What's your experience with

[FretFire]

Re: What's your experience with

I have a birdseye neck from USACG that I sprayed with Reranch nitro myself, and after a couple of years it's perfectly fine. I don't think you can really make a general statement about wood though, we should all know from listening to guitar after guitar that each piece is different...

 

[Sludgenutz]

Re: What's your experience with

Off Topic:

Hmmm, I read this thread earlier today, and a number of hours later saw the TV show "How it's Made". One of the segments was about the manufacture of pool cues, and I got to thinking how many warped pool cues I've seen! The wood of a pool cue is thinner and symetric compared to a guitar neck, so a chosen wood can bend in the direction it pleases!

I looked up a custom pool cue maker, who not only offers birdeye maple, but used it for one of his own cues. He has a personal-use cue, listed on his site for sale:
http://www.ravencues.com/cue4used.html

Some of his other stuff costs as much as a Les Paul!
http://www.ravencues.com/cuescompletedandunsold.html

Beautiful!

 

[J Moose]

Re: What's your experience with

That doesn't make any sense at all. I've had an Ovation CS247 for 4-5 years that is quilted maple top, and I've never had it warp, and it's not been taken very good care of at all (and miraculously it has survived my abuse). The Schecter C-1 Classic that I own was in the music store for as long as I can remember, and it is quilt maple top, and never warped. Why don't we hear more reports about all the other maple on maple necks Fender and others sell? Somehow I smell some :bs

I've never seen a neck go bad, either.

Yeah... whatever dude!

For one thing, the maple top of a guitar doesn't have to withstand and counterbalance a few hundred pounds of tension like a neck does. What do you think that piece of steel called a "truss rod" is for? Second, the maple top on your Schecter isn't really a full thickness figured top. They're using a veneer that's 1/8" thick, if that. Same goes for Epiphones, LTD & all the other imported guitars. There may be exceptions, but generally not.

I don't think anyone is really saying that EVERY birdseye or super flamed neck will twist, but the reality is that in about 20 years of playing every day & knowing other players, I've only seen a handful of pretzel necks and they've all been highly figured wood with one exception, a '70s LP Deluxe with a mahogany neck that had been stripped & oiled.

There's also quite a sizable difference in the quality of wood that's used by USACG, Ernie Ball or the Fender Custom Shop and what goes into a $500 Korean guitar. From the source, to the harvesting, selection, cutting, curing...

You go on loving your liteash... at the end of the day it's just another Strat.

 

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: What's your experience with

There's also quite a sizable difference in the quality of wood that's used by USACG, Ernie Ball or the Fender Custom Shop and what goes into a $500 Korean guitar. From the source, to the harvesting, selection, cutting, curing...

I realize that. Trust me, when I can afford one, I'll be getting an American Standard similar in setup to my Lite Ash. I never meant to say my Lite Ash would last forever: I just think 2.5 years is rather quick for a neck to pretzel, if it even did. Still, I don't think I've seen any professional player have a Stratocaster for a very long time that was not an American Standard, so I'll eventually be getting one.

 

[Doc Holiday]

Re: What's your experience with

While I was hoping (knew it was highly unrealistic) to come to some kind of consensus here all the responses basically have added to what I already guessed and that it is a gamble that may or may not come back to bite. I had never thought about the process to get it to construction (i.e. drying) could influence it. The thing is I don't even really care about that neck on the lite ash tele but it has everything else I wanted like color and SD pickups. At the end of the day, not being sure what guitar to buy is considered a nice problem to have in my book!!

 

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: What's your experience with

While I was hoping (knew it was highly unrealistic) to come to some kind of consensus here all the responses basically have added to what I already guessed and that it is a gamble that may or may not come back to bite. I had never thought about the process to get it to construction (i.e. drying) could influence it. The thing is I don't even really care about that neck on the lite ash tele but it has everything else I wanted like color and SD pickups. At the end of the day, not being sure what guitar to buy is considered a nice problem to have in my book!!

Then just buy it. If the neck really pretzels later on (which I personally doubt) just call and gripe out Fender. You could always get a replacement neck later on. In my book, they're a winner, but I'm just one opinion out of several billion.