body joint and sustain?

gottalovethe80s

gottalovethe80s

New member
hi guys, I'm looking to buy a body for my strat neck, and after talking with my tech he told me that I should avoid bodies where two pieces of the body are joined nearer to the center as that will give the body poor sustain compared to bodies where the joint is nearer to the sides.
do you guys have any experience concerning this?
 
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Re: body joint and sustain?

I seriously doubt that. Many solid color Fender bodies are 2 pieces and they're typically center-joined. As long as the wood is decent quality and not poorly glued there should be no issues with sustain or tone.
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

What, two piece bodies? I actively seek out those. It's like an industry standard. All of my guitars have 2 pieces and they sustain as beautifully as they look. Nonsense in my book.
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

A good body is a good piece of wood(s) period. One piece bodies are great usually but even they can be bad if the wood is bad. I have a one piece swamp ash strat body and a one piece swamp ash J bass body. Both are wonderful. I also have a two piece black korina and a two piece mahogany Les Paul body. All have bolt-on necks. Of all the bodies the bass body has (by far) the most sustain followed by the mahogany Les Paul body.

I wouldn't shy away from a two piece body at all. Like all wood, it's hit or miss.
 
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Re: body joint and sustain?

gottalovethe80s said:
after talking with my tech he told me that I should avoid bodies where two pieces of the body are joined in the middle as that will give the body poor sustain
Click to expand...

He's probably right, being a tech and all. He surely set up a controlled test and hooked several like guitars to audio analysis equipment and established these points of fact and documented everything thoroughly, and he will be happy to provide you with this documentation.
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

DreX said:
He's probably right, being a tech and all. He surely set up a controlled test and hooked several like guitars to audio analysis equipment and established these points of fact and documented everything thoroughly, and he will be happy to provide you with this documentation.
Click to expand...
There comes a time when sarcasm can easlily be mistaken for sincerity, and vice versa.

This is one of those times.
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

I think you guys are misunderstanding me a little here, what my tech meant was bodies with joints nearer to the center, like this
$_57.JPG

would have less sustain than a body joint like this
img4162.jpg

would where it's joined have affect on sustain, or was the guy spouting bullcrap?
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

No, that is what we were talking about. At least I was anyway.

2 piece bodies usually join together right in the center.
 
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Re: body joint and sustain?

I really don't know what passes for brains in people like this.

I am not sure what he does for you work-wise, but from now on I would assume he knows NOTHING about guitar construction. Ignore him from now on. Hopefully he only does dogsbody type work, but its certain he'll never be a luthier, as these guys actually know things.

To give you any idea, this assumption would include Gibson Les Pauls including late 50's bursts as the top has a glue join in the middle. It would include any other guitar with a bookmatched top, any guitar with a glue in neck as that is near the centre too.
Maybe this theory also includes laminate/multipiece necks - these have seams near the centreline of the guitar too.....
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

Everyone has their own quirky beliefs here and there. Sometimes it's a tidbit they heard somewhere before and loosely hold on to it as true simply because they never bothered to give it any real thought. Other times they have thought it through, but simply have no real understanding or knowledge base of the related physics to appraise the idea with any reliability.

Whatever the source of your tech's faith in this notion (I'll give them benefit of the doubt and assume they may just not have though it through), it is indeed one of the most laughable and preposterous ideas I've heard in a while. The color of the finish will likely have equal or greater influence than the location of body seams relative to the neck joint.

As said above, purely "a load of dogs bollocks".
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

lol thanks for the input, guys. my tech's always been a textbook kinda guy, that's why I went here to ask you guys for your experience regarding these matters :D
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

Be careful not to confuse "textbook" with "mythos", lest you unintentionally denigrate genuine evidence-based knowledge as being at all similar to naive beliefs. This is about as anti-textbook as you get, and if they actually did study the textbooks they would never promote such nonsense.
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

"So, Bollocks is bad, but Dogs Bollocks is good?"
"Yeah mate."
-Formula41

Dogs lick their bollocks, ergo, they must be good (to the dog, at least), so "the dog's bollocks" is akin to "the cat's a$$" (which follows the same logic). "Bollocks" is not good, hence "Nevermind the bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols".


As for the topic at hand, a poorly-made body where there is a joint between any 2 pieces at the center is the same quality as a poorly-made 1 piece body or a poorly-made 5-piece body whose joints surround the neck joint evenly. Crap R crap.

I'd be more concerned with how the base of the neck pocket and the bottom face of the neck heel meet, as I've seen some poorly-cut pockets that had a smooth rear wall sound like utter crap, but a guitar that had a slight gap between the rear wall and the heel edge but a smooth heel face and pocket base sounded better.
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

Meh.

Given free choice I would prefer the section leading to the bridge being one piece but I can't imagine it makes a difference.

It's also impossible to test so doesn't trigger my OCD.
 
Re: body joint and sustain?

Sometimes the most credible thing you can say is, "Home skillet, I have no ****ing idea."
 
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