Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

[ImmortalSix]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

I have a very strong opinion!

I have a very firmly held belief on which guitars are better and I WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT IT!

My favorite and YOUR FACE sound like a good match to me!

Pictured: all different types of guitars, living together in harmony

 

[Hud Hudson]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

Just saw this thread. I've had a 2-piece maple Strat neck for ten years. Very bright, snappy, glassy tone compared to rosewood. It has the very skinny late '59 neck shape. I've only seen one of these on the Web over the last decade, some dude in the UK. I'd post pics but the attachment feature is requiring a URL. E-mail me and I'll forward pics.

 

[Stef]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

we are all here interested in maple+maple vs just maple (one piece)
It's a common knowledge maple is brighter than rosewood!

 

[Hud Hudson]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

we are all here interested in maple+maple vs just maple (one piece)
It's a common knowledge maple is brighter than rosewood!

It's brighter to me than one piece Strat necks I've played BUT I have never played a '59 one-piece, which would have the same neck shape & size as my '61 two-piece; any difference in tone could have more to do with the small profile than the maple veneer board.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

To my ears the rosewood board necks are actually brighter, and there was a large thread on TGP where John Suhr was quoted with the same opinion.

This is with the same guitar just the necks exchanged, everything else the same.

I don't think the interruption in wood and the "glue in there" do what some of you think it does. Then why would a LP with carved maple top be brighter. And the glue pretty much disappears if done correctly, there's wood on wood held by the pores.

Some forms of rosewood are much darker. I suspect that the typical hard figure Brazilian rosewood does. But then I didn't rip the fretboard off a rosewood neck and tried a different one yet.

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

My SX STL50 has a 2 piece maple / maple slab neck, and it is incredibly warm and full. Fuller than my maple / rosewood necks.

 

[Stef]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

To my ears the rosewood board necks are actually brighter, and there was a large thread on TGP where John Suhr was quoted with the same opinion.

This is with the same guitar just the necks exchanged, everything else the same.

That's what I heard or red somewhere, but I don't think it's true..
Here's an interesting clip - a rosewood strat (solo) there sounds darker, mellower...I don't believe it's a coincidence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLF4Eey2Xh8

same video with just the maple neck strat (solo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2ys11O1jrQ&feature=related

One piece maple has IME more high mids and presence, tighter and edgier mids and bass vs rosewood with more low mids, softer bass and mellower tone. I'd compare it to the feel of the woods when you touch the fretboard - maple is firm and hard vs rosewood: softer, oily feel..

 

[Stef]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

In Guitar World’s January 1981 feature, Edward revealed that he in fact had a preference for unfinished maple necks as well as Gibson PAF pickups. His necks were often maple "cap" necks, a two-piece design as used on late 60’s Fenders which softened the sometimes overly-bright one-piece maple necks. While he admitted using all different types of pickups, Edward’s preference at the time for replacement pickups (besides Gibson PAFs often taken from ES-335s) were those made by Seymour Duncan.

http://www.legendarytones.com/brownsound.html

 

[John_L]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

One peice with a skunk stripe looks better. Although I don't think it makes as much difference as all that. The elephant in the room is the frets. Fender switched to wider frets when they introduced rosewood and wider frets take away some of the high harmonics and sustain (the real mind bending thing is that most people have fret size arse backward) with vintage frets there isn't much between a maple neck with the rosewood cap and a maple board, although you can get some more harmonics with the maple.
I did once see a rosewood neck with a maple skunk stripe which looked sweet.

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

This is one of those weird construction questions where the different pieces of woods used are probably too tonally different to ever make a proper assessment of the tonal impact of any given construction methods.

Some pieces of maple are brighter than others.

 

[JeffB]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

This is one of those weird construction questions where the different pieces of woods used are probably too tonally different to ever make a proper assessment of the tonal impact of any given construction methods..

This is what I'd bet my money on.

Comparing average tonal characteristics of two totally different woods (e.g. rosewood vs maple, or ebony vs. rosewood) is one thing- comparing maple vs. maple with a slight difference in cut and construction technique is much tougher to gauge.

I supect it woul have to be some seriously controlled testing utilizing the same board/block of maple for construction of both necks/fingerboards. and making sure there is no structural (density) difference between the two necks, same moisture content, and blah blah blah. Assuming you could even do that then testing them on the same body/hardware/tuners with the same exact strings/pickups and getting a few sets of good ears going back and forth between the two for a length of time. Is it worth it? eh..not to me, maybe to someone like Eric Johnson.

 

[John_L]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

Thing is we each have unique ears

 

[JeffB]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

Thing is we each have unique ears

Right! So thats why said get a few good sets of ears and see if there can be SOME kind of concensus.

And still- you come to a completely different conclusion despite the concensus from a few others. 5 guys could come to the concensus that the burritos they are eating are a level 5 spicey-ness, and a 6th guy could find they are nowhere near that spicy- more like level 2.

So we would need some kind of digital measuring audio waveform thingermabobber to measure the audio difference between the two necks. :smack:

 

[John_L]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

Right! So thats why said get a few good sets of ears and see if there can be SOME kind of concensus.

And still- you come to a completely different conclusion despite the concensus from a few others. 5 guys could come to the concensus that the burritos they are eating are a level 5 spicey-ness, and a 6th guy could find they are nowhere near that spicy- more like level 2.

So we would need some kind of digital measuring audio waveform thingermabobber to measure the audio difference between the two necks. :smack:

Mythbusters tried to do cures for chilli mouth, only one guy was eating the chopped Jaliphino like it was baby food while other was throwing up because it was too hot.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Fender style neck: One piece vs/ two piece

There are a lot of necks that have separate fingerboard but still a skunk stripe. It's from trying to streamline manufacturing and from trying to process as much forward as you can without committing to a certain model. You put in the truss rod the same way into all necks and later you can either shape the top if you want one-piece maple or you flatten it and glue rosewood on.

IMHO the truss rod plays a, if not the, decisive role in how a Fender style neck sounds.

And nobody is going to tell me that a 6100 with it's twice-as-much mass sounds the same as a vintage style fret.