Guitar/Neck design question.

[Artie]

Most electric guitars have either a "cutaway", or a "double-cutaway" to accomodate fingering the upper frets.

Is there some reason they don't just make the neck a few inches longer to begin with, putting all the frets outside the perimeter of the body?

(I know . . . probably a dumb question.)

Artie

 

[dalastcaffeine]

string tension, intonation issues.....plus no one wants a dreadnought looking electric....it looks stupid....

 

[Imp]

the balance of the guitar would go wacky heh. look at it this way :

wheres the middle of the neck? the 12th fret..
where does the strats/les pauls horns reach to? the 12th fret

what happens if you put the strap button next to the 17th fret? you get an awful sore headstock

i made a body once with the strap button next to the 17th. its now safely stored in a cupboard

 

[Artie]

Part of what got me to thinking about this was looking at the Tom Anderson Baritom guitars, which appear to be nothing more than a standard guitar with a longer neck. I can't imagine that these have balance problems, but maybe I'm over-simplifying the situation.

Could you just build one of these, and not fret the last few inches of the neck? Would that be the same?

The other part of the reason I'm asking is, it has to do with a guitar design that I'm thinking of building.

Artie

Edit: (And . . . there's at least one person that wants a dreadnought-looking electric - but I hear he's a bit eccentric.)

 

[scooter]

Part of what got me to thinking about this was looking at the Tom Anderson Baritom guitars, which appear to be nothing more than a standard guitar with a longer neck. I can't imagine that these have balance problems, but maybe I'm over-simplifying the situation.

Could you just build one of these, and not fret the last few inches of the neck? Would that be the same?

The other part of the reason I'm asking is, it has to do with a guitar design that I'm thinking of building.

Artie

Edit: (And . . . there's at least one person that wants a dreadnought-looking electric - but I hear he's a bit eccentric.)

Although balance is important it is not the critical point here. Recall that the scale length is the distance from the nut to the bridge. Let's assume you have are building a strat with a 25.5" scale length and you want to join the neck to the body at the 22 fret. That way the frets are outside the body perimeter as you suggested. First you would need a neck tenon that extends beyond the fingerboard. OK fine. Now you need to figure out where the bridge would go. In this case it's 25.5" from the nut however, you now have a neck to body join at the 22nd fret. The bridge would end up approximately where the middle pickup would normally be the neck pickup would be off the body and the middle pickup would be difficult to fit onto the body. Visualize this by thinking of a strat and simultaneously moving the neck and bridge until the 22nd fret is at the neck/body join.

Notice that the baritom guitar has 22 frets. It also has a 28 5/8" scale length. Remember that as scale length increases so do the distances between frets. So removing the last few frets does not work.

The only way to do what you want (that I can think of at least) would be to use a neck tenon that extends way past the finger board. Then your bridge would need to be near the middle of the body and you could only get 1 pickup onto the guitar which would be essentially a neck pickup.

 

[Artie]

Thanks for that info scooter. What I was thinking of, was useing, for example, a 28 5/8" scale length, but tuning to the "normal" guitar tuning. Theoretically, I'ld have the same setup and spacing as the Anderson Baritom, but the guitar would play normally.

At least, in theory.