Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

M

Miget Kotla

New member
Could you share your experiences regarding the effects on tone and sound from the type/style of guitar neck?

Not an easy comparison because it might require two otherwise identical guitars - the only difference being the necks. Still, there are many who have played so many guitars they might have a decent feel for the effects of a wide versus narrow neck, a thick versus thin neck, and of course the type of wood used in various parts of the neck.

How much effect on tone and sound will selecting a thin neck over a thick neck create?
Is there a real difference between the sound of a narrow or wide neck?
How much sound difference is there between maple and rosewood necks?

Thanks for sharing your preferences and experiences!
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

With a neck it's more about comfort than tone. Maple is brighter the Rosewood typically. Does neck thickness affect tone sure but by how much not as much as you would think. Have you even tried to go out yet and play a couple different guitars?
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

Rockstar216 said:
With a neck it's more about comfort than tone. Maple is brighter the Rosewood typically. Does neck thickness affect tone sure but by how much not as much as you would think. Have you even tried to go out yet and play a couple different guitars?
Click to expand...

Yes, I've played lots of guitars. Not able to play a variety of 15-50 at one time looking for the one with the best sound or feel.............but over the years yeah, have played many guitars. The challenge for someone that doesn't have extensive experience is in rotating through a few guitars a month (at most) from friends etc......hard with that limited experience to determine whether the "heavier" or more "full" sound is because of the humbuckers or the Mark V.......and how a wide neck contributes to that full sound. Or whether single coil pickups on a Tele played through a Fender supersonic amp are the reasons for the clean/clear sound............or is it a thinner or more narrow neck............or the make of the neck?

I saw the Seymour Duncan Zeph promotional video where they have 2 almost identical guitars cut from the same piece of wood to have the difference in sound be attributed as much to the pickup differences as possible. Nice effort....although I am sure there are other differences, it at least demonstrate good recognition of the little things that go into making sounds and different tones.

Maybe the size and make of neck do not cause enough of a different sound to really matter considering all the other variables?

Thanks again for sharing!
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

How do you know that a thick neck isn't going to turn a slightly dark guitar into thick and slightly muddy, or that a thin neck might turn a slightly bright guitar into icepick??
Much better to go for something that gives you the most comfort....your years of playing must have given you at least the back shape that fits your hand best.

Nobody can tell tonal differences with back contour, or fretboard width. If you have different woods on the fretboard even that is barely noticeable. Body wood and construction are the main ones.
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

Whatever you do just make sure you get a neck without a truss rod. That metal in the neck is a total tone suck and will rob the guitar of upper harmonic resonance. It's a little known fact that the greatest guitarists have had the truss rods removed from their guitars and the neck filled so that it is solid wood.
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

Powdered Toast Man said:
Whatever you do just make sure you get a neck without a truss rod. That metal in the neck is a total tone suck and will rob the guitar of upper harmonic resonance. It's a little known fact that the greatest guitarists have had the truss rods removed from their guitars and the neck filled so that it is solid wood.
Click to expand...

No truss? Seriously?

Well, if you do go that avenue, based on both logic and experience, I'd sincerely recommend you keep it to bolt-on, quartersawn maple (3-piece probably best) AND w/maple fretboard... That stuff is SOOO much harder and keeps shape a helluva lot better than other popular materials.


AS to the OP's maple vs. rosewood neck, assuming he means fretboard, it's surprisingly influential to shaping your tone. Maple adds brightness a lot, even in the smallest quantities. Ebony, too. And the more, the brighter. A recent encounter with a very maple-heavy instrument showed that even 8-strings, when built with a spalted maple body, maple neck, and ebony fretboard are LUDICROUSLY bright, just plain old shockingly so...

Concerning neck thickness, I'd be inclined to say it affects tone even more through HOW you play... Or, at the very least, that has a major influence. If the profile's good, really thin necks can really contribute to letting you do some crazy stuff, and the cost in tone, if done right, doesn't seem particularly bad in comparison. Although, if you want a thick-profile fast neck, those exist too. ESP Japan (but not its LTD copies) seems particularly known for very strange neck carves that somehow manage to work real nice... like their Eclipse II's relatively thick & narrow (string spacing/nut wise) neck - which IS like half a baseball bat, just a very child-sized bat at that - manages to still be crazy fast, but contributes to the tone the characteristics you'd expect out of a thick neck.

Some tonal comparisons of neck carves and woods will be based on misconceptions though, with a lot people basing their thoughts on thick&rosewood f/b = Gibson LP, thin&rosewood f/b = 80s Ibanez, and thick&maple f/b = Telecaster... Throwing the bias away, though, for example a (proper blonde, not baked) maple fretboard on an LP really does brighten the tone up A LOT, over a classic rosewood one.

Concerning neck (not fretboard) wood, that's almost always various kinds of maple, with few exceptions... Apparently, truss rod or not, maple is just by far the hardest and most durable of affordable and appropriately suited tonewoods, so unless you want lots of problems and a very close love/hate relationship with your truss rod, maple is the safest, most convenient bet.

If you really wanna figure these things out, your best bet is your own ears, a large store with a good hands-on policy, and its wall of stratocasters. Use the same country (MIM or USA) and try to stick to the same pickups between different models - for control purposes, and try out a bunch of different neck options. Beats listening to us!
 
Last edited:
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

Neck shape probably doesn't have much bearing on guitar tone, but the amount of wood in the neck (and the type of wood) will. Larger necks with more wood play a bigger part in the sound and response. A lot of guys who play bolt-on neck instruments attest to how various necks on their guitar can change the entire instrument. But in reality for many people, the neck is more about how it feels and how it makes the playing experience for them (after all, the neck and playability is the first thing that makes us either like a guitar or dislike it, everything else is secondary .... if it's not enjoyable to play, nothing else matters, even if it's the best guitar ever built).

Sometimes a neck can be too small and cause pain in the fretting hand, and conversely some large necks can look unplayable but actually be very comfortable. Some of these things may not be immediately apparent, it can take a few hours of playing to discover what is comfortable and what is not.
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

We need to have a different colour font for sarcasm....sometimes its hard to tell
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

I had a long conversation with Lindy Fralin a couple years ago, and he stressed the importance of thick necks for tone quality. He said one of the early PRS models just sounded awful, and he and Paul Reed Smith tried to figure out why. They both decided that it was the thin neck, and the model was discontinued. Fralin said that it's most important to have more mass at the neck where it joins the body.

You can tweaks other variables to try to compensate for thin necks, but I recommend using the thickest necks, with the most mass, that you're comfortable with.
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

blueman335 said:
I had a long conversation with Lindy Fralin a couple years ago, and he stressed the importance of thick necks for tone quality. He said one of the early PRS models just sounded awful, and he and Paul Reed Smith tried to figure out why. They both decided that it was the thin neck, and the model was discontinued. Fralin said that it's most important to have more mass at the neck where it joins the body.

You can tweaks other variables to try to compensate for thin necks, but I recommend using the thickest necks, with the most mass, that you're comfortable with.
Click to expand...

This is why Jimmy page had the neck shaved on his Les Paul? Must have ruined that guitar eh
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

I've only tried a few different guitars, but each of them have had a very different neck profile. I'vve really come to love Gibson and Epiphone neck because of their thickness. I have bigger hands, so Ibanez necks feel like a toothpick.
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

blueman335 said:
I had a long conversation with Lindy Fralin a couple years ago, and he stressed the importance of thick necks for tone quality. He said one of the early PRS models just sounded awful, and he and Paul Reed Smith tried to figure out why. They both decided that it was the thin neck, and the model was discontinued. Fralin said that it's most important to have more mass at the neck where it joins the body.

You can tweaks other variables to try to compensate for thin necks, but I recommend using the thickest necks, with the most mass, that you're comfortable with.
Click to expand...
My toothpick necked Gibson SG Special is one of the best sounding guitars I've ever played/heard. Then again, what a professional defines as "awful" is probably what I define as "pretty darn great". With PRS, only the toppiest top of the line is good enough.
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

Adieu said:
No truss? Seriously?

Well, if you do go that avenue, based on both logic and experience, I'd sincerely recommend you keep it to bolt-on, quartersawn maple (3-piece probably best) AND w/maple fretboard... That stuff is SOOO much harder and keeps shape a helluva lot better than other popular materials.


AS to the OP's maple vs. rosewood neck, assuming he means fretboard, it's surprisingly influential to shaping your tone. Maple adds brightness a lot, even in the smallest quantities. Ebony, too. And the more, the brighter. A recent encounter with a very maple-heavy instrument showed that even 8-strings, when built with a spalted maple body, maple neck, and ebony fretboard are LUDICROUSLY bright, just plain old shockingly so...

Concerning neck thickness, I'd be inclined to say it affects tone even more through HOW you play... Or, at the very least, that has a major influence. If the profile's good, really thin necks can really contribute to letting you do some crazy stuff, and the cost in tone, if done right, doesn't seem particularly bad in comparison. Although, if you want a thick-profile fast neck, those exist too. ESP Japan (but not its LTD copies) seems particularly known for very strange neck carves that somehow manage to work real nice... like their Eclipse II's relatively thick & narrow (string spacing/nut wise) neck - which IS like half a baseball bat, just a very child-sized bat at that - manages to still be crazy fast, but contributes to the tone the characteristics you'd expect out of a thick neck.

Some tonal comparisons of neck carves and woods will be based on misconceptions though, with a lot people basing their thoughts on thick&rosewood f/b = Gibson LP, thin&rosewood f/b = 80s Ibanez, and thick&maple f/b = Telecaster... Throwing the bias away, though, for example a (proper blonde, not baked) maple fretboard on an LP really does brighten the tone up A LOT, over a classic rosewood one.

Concerning neck (not fretboard) wood, that's almost always various kinds of maple, with few exceptions... Apparently, truss rod or not, maple is just by far the hardest and most durable of affordable and appropriately suited tonewoods, so unless you want lots of problems and a very close love/hate relationship with your truss rod, maple is the safest, most convenient bet.

If you really wanna figure these things out, your best bet is your own ears, a large store with a good hands-on policy, and its wall of stratocasters. Use the same country (MIM or USA) and try to stick to the same pickups between different models - for control purposes, and try out a bunch of different neck options. Beats listening to us!
Click to expand...

godzilla-facepalm.png
 
Re: Neck Width/Thickness/Wood

Wide, thick wood. Imagine that!
 
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