Official Luthiers Forum!

First of all, thanks to all of you for sharing your immense knowledge on this forum! This place is a unique resource for learners like myself. Anyway, here's my first post.

It is my understanding that most luthiers want to keep the guitar neck as light as possible, which I guess is why people tend to prefer carbon fiber over steel reinforcement rods. Is this just for better comfort, or will a massive neck actually affect the sound of the guitar negatively? I'm probably making a fool of myself now, but I'm thinking the opposite. When I use a solid steel slide on my square neck, the tone is far better than if I try a hollow bottleneck. Isn't this the same principle? Properly seated frets also sound better than wobbly ones. More mass = more tone, or..? Any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance!

I have read reference to some studies on classical guitars that a heavy neck improved tone, at least in the subjective opinion of the person investigating. The heavy neck was caused by clamping weights onto the head stock. The theory was to reduce vibrational movement of the neck, thereby reducing decay of the string. However, classical guitars are not supported at the neck when playing, so the heavy neck is a big detriment.

viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=22042

If you get a chance...read that thread. There's good information in there.

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

Interesting thing about the headstcok weights. I just tried it on two (very different) classical guitars, clamped a big plane iron.
While I do sense an increase in sustain, the overall tone quality is degraded a little - I think I like it better without the weight.

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Build log

It only makes sense that the neck will play a part in the guitar's tone. With one end of the strings
being anchored there whether at the nut or at whatever fret the strings are terminated at while playing
notes other than open notes. The joint between the neck and the body is essential for any transfer
of vibration to take place.

Anyone who has been exposed to the methods, techniques and sequence used by the fine violin
makers of the past has seen that one of the very last things done by them is the final shaping and
carving of the head scroll. The reason for holding off on this critical step was to maximize the real
contribution of the neck to the overall tone, sustain and response of the instrument. The scroll is
incorporated into the design of all fine violins, not only as a beautiful ornamentation effort, but also
as a source of mass and weight at that end of the instrument.

With the body carefully tuned or voiced through experienced carving of the top and back to coax
them as close to their tonal potential as possible, the carving of the scroll allowed the luthier to fine
tune the sustain and response characteristics of his instruments by carefully adjusting the amount of
mass and its subsequent weight in the tip of the headstock. Too much weight and mass and the tone
and sustain suffer and too little, they suffer in other ways.

With this in mind and considering the quality of the tone of those wonderful violins produced by
the luthiers of old, we need to take seriously the fact that the neck, its weight and rigidity and the
interface between it and the body all have some effect on the tone of our instruments.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

IME a heavier/denser neck increases sustain and focus, while a lighter neck tends to sound more open. A light neck tends to vibrate more, perhaps "robbing" those vibrations from the top.
Everything has limits and too heavy a neck is unpleasant because of the lack of balance, especially on an acoustic guitar.
CF rods stiffen the neck without adding mass and raise the frequency a bit, it has a sound.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I never heard that about violin makers (we call 'em fiddles 'round these parts, though... ). Cool stuff, Kevin!

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
http://www.wesmcmillian.com

The only difference between a violin and a fiddle is that that violin doesn't have beer spilled on it.

In the late 1700s the necks on most violins were changed to be longer and have a greater back set. That includes Strads and Guarnaries. If the neck has a big influence on tone, no one would have risked making the conversion. (IMHO) Some old violins couldn't make the transition because they were too lightly built and could take the stress of the longer, tighter strings.

Keep in mind (and I'm not saying you haven't) is the guitar can be more than just volume and tone, it is feel also. A "multi-sensory experience".

Some "perfomance" guitars are built to be massively solid on every element but the isolated top. Nothing moves but the strings, bridge and top. This construction gets every ounce of string energy to the sound-producing top, thus volume is increased, but at the decrease of other elements.

A lightly built guitar, and neck, vibrates more universally, volume may decrease, but tone may be "richer" and the feel will be more "alive".

Not many guitarists will be found in a performance hall, but volume is currently the most desired trait, it seems. "Give them volume, and they will hear tone" who said it?

The builder need to determine the reason the guitar is being built, and aim for that mark.

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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008907949110

Mike, I heard that the difference in a violin and fiddle is this; a violin has four strings and a fiddle has four "straangs".

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RJS

Where did you hear that fiberglass truss rod is prefered over steel? Martin truss rods are... steel. Read the above posts regarding density and weight tranfering vibrations.

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God, Family, Carreer

It's not unusual to put carbon-fiber (not fiberglass) reinforcing rods in the neck, usually on either side of the metal truss rod (this is my choice). Although I think I have heard of a few using only the carbon-fiber reinforcement.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Build a neck out of cork, the fretboard out of rubber, and get a spring of the right tension to pull the neck straight as a truss rod. You'll see the guitar will sound just the same as it would with a titanium neck, right?

Of course the neck effects the tone. The fretboard is just another bridge that they had to come up with another name for because it has 20-some saddles in it. Yes, it's less efficiently coupled to the soundboard than the bridge for driving it in to motion, but coupled none the less. Stick a tuning for on a fret and tell me it doesn't contribute to driving the top.

As far as the string sees it, it hits each end with the same kind of energy as the other. That is either reflected back in to the string, transmitted over the saddle/fret, or transfered to the saddle fret, after which some energy is absorbed and turned to heat, some is transfered on to other areas, some is reflected back at other points, etc. Going it to details of the different ways a neck can vibrate as a bar, dampen, reflect, transmit energy in different directions and back again, that would be a good chapter for Alan to write (or book I suppose, depending on how much detail you want).

Stiffness, hardness, mass - these all change the way the neck reflects, absorbs, and transmits waves coming from (and going back in to) the string and top in so many ways. Yes, of course the neck influences the tone, enormously.

Just be careful and check your thinking when you find yourself using words like "better", or absolutes like "More mass = more tone". It's okay to indicate a change in timbre that runs consistent with a change in construction, but it's not anything like an absolute or linear scale. If you think a recipe tasted better with 2 tsp of salt than it did with 1, I don't think you should assume that everyone would consider it the best dish in the world if you threw in a cup. In fact, for some tastes or with some substitutions, it may be more well received with none.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

as far as adding weight to a neck .. well.....i just tried that.on a guitar I built using a stock martin neck, I had a problem with the g string when plucked openly, i could feel the neck wobbling when I held my fingers close to the tuning button and plucked the string, after clamping some weight to the head stock I decided to add some weight to the headstock( I read this was a good idea in one of the books) so I removed the headstock plate , routed a channel in the head stock and added quite a bit of weight to the headstock . ( we wont go into how much , lest my sanity be questioned ). after stringing it up again, I would say the sustain was about the same as it was but i had a worse problem with the d string, it seems building in the weight had a differing effect than clamping some weight to the headstock! the weight changed the resonance of the neck AND THE TOP AND THE BACK! all to around D , so I removed the headplate re strung it and began removing weight, I will say i removed approximatly %90 of the weight I added to get the neck resonance near A sharp, i had sanded the top and back before removing the weight so I cannot say where the top and back would have been had I not sanded them after adding the weight, before removing it . but it is safe to say they would have changed some .all in all we got her playing again and she still sounds good. the moral of the story ? yes the neck effects the tone.. and dont believe everything you read ! Jody