Official Luthiers Forum!

Before I ask my question I would just like to thank everybody here for dealing with my ignorance when it comes to luthierie. I have been making cigarbox guitars for about a year and I recently decided to make a neck-thru electric guitar. I have a beautiful piece of curly maple for the neck but after measuring and weighing it, I have discovered that it is soft maple (it is almost exactly one board foot and it weighs only 2.6 pounds). Before I was worried about having a sound that was too bright, but now Im worried about having any decent tone at all. Will this soft maple work for a neck thru? what can I expect? -Alex

Let me add a little more detail. A cubic foot of this wood would be 31.2 pounds while a cubic foot of rock maple would be roughly 44 pounds. I do plan on reinforcing the neck with two of the carbon fiber rods from stewmak in addition to a standard truss rod. My only real concern is tone and sustain. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance -Alex

One of my best sounding basses was made with softmaple for the neck. I don't think it matters that much.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Curly big leaf tends to move quite a bit more than curly rock maple and is not nearly as stiff. The carbon rods will do nothing to keep things true if the wood wants to twist, however they will help keep dead spots to a minimum.

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How long is that in luthyears?

Is there anything that I can do to prevent the neck from twisting, and what is a "dead spot"?

Well, adding carbon fiber is a good way to keep things stable - twisting, warping, etc., would be kept to a minimum by doing so.

A dead spot is an area on the neck that doesn't ring out as loudly as other areas of the neck. The volume and tone should basically be similar up and down the neck. Again, adding carbon fiber helps reduce any tendency towards dead spots.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

A dead spot is a null point on the fretboard where the vibrations in the wood tend to cancel other vibrations out. In most cases it is probably caused by phase cancellation ,but poor fretwork can mimic the effect sometimes.

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How long is that in luthyears?

A dead spot is a note on the fretboard where the body overly resonates sympathetically with the frequency in the string, dissipating the string energy and causing the note to die prematurely, or not ring out as strong. Often times I find that 34 inch scale basses have a dead spot somewhere between frets 5 through ten on the g string.

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Old growth, shmold growth!