but good fret works improves comfort, instrument tone, and tuning.
Best
Kris
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08-09-2021 06:09 AM
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A straight neck and good fretwork are everything.
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I'd go a step further and say the entire design and construction of the neck (including the fingerboard and frets) are what make or break a guitar.
Originally Posted by kris
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We usually think of the body of the archtop guitar to be the vibrating bit, but the neck itself is vibrating as well and thus has a role in shaping the tone of the instrument. The neck is IMHO absolutely 50% of the tone-shaping equation. Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
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Completely agree. Its really the only thing a player can't "adjust for" while playing. Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
Somebody could hand me a solid body with strat pickups (shudder) and by using my hands and the amp, ill get a good sound...
But if the neck is bad? Nope.
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Totally agree. The neck comes first, not only in playability but sound. I heard a quote recently, I believe it was from a luthier, that in solid body construction, the sound follows the neck. I have found that to be true on every guitar I have, with all kinds of construction. You only have to swap necks on a telecaster once to find this out. And IMHO, up to a point, fatter necks yield stronger tone. Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
Second to this, the neck has to match the body. Again, trading necks on a telecaster....
Third to me is pickups. I once put an early sixties strat pickguard assembly on an otherwise so-so parts caster. It immediately sounded pretty close to my '63 strat. And I was fortunate enough to buy a pair of original PAF's in the later '70's that reside on my reissue LP- I wish I'd bought every vintage pickup I came across!
But it all comes back to the neck. Bad neck equals bad guitar, always. The rest i can work with!
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Jimmy D'Aquisto always felt installing the neck was the most critical part. I'm not a luthier but it does make sense, that if the whole instrument doesn't work or allow notes to ring properly as well as play properly, it's a dud!
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Speaking of Telecasters:
a beefy neck and a lightweight body. Those tho parameters are essentially for a good tone on a Telly.
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The guitar is never better than its weakest link. Some things can be adjusted, some things can be replaced, but the truss rod is what it is.
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+1 That's why instrument making is so demanding, everything needs to be right to make a great guitar, and really it needs to look beautiful too. Another crucial part is the nut, poorly cut will annoy you endlessly. One of the worst guitars I've played had a nut that was actually at an angle to the neck. Originally Posted by JCat
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+1 on fretwork.
I'll take a PartsCaster with good fretwork over almost anything off the shelf by a name brand.
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It has to intonate properly after being setup to your preferences and it has to stay in tune.
So, it's whatever contributes to that -- probably basic things like fret placement, neck angle and neck stability.
After that, it's taste regarding what's playable and what sounds good.
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I'd say AAAAA woods, otherwise agree with all of the above.
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Impossible to give a straight up answer - there are so many parameters that also differ depending on what type of guitar we're talking about. With an acoustic guitar the core of the tone lives in the top but when it doesn't intonate properly or if the neck-angle is not "right" ....
My Warmoth Tele is almost 30 years old now and the 1" thick neck on a partly hollow ash body lets the guitar resonate like a bell, producing a strong fundamental tone which I love - however it is NOT the best choice if I were booked for a typical Nashville Country music-type session : the twang factor is not as pronounced. So this is another proof that one man's holy grail might sound like a dud for the next guy .... my '63 Gibson ES-345 has the (typical of that period) wide/shallow neck shape. I bought it 40 years ago and played the heck out of it during the first 10 or 15 years, it was my main axe. I like the fact that I can easily bend that neck , giving sustained chords a natural chorus-like effect. Again, this one does not deliver the cutting edge that I hear from Clapton's '64 ES-335 or Carlton's original '68 model. Mine sounds sweeter, has a more pronounced attack and generally leans more towards an archtop-like/hollowbody sound. Difficult to describe ....
These factors only count when the guitar is playable to begin with - a twisted neck, bad fretwork/off intonation make any guitar useless. Except maybe when it's set up for strict slide playing ....
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For sure, frets that are properly leveled and crowned* make a very noticeable difference in how a guitar plays (and sometimes intonates). So does having frets made of the right size wire (something more subjective). From my own experience, I can't say what difference neck material or profile makes in the sound of the guitar. I've never had the opportunity to play at any length two guitars that were identical except for that one difference, so can't isolate it from other differences between guitars. My Strat, GJ guitar, archtop, semi-hollow, and flattop all have different necks, but that's the least of the differences between them.
* I've started doing some of my own fret leveling/crowning and have become more attuned to this. Cleaning up chewed up, unlevel frets really makes a huge difference, not just in terms of getting rid of buzzes, but in terms of the whole feel of the guitar. Ditto for seemingly little details like filing fret ends that poke out from the edge of the fingerboard.
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An earlier poster said that the neck must match the body, I couldnt agree more.
While a neck stiff enough to transfer the energy of the strings to the body unhindered is a truth I think we can all relate to, there is another detail less mentioned, and that is the contact area between the neck and body of a Tele for example.
Its essential that the neck be a gentle press fit into the body's neck pocket. This ensures the maximum surface contact area between the neck and body on all four surfaces. This produces a guitar with a sustain, touch sensitivity and dynamic range that can rival certain set neck guitars, and a point I thought worth raising for further discussion.Last edited by AcVox; 08-16-2021 at 06:56 PM.
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A few years back I was following a thread about vibration in guitars. I decided to investigate and used a stethoscope on my unplugged Strat. I was expecting to hear it generally all over with the strongest being the bridge... I was wrong and shocked. The bridge was silent, and so were almost all the places I tested (and I tested everything top to bottom, end to end, back and front). Originally Posted by citizenk74
With the whammy bar it place, the bar end was chiming pretty loudly.
The only other area that sounded was the head stock, suddenly beginning to be heard passing from the silent neck to the loud nut, louder toward the head stock's far end, but the loudest parts of all the guitar were the tuning machine keys - I heard those very loud even as the scope was approaching them before contact.
Of course this was with a solid body guitar, but I was very surprised that no sound could be detected from the bridge, the body, or the neck.
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I just had my only guitar, a nice [if blingy] late model GB10, made in Indonesia.
[2K cheaper than the Japanese made one the shop also had]
I liked the neck carve better than the Japanese one and the pickups [well the neck one anyway] seemed to have a
bigger warmer sound.
Both came with a hard shaped case....so I got the cheaper one.
That was back in November last year and with two moves a load of "downsizing" selling/gifting
instruments,amps and a sizeable portion of my library I haven't been that inspired to play since.
Well after attempting my usual DIY self-setup, trying string types and gauges tweaking truss rod and
adjusting string height at the bridge I found that for longer sessions I wasn't in a hurry to go back the next day.
It soon became clear that I wasn't getting on very well with the guitar and thought I'd sell it.
But not before I'd had it setup by a professional. Guy came highly commended for his work with some
of the top players of all genres in NZ sending guitars to be attended to,some for major surgery.
So I gave him a go and for a couple of hundred he had that guitar not only playing better:
...like a more even action along the board, to sounding a whole lot better acoustically.
He balanced the pickups....turned out the bracket holing the neck p/u was a little too high,so it overpowered the bridge p/u.
It sounds appreciably louder and more balanced from trebles to bass. I even went back to my oldest fave pick,the venerable
celluloid 351 heavy. [No more pick neuroticism??]
What didn't he do??!!! [I'll never know exactly, he was schtung with a bit of a smile on seeing my appreciation]
Now I can't wait to play each day, learning new tunes and working on new approaches.
That proved to me once and for all that sometimes you have to know your limitations as a mere player and
get your instrument fully setup by a pro.
Parting shot was as he handed the instrument back to me, nice guitar man!
[He wasn't blowing smoke...his week's update of interesting jobs that week on his FB page he mentioned a "setup on a nice Benson GB10"]
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Coupling. The bridge coupling to the body, the neck coupling to the body. In my experience those are the most important parts.
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The headstock. How are people going to know I'm cool if they don't see me playing something expensive?
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I find it very hard to point out any single part as the most important. Actually, they all are important to the degree, that the guitar will either fall apart or not make any sound at all if missing. Missing the Bridge? No sound. Missing the tuners? The strings can't be tightened = no sound. No glue in joints? The guitar falls apart. Continue the list yourself.
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I had the chance to play an Epiphone ES175 Premium alongside 3 Gibson ES175s for quite some time. The Epiphone stood up very well to the Gibsons, and it showed me that (a) and excellent neck and fret work with (b) a competent body (not even brilliant or masterful) and (c) adequate pickup will produce an outstanding guitar.
Likewise, at one time I had a Gibson L5ces, an Aria Pro II PE180, an Epiphone Broadway Elitist, and an Epiphone Broadway MiK, and among all of them, it was also clear that a great neck and frets was strategic. ON a competently made body (the MiK Epiphone!) a good neck and decent pickups will deliver fine sound. The Broadway Elitist was every bit as nice sounding and fine playing as the Gibson.
So I agree, the neck and fretwork are the deal makers/breakers for me.
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I guess I should take a moment to shout out some unsung heroes: mechanical connections. The nut and the bridge, mainly. They might not be the most important elements in a guitar, but all those people that complain about getting a dog or not staying in tune?
A properly installed and cut nut of a decent material and a properly installed bridge of a nice alloy and you've got yourself a brand new guitar. Of course plastic nuts and mystery meat alloys that aren't seated right and can't intonate won't sound as good, and what do you think most guitars have?
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