Official Luthiers Forum!

In a given week I likely play more guitars than most in my work and over the last nearly 20 years I have a list of the five best sounding acoustic guitars, modern production that I have ever played. One of them is a Bourgeois with a torrified top that one of my customers asked me to inspect and bless as a keeper or not during an acceptance period. It was an incredible instrument with tone for days. Definitely a keeper!

It also had a detachable neck which is a finger in the eye to traditionalists of which I am usually thought to be and even consider myself. But I was wrong, R - O - N - G on the assertion that only a dovetail is sonically superior as many of us will find ourselves someday with the right guitar in our laps.

Here is a video with a 30,000 foot view of the justification for such an innovative neck joint and a tease look at it from afar. If it were my IP (intellectual property) I would not be overly inclined to be sharing it here or providing greater detail in a video knowing that you guys like to adopt good ideas as do I.

I can't tell and don't have direct experience taking one of these apart if they use shims or some other method to adjust the neck angle but the look I do have affords me a view of some very precise, detailed engineering that is likely one of the best neck joint implementations out here that is not a traditional dovetail.

The real reason I wanted to post this video is the excellent video's host's explanation of how important the neck angle is. He educates the audience with some important facts about the relationship between saddle height, neck angle and set-up.

I'm a set-up guy these days doing over 600 a year and I know first hand that there are drawbacks to lowering or raising saddles and that there is a optimal height for a saddle all other things functioning as they should. Most of us use 1/2" measured in the middle of the saddle between the D and G in front of the bridge from the top.

Go higher and the instrument gets louder but there is also more torque on the bridge making it rock more (hence the louder). A saddle that is too tall may:

1) Break
2) Split out the front of the bridge
3) lift the bridge
4) Encourage a crack in the middle of the lower bout and/or contribute to opening up the top's center seam

A saddle that is too short may:

1) Reduce volume to an unacceptable level
2) Reduce the break angle over the saddle in extreme cases requiring the creation of string ramps in the bridge.
3) Rattle and buzz on ski ramps, high frets or poor fret work
4) Is less tolerant of incorrectly adjusted truss rods

So this is a good video for builders, Hesh approved and if you ever get a chance to get to know a Bourgeois guitar don't pass up the opportunity they are fantastic!

Lastly there is a notion here that the saddle height is more important than we may think and perhaps adjusting the neck angle to a fixed saddle height is a better idea than vice versa. I agree for all the reasons I provided and stated in the video.

It's also not a new concept and and I've worked on over 100 year old Hausers and others that had adjustable neck angles for these very reasons.

Today not only Bourgeois is offering this functionality in their instruments Martin is as well with the Martin SC series that is billed as even a gigging musician with a shim kit can reset their neck angle with strings on at a gig in under five minutes time. I've done it several times myself and it works well.

Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/LzYczenb7qs?si=0-THGx7ST7KgY8km

I have used that basic neck joint since 2005. Copied from both Sylvan Wells and Dana. I do it for exactly the same reason expressed in the video. Easy adjustment of the neck joint for optimal saddle height.
It also helps in that during construction you can attach the neck exactly as it will be when the guitar is strung up and support the headstock, add appropriate weight to the upper bout and duplicate the behavior and angle of the neck. Helps me with the neck set and fretboard prep.

Downside for me has been it moves a little more under tension and in the first 6-8 months of life compared to a glued dovetail or bolt on with a glued extension and you have to consider that with the set and some construction techniques. The store I sold in for 15 years carried Bourgeois guitars and I noticed they came with fairly high saddles. Mine are a little high too out of the gate as I have a pretty good idea of how much they will settle.

I have had to tweak the neck set on some for optimal saddle height in the first year but have found that after that they remain stable. I tell the owners that the guitar will definitely need the setup tweaked in the first year but should be stable after that.

I have made some alterations to construction techniques to help minimize the movement and they help. If anyone is interested I can elaborate.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I would be interested, Terence. I'm almost done with a guitar that I built with a Gore/Gilet neck joint, and it seems really solid, but any tips on how to tweak construction to make it better would be much appreciated.

Initially I followed Sylvan Wells’ technique which had the piece serving as a mortise for the fretboard tenon as a separate entity butted against the head block but later went with it being an integral part of the headblock. I think that helped a little.

Rather than a full fretboard tenon as part of the neck likeTaylor I have gone with a separate tenon thinking if more of the top was glued to the headblock extension that might help headblock rotation.

An idea I got from Bourgeois was to leave a small gap between the end of the headblock extension and the top brace. After the fretboard tenon mortise is routed you can access the gap and tightly wedge in mahogany shims insuring a snug bond between the extension and the top brace. Help prevent rotation? Hopefully a little.

You can see the unfilled gap in the photo. I wedge in shims tightly and hit with thin ca to anchor. The truss rod groove still needs to be completed with a chisel.

IMG_1889 by Terence Kennedy, on Flickr

Lastly I have been gluing the headblock to the rimset with epoxy. I didn’t see any downside there and as I have a slight radius on the mating surfaces I wanted to be sure any minor gaps were filled.

All these things seem to have helped stability but I think they still move more than a glued dovetail.
There was a learning curve for me as far as getting a feel for that.

P.S. I have also experimented with carbon fiber struts. They are more work but stable!

IMG_3767 by Terence Kennedy, on Flickr

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I too have been doing something similar the last couple of instruments. Not that I've built anything much in many years now.

@Hesh,
I have to tell you bro, I've tried Crowley's, Daisy, and a number of others, but yours is my favorite sour cream.
Just sayin',

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Well that was my father's side of my family the Breakstone Dairy Company and it was the largest dairy company on the east coast of the US at one time. It later became Kraft Foods.

When my father was back from WWII he had been in the Devil's Brigade aka the First Special Service Force which later became the Green Beret. "The Force" as they were known were what the movie Inglorious Bastards and the movie The Devil's Brigade were based on. The nazis called them "The Black Devils." He used the GI Bill to go to City College in NYC to become a psychologist. He worked for Sam Breakstone in one of the many factories.

My father has the Congressional Gold Medal for his service in WWII.

He had stories of huge globs of grease falling out of the massive machinery into the cottage cheese and sour cream and some Upton Sinclair stories too that are not very appetizing except for Silence of the Lamb fans.

I think it's good too though the sour cream and buy it for my chip dip. . The cream cheese is to this day a deli favorite at the best delis in the country.

Thanks Don I never got anything out of it and had to work for a living

Terry thank you for all of your input here you answered my questions. I have to wonder if using torrified wood was a move that they made to help minimize the need for first year adjustments. Seems like it might help.

We are pretty connected with our customers and in a trusted advisor role where we offer things like a free inspection on a new instrument during an acceptance period. A large, big box reseller in our region hates us as a result we reject poorly built things commonly.

But my point is that first year movement is both very real and very common. Especially here in Michigan during winter where no one seems to tell new acoustic guitar owners that they not only just entered the fascinating and rewarding world of playing the guitar where they can now get all the babes with their talent (not...) but they will be schlepping water to humidify their homes forever more too. So they don't humidify initially and the set-ups change dramatically as the new instruments dry out that first winter.

Here in Michigan we grow soy beans, corn, tomatoes, cherries and fret sprout.

Haven’t done a dovetail since 2008.

I’m sure that all the big boys who used the ‘traditional hand cut dovetail for superior tone’ as a marketing ploy are weeping watching the bolt on neck being accepted in the market.

I did a few bolt on/off in the Sylvan/Bourgiose style then tried a bolt on butt joint with glued extension for my budget line and never looked back. The former are pretty time consuming to build, the latter are dead simple and fast, and you can do a 15 minute neck reset without needing to release the tongue, so win/win for me.

IMO, the dovetail was chosen for its speed of implementation on the factory floor. Line up the neck angle and two cuts with a router and you’re done. Tone had nothing to do with it.

The dovetail is likely the most time and effort intensive neck joint ever devised since setting right to left, up and down, seamless heel fit, etc. takes time. It's true creating a dovetail is easy in terms of operations but setting one is not easy or fast. It's not a couple bolts, measure, adjust and snug it up. It's chalk, trial fits, more chalk and because the neck angle is perhaps the single most important measurement one will ever attempt to do correctly while building a guitar setting a dovetail is very much a skilled labor thing.

There is also the issue of setting a dovetail so that the instrument remains serviceable. This means not throwing everything from the kitchen sink to business cards to even picks in there to fill gaps and call it a day.... We've seen these things including people gluing the cheeks to the sides. That was not fun to release.

Out of all the operations I have ever done in lutherie setting a dove tail properly in my experience requires the most skill, knowledge and "the touch" of a skilled builder or luthier. This is why others for decades tried to get away from them just like non-slotted pins when skilled labor was required that costs more and if you can eliminate the need for it all together you reduce your costs and time required.

Regarding tone that's subjective and although I appreciate a proper dovetail joint and the light weight, high strength assembly that results without the need for a hardware store worth of bolts, slides, inserts, dissimilar materials and even glues the real demand for dovetails is with traditionalists. Traditionalists are prevalent in the high-end guitar market. They are not always keen to trust someone's better mousetrap and tradition means everything to them.

Those who sell into the bluegrass market will agree with me those folks are hard core and you don't see many if any Taylors there with bolt-on necks.

And finally if a dovetail joint is a marketing ploy which it's clearly not... it's one hell of a successful one because again traditionalists are huge in the guitar market and that shows no signs of changing.

Not a marketing ploy but a very appropriate and eloquent joint that one can do in a small factory back in the day like Gibson with a dirt floor at low cost and with no dependency on anything but wood and HHG.

Is this the same?
https://www.facebook.com/legacymusicnc/videos/775193960093175

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Looks like it.

Bummer ! But you've done well even without that.

Your dad sounds like an awesome guy...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hesh, don't forget Taylor. Martin didn't come up with their design without being shamed into it.

And I've backed into setting the neck angle after establishing that half-inch-above-the-soundboard-string-height-at-the-bridge. Life got easier. That's a chosen dimension and I can set it even before installing the bridge.

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Peter Havriluk

I found a video on that new Martin neck. Pretty cool but you'd want a really solid headblock/upper bout. Wonder how much they move the first year? Ever worked on one Hesh?

https://vimeo.com/911286786?cjdata=MXxO ... ae0a82b82d

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Yes I've worked on a number of them one of our famous clients has two of them that we service and I had to learn how to do it.

Normally I'm a big fan of Martin and they certainly addressed a common problem here with gigging musicians often playing venues that are very dry or humid and their guitars show movement in the neck angle.

What I do like about the implementation is it's supported and brought to us by a company that is second to none in terms of customer service and supporting their products when it comes to major guitar producers.

They addressed a real issue and their resulting implementation does work and will remedy the problem when there is movement. If you've noticed Martin is expanding their offerings and flirting with non-traditional design now.

What I don't like about this neck joint in all honesty is the use of steel bolts threaded into aluminum block. Dissimilar materials are not going to do well over time and I would have preferred to see steel inserts embedded in the aluminum.

Second I'm one of these pain in the arse traditionalists who want simple and historic implementations of guitars unless you are doing something very different such as an all CF instrument I get that too. But the idea of a neck bolted on an acoustic guitar body in a similar fashion to a Fender bolt on neck on an electric is not very attractive to me.... I'm also not a fan as indicated prior in this thread of an acoustic guitar with a hardware store of stuff, aluminum channel, steel bolts, plastic shims, etc. It reminds me of Rick Turner telling us all that we were doing nothing more than building model airplane kits....

The Furch implementation with major metal assemblies in the neck is a nightmare of design to me....

This joint is stated to be serviceable by a musician at a gig and that's true. But they need the $50 shim kit and the knowledge to diagnose what is wrong with their guitar in the first place AND what remedy will make it all right again.

When my clients come in the door and the dome on their D-18 dropped when it's 16F and dry as Saudi Arabia here in a Michigan winter they don't tell me that the thing needs a neck angle adjustment they tell me it's buzzing out and they have no idea why. So I think it's a stretch to suggest to musicians that they're going to understand guitar physics enough to self diagnose what's wrong with it. Knowing what you did all your life Terry my bet is you can relate to this statement. Thanks for your service too my friend I'm having surgery finally in January for 5 - 6 or more hernia. U of M and they told me they are keeping me for 3 days or more.

Other things that I don't like about it is Martin went whole Hog wild on innovation with multiple X bracing, non traditional body design and it's built in Mexico if I recall and the most expensive guitar Martin has ever built in Mexico.

To their credit you can get them with quality pick-ups from the factory and that's cool and in line with targeting gigging musicians.

Sadly ole Hesh here may be behind the times in my view of Martin but I'm not alone. Martin to me is the standard that all others are judged by and this belief is shared perhaps by most guitar players. Martin as a company is also my benchmark and they are a superb company and by far the most client centric company I've ever worked with. I've seen them cover a neck reset on a 50 year old guitar with only a black and white photo of a toothless kid holding a D-35 and trying to smile. Who does that.

But I just don't like these SC instruments all that much and think that learning to tweak a truss rod is easier and usually going to serve the same purpose for most neck movement.

They are very well made, sound pretty good but I still think a traditional Martin model with a quality pick-up sounds better.

I have the $50 shim kit on my bench for when they come in. Dave knows of people who are already 3D printing the shims. But we have not seen very many of these and I can remember perhaps only five total so far over the couple year they have been in production.

If all is well and their owners are getting on with them I'm not supposed to see them either am I. Maybe these will make me like that Maytag repairman