A preview of some nifty contours

[bluejaybill]

@nevershouldhavesoldit , I see reasoning to your point but can I just ask

String vibration energy is transferred to the body at the nut & bridge. The neck is functionally part of the body, since the two are theoretically a solid unit. Any discontinuity affects transmission of string energy and can affect the harmonic structure.

Would this only be an issue for notes whose terminal node points (bridge to nut) fall beyond the scarf location? Any fretted note from say 3rd fret up would not vibrate through the scarf?

I’ve also often wondered about the neck to body joins- making a perfectly fitting tapered dovetail is manually very hard. Lots of planes held by glue there. A bolt on neck relies in transmission through the bolts and any interference fit alone!

EMike

Almost all guitars involve a connection between two planes of wood, held together by either glue or bolts.

Those joints are usually very tight if executed properly. On a bolt on, the connection is probably more about the wood than the bolts.

My point being, if there is any loss at these wood on wood connections, we probably wouldn't know it, since all guitars that we play are made this way. I suppose it's conceivable the a scarf joint would be a bit worse, heck otherwise they would have always made them that way, but if it's done right I would tend to doubt it.

And good luthiers have no problem with a dovetail joint, it's carpentry 101, or maybe 202. It is possible that the type of glue matters, a lot of folks swear hide glue is best. YMMV etc.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

I suppose it's conceivable the a scarf joint would be a bit worse, heck otherwise they would have always made them that way, but if it's done right I would tend to doubt it.

I'm not saying that it's worse, only that it probably affects the sound of the guitar to some degree. If audible at all, it could just as easily be better to some ears as worse. This is also true for every other interface of body parts with other body parts or the neck. We've all experienced guitars that looked similar but sounded very different from each other. Each difference in construction probably contributes to this. Any glued joint between two pieces of wood will affect the resonances of the guitar in comparison to a one piece body and neck. Some frequencies will be attenuated by a small but possibly audible amount, and the partial acoustic isolation of the joined pieces will leave each piece to resonate at its own frequency in addition to resonating as part of the body unit, adding to the overall sonic spectrum of the guitar's tone. All of these effects are subtle and individually at or even below the thresold of audibility. But they add up and interact, which is probably why different guitars of seemingly identical design and construction other than the presence of a few more wood-to-wood interfaces in one can sound different from each other.

My Tele's sound (both acoustic and electric) is quite different from a stock Telecaster, even though the shape and dimensions are essentially identical. My Tele has a one piece mahogany body with a set neck and a maple cap. So there's a huge interface between the cap and the body, and what I think is a short dovetail join between neck and body. These seem to me to be significant structural differences likely to be the biggest reasons it doesn't sound like a Fender Tele. And Fender Teles differ in sound from model to model.

As for Mike's question, "Would this only be an issue for notes whose terminal node points (bridge to nut) fall beyond the scarf location? Any fretted note from say 3rd fret up would not vibrate through the scarf?", the entire body vibrates in sympathetic resonance with the strings no matter where on the neck a note is being fretted. The string vibration excites the wood of the neck/body unit through the fret. So every joint in the vibrating structure can affect its resonance and therefore its acoustic sound.

I don't think any of these things has a significant impact on sound, sustain etc by itself. But there are many parts on a guitar and many interfaces among them. Each combination of these parts and joining methods has its own "sound", although many are probably so close to each other that most of us wouldn't notice. Whether any individual difference (e.g. a scarf joint in the neck) would be audible is pretty hard to determine. You'd have to make two identical guitars except for the difference being studied and run conrolled, blinded comparisons with multiple listeners.