Guitar necks do make a difference

[Erlend_G]

I "need" a rather thick, C-shape neck, to feel comfortable. Also, in my experience; a thicker neck sounds better. YMMV .

I like the neck of my Epi Wildkat, which is now my #1 guitar. In my teens, I had an Ibanez RG270DX, and I sold it because of the toothpick neck.

At one time; I had a 1966 nippon-gakki Yamaha SA-5, #374 (stolen). It had a HUGE, d-shaped, 2-piece neck. And a glorious sound . Tiny frets, which made it "as fat as could be", - modern frets would have made that neck way huge. hehe.


I also got a Peavey Predator Plus; it's got a wierd, thin C neck with flat radius and large frets. Great for more modern sounds; but- when I play it, it feels like half the neck is...gone. Sorta like getting phantom limb pains/sensations... sorta.

peace

-Erl

[Top-L]

While I agree that there are neck and hand shapes/sizes that make for a better match than others (basball bats for small hands or Wizard necks for someone who has finger like ET are prolly not the best fit), I found out through my own ordeal that the discomfort is more likely due to not taking care of our bodies/muscles and bad technique (forcing things instead of resting and playing with tense muscles and body)

I've gotten into this guitar workout spiral the past couple of years and last summer I managed to strain my picking hand so bad that I had trouble pushing down on a liquid soap dispenser as I "successfully" developed both tennis and golfer's elbow... Thankfully one of my online friends from another forum is a physiotherapist and he insisted that he can help me so we did 2 Zoom sessions (he lives in Italy) and boy was I amazed. He showed me a pre playing and after playing routine, both around 15 minutes and I am not touching a guitar without those anymore . All my pain was almost instantly gone and never returned. One of the most surprising things I learned is how the state of our ankles is connected with our shoulders.

In short (and without giving any medical advice) he explained to me that when strained, the muscles and connective tissues become tense to limit the range of motion to avoid further injury. Now until the tissues don't get back (or never had) proper range of motion, the pain won't go away and using the muscles in question will further aggravate the problem. So an easy set of warmup and stretching exercises solved my problem, thankfully.

Now I'm not saying that everbody has the same problem or thtat this is the sole source of their problem. This is just my sotry and food for thought. In a way guitar is like sport: you train your muscles to perform better. One doesn't play football without taking care of their body and muscles, but we, guitar players tend to forget that aspect of our passion. Some pain is OK - no pain, no gain. But we have to learn when to stop and how to take care of our body. Some guys are lucky and never have such problems. I am not one of them and I am thankful that I had a chance to learn how to avoid bigger problems.

Count yourself lucky. I have tennis elbow in right arm, which is now just subsiding after about 15 months. Course of recovery can be up to two years and I put myself in that category as I can still feel issues. It may never go away.

Ive watched tons of videos, performed "at home" PT, got referral from doc for real PT but because of Covid was not able/unwilling to mess with exposure/time/expense.

From my reading, PT for tennis elbow is not much better than placebo. Some people are long haulers and need significant time. Ironically, the exersize which helps me most is reverse finger extension (put fist in sock and open hand) which is not common PT for TE.

It was not caused by playing, but by guitar maintenance, a period of two weeks where I decided to level, crown and polish all my guitar necks. I probably put in 40+ hours of back/forth filing and polishing moitions in a very short period of time. I haven't played guitar since then because unsure if picking motion will exacerbate problem. Also afraid it will get worse as spring is upon us, yard work, washing cars, etc, had made it worse last summer. Its been a serious problem for me.

My left arm also screwed up by a completely torn bicep about five years ago. Had to go through surgery, change my playing position, etc, which probably altered my RH picking enough to cause the TE. It certainly limited range of motion just enough that to vibrato I need to sit in classical.

Both of my arms are ****ed. I haven't picked up guitar in 15 months. I am patient and believe I will play again.

I just wanted to point out that your recovery from TE, from everything I read about course of recovery and the role of PT, is probably just luck. PT has very low success rate for healing TE.

[GuitarStv]

Pain in the hand is usually caused by one of several things:
- wrist at a funny angle (can be caused by a weird sitting angle, strap too low, neck angled wrong, etc.)
- trying to change how much I play (going from 40 minutes a day to 4 hrs a day for example)
- playing the same thing repetitively for long periods of time (need to take breaks and do this kind of thing in short 5-10 minute periods - not hours at a time)

Generally, I find larger necks to be more comfortable for playing rhythm and barre chords on . . . but if I'm not doing the above three things I don't feel pain while playing guitar - neck doesn't seem to play too much into this.

[NegativeEase]

Neck profile is the number 1 consideration for me buying a guitar, then fretboard radius

[PS412]

Thick or thin, scale lengths, round, c, u, I don't mind any of them. I do find ESP's thin U profile maybe a little more to my liking.
As has been mentioned earlier, I am more fussy about the guitar position, body height when standing, and angle of the neck.

[Aceman]

Anything except the most extreme thin/flat, or largest baseball bats are fine by me.

A nice middle of the road C shape, perhaps.

[Demanic]

I prefer a wider neck even if it's has a thin cross section. Like the Ibanez Wizards. My Shecters have wider necks with C profiles. My Strat neck is thin but more of a D shape. Love the compound necks on my Jacksons.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk

[nexion218]

Count yourself lucky. I have tennis elbow in right arm, which is now just subsiding after about 15 months. Course of recovery can be up to two years and I put myself in that category as I can still feel issues. It may never go away.

Ive watched tons of videos, performed "at home" PT, got referral from doc for real PT but because of Covid was not able/unwilling to mess with exposure/time/expense.

From my reading, PT for tennis elbow is not much better than placebo. Some people are long haulers and need significant time. Ironically, the exersize which helps me most is reverse finger extension (put fist in sock and open hand) which is not common PT for TE.

It was not caused by playing, but by guitar maintenance, a period of two weeks where I decided to level, crown and polish all my guitar necks. I probably put in 40+ hours of back/forth filing and polishing moitions in a very short period of time. I haven't played guitar since then because unsure if picking motion will exacerbate problem. Also afraid it will get worse as spring is upon us, yard work, washing cars, etc, had made it worse last summer. Its been a serious problem for me.

My left arm also screwed up by a completely torn bicep about five years ago. Had to go through surgery, change my playing position, etc, which probably altered my RH picking enough to cause the TE. It certainly limited range of motion just enough that to vibrato I need to sit in classical.

Both of my arms are ****ed. I haven't picked up guitar in 15 months. I am patient and believe I will play again.

I just wanted to point out that your recovery from TE, from everything I read about course of recovery and the role of PT, is probably just luck. PT has very low success rate for healing TE.

Wow, sorry to hear that... I was totally depressed because of it... The things is, when I do the exercises before and after playing, all is good. When I don't (only did that once since), my arm returns to being tense and weak. Either way, I do feel lucky and I hope the best for you. I'm not much of a player, but among many other good things that music does for me, guitar keeps me from drinking my brains to liquid sh!t and I was genuinely worried about the possibility of not being able to play...

[Aceman]

I do prefer a slightly wider neck on a classical...

[Mincer]

My classical is a hybrid, with the neck as wide as an average steel string. It is very easy and fun to play.

[JOLLY]

I have tennis elbow in right arm, which is now just subsiding after about 15 months. Course of recovery can be up to two years and I put myself in that category as I can still feel issues. It may never go away.

I feel your pain. I had tennis elbow in one elbow for about a year, maybe nine months. It really sucked with the type of work that I do, and was doing when I had it. As soon as it went away, I got tennis elbow in my other elbow, and had it for about the same amount of time. So I pretty much had tennis elbow for about two years. The only thing that I did for it was wear one of those braces around my forearm. I guess it helped.