Official Luthiers Forum!

I have mentioned on another thread I like the no heel of neck through the body and the added sustain they are supposed to have. My question is how much do the glued on sides or top contribute to the tone on a neck through? Has anyone of you ever made one with out any body sides glued on just to see what it sounds like. Then glued body sides to it to compare. I know may sound like a silly question but when you think about it the wood glued on the sides of a neck through guitar would not react much without at least top glued on making a more higher percntage mating with the neck going through the body.

I'm probably over thinking but am wondering if a long neck mortise joint with the bridge at the end of the neck and the stop tail piece behind it in the body would actually transfer more resonance to the body vs. a neckthrough that just completely goes through glued on sides.

I guess I am becoming obsessive and to theoretical when thinking about building a guitar. Please excuse if a lame question.

Also do body cavities actually do anything other than lighten a guitar in a non semi-acoustic? Do they effect the tone of the guitar much at all.

i often question: why the need for sustain in an electric guitar? why is it an established benchmark of what an electric guitar "should be"? ...often sustain can be a detriment to electric guitar playing, whether people realize it or not, and players fight it with various muting techniques; the "sustain" mantra has always baffled me a bit. too much sustain can cause a lot of background noise, cause unwanted feedback, and can accentuate poor technique.
aside from jazz players, most electric guitar players in the past 40 years are not strumming slow open chords, or playing long lead notes, and they are playing with a lot of solid state distortion, which is an artificial way of creating sustain.
i know the above ideas are heretical, but i think the whole "sustain" convention deserves some consideration

Astute observation.
Why do so many electric players desire sustain, and then never play anything longer than a quarter note?

But.... it traditionally is an attribute luthiers strive for. I know I do.

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Tony,
I was wondering the same thing about glued up laminations versus a solid piece on a neck through.
I built a guitar with a one-piece bridge. It has good sustain, or rather, I can really feel the vibrations when playing an open chord.
Hard to explain, but this is something I like and want to maximize. Odd, but it is loud without an amp compared to other guitars.
This guitar has a standard neck pocket.
So, does a glue line dampen vibrations? I don't know.
Maybe the sustain is all to do about the bridge I used or the material (Chinaberry)?
I was planning a neck through on my next build, but realized I would have to laminate the neck due to size.
Curious about increased sustain on a laminated neck through versus a solid neck.
I have no insight, but I'm sure someone will share their experience.
DZ

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Wah

if the convention is that "a good glue joint is stronger than the wood itself", then i should think that a well laminated neck shouldn't suffer sustain loss. i DO think that truss rods and their cavities detract from neck sustain though....i have made two maple necks with no truss rods thus far and they seem to vibrate and feel more "alive" in the left hand. could be my imagination, but that's where my opinion is now

Adding mass will lower the natural frequency.

The question is if the added mass will increase the damping which would reduce the sustain.

I suspect that the change in damping (assuming that you are attaching the same species of wood) is negligible compared to the change in mass/frequency.

Just a guess.

Kevin Looker

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

I can not imagine Mr. Moore without sustain......... min 2:30 to 3:10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-j5vCJKM-4



Controlled feedback is
.......bountiful, min 6:30 - 8:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfHVuQ2Y ... re=related

.....fun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmndPNw4ED0

......mean: what would War Pigs intro sound without some feedback?
......brutal: Remember Jimi Hendrix?


Not to people with GOOD technique
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxEw_08eQ4s



It doesn't sound heretical, it sounds rude. As a luthier you should try and understand what the player wants and needs. It is an art to make an instrument, it is ANOTHER art to play it. You do not want players to lack respect for you, and they do not want you to lack respect for them. There are good players and bad ones, there are good luthiers and bad ones. Don't be a bad one.

..."rude"...? ok.
i am not a "luthier", i am a guy who has made a few guitars in his basement, for fun. i have also played guitar since about 1982.
every example you cited relies completely on massive amounts of effect for "sustain", and technique. i could make a guitar made of rubber sustain, if you let me play it through a high gain amp that is cranked and feeding back, with 2 distortion pedals and a compressor.
most of those musicians also used stock instruments. hendrix and vai used bolt-on instruments, which "sustain" proponents turn their noses up at.

Seems to me that nyazzip is speaking to luthiers here...not players. It's crude assessment to imply he's rude or a bad luthier based on his comments. Nice first post.

Personally...I believe the vast majority of the guitar buying public is highly susceptible to marketing fads. Those that buy directly from luthiers are far less susceptible and more discerning but they are still influenced by discussions of these things and have a relatively narrow point of reference as they consider all this since they don't build guitars. Buyers mostly have no chance of truly isolating, and therefore understanding, the variables that go into sustain. So we get big wads of brass for bridges and neckthroughs and some pretty wild claims of eternal sustain and very little proof of any of these theories. Even luthiers can have a lean point of reference. Fat lot of good that does a customer when this is the case.

My original bridges were made from brass. Experimenting, I made one from aluminum using the exact same geometry. I have good ears. There isn't a scintilla of difference in the sustain of two identically built guitars when those bridges are the only difference. If I understand the customer wants sustain and he insists on a heavy brass bridge because he thinks that's going to do it for him...I'm remiss if I don't try to dissuade him of his notions. We'll talk about signal processing...which is how most of the popular sustain tones are created.

After talking about pedals we'll discuss what creates sustain on a guitar...which is...rigidity between the fulcrums. The fulcrums in the case of the guitar are the bridge and the nut. Low relative movement between these two things increases sustain. The more rigid they are relative to each other, the more energy is retained between the fulcrums...the less energy is lost. Of course, sustain doesn't necessarily translate into a pleasing musical tone but if sustain is what you want there are certainly ways to achieve it. I would suggest a neckthrough, however, is also something of a myth in the building community. I dare say that building neckthroughs is perceived as a means to achieve sustain because it simply eliminates the possibility of screwing up a set neck when fitting and gluing a neck to a body. If anyone can make a case that their neckthrough sustains longer than a typical PRS or Les Paul...they might have a point when promoting neckthroughs...but my guitars sustain well and it's due to rigidity and having created a device to ensure the proper clamping in two directions when gluing the neck to the body.

Lastly...I made two guitars out of identical boards. Bodies, necks, fretboards, headstock facings.....all from the same boards. One guitar was a solidbody and weighed about 10 lbs. The other was highly chambered and weighed a little over 6 lbs. I set them up to play identically. Same pups. Here's me playing the same tune through both of them. See what you think.

http://www.recordingproject.com/bbs/vie ... hp?t=40311

I think there's a tiny difference...a tiny bit of a compressed tone on the solid body....but it ain't much. It certainly isn't enough to warrant EVER making another solid body guitar. I have a guitar I just polished made primarily of Peruvian Walnut. That guitar without the hardware weighs 3.75 lbs. All the hardware, pickups, pots, and tuners is 1.1 lbs. So it's going to weigh 4.85 lbs. when playable...and I can't wait to play it....screaming curiosity.

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StuMusic

They sound identical to me. I guess I still have a lot to learn. I like your playing style.

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Sorry.

Sustainrules...It seems you are a little over zealous. Take a deep breath, and accept the fact that your way of thinking is not the only way of thinking. I think this forum is for discussing all aspects in guitar building (hopefully with an open mind).

Zlurgh...
I've listened to your sound clips a couple times, and I was able to guess which of the two guitars was chambered. I noticed a little more sparkle on the chambered body. I just finished a tele build where I chambered the body, and it felt more alive in my hands than most teles I've played. I wouldn't consider either one of your guitars "better" sounding. The thing about guitars and players....There isn't one style of music, and no two people are going to have the exact same likes or dislikes.

If you have a customer who thinks sustain is the be all end all, then build to it. I do believe that there are things that contribute to sustain, but I haven't built enough guitars to have much personal experience or suggestions. Some people claim that jumbo frets will add sustain. Sorting through some of the mumbo jumbo and forming your own conclusions can dictate how you build and who you're clientele might be. To me, a good guitar, is a guitar that you want to pick up and play even when you don't have time. That's going to be a different guitar for different people.

This delves into the acoustic realm of things, but look at all the people buying up old 20's or 30's Silvertones and Harmonies. No sustain or really much there for good acoustics but it's a sound they like. Too each his own.

Mitch

Ignore the prepubescent rant, maybe he'll go away.

Kevin Looker

_________________
I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

Tony,
To date all of my builds have been neck-through guitars and one 5 str bass.

Many debate the importance of wood types and construction methods/options effecting
tone and sustain.

Before I started building I spent a very long time gathering information.
I learned of one luthier, Carl Thompson, that I related to more than any other.
I really appreciated his views about "claims" that are made and his view that he
was fine with them having them but he wasn't going to make claims. He would determine
the "value" of the instrument when it was completed.

To date I haven't met a luthier that can take a stack of wood and tell me exactly
what it will sound like when completed. Now there may be some...I haven't met them.

My opinion is build your guitar with the woods you want- follow your gut- and when
it comes time to for the set-up pay particular attention to your choice of pickups and adjusting them.
You will find the tonal/volume and sustain abilities of those pickups and the guitar then.

I think after you build the guitar your choice of pickups and how you adjust them will be the strongest factor of a well
made electric guitar. Naturally all the other factors from head design, machines, nut material and setup, bridge/string angle etc. all come into play.
There is added sustain from the neck through design but it can be taken away easily by a number of other areas in the build and knowing how to choose and adjust the pups is a very big one.

Thanks for the relplies reading every one and soaking it all in. Every night I'm on the computer reading and watching various build videos on youtube. I have a nice piece of 4 years dried walnut on the way. I have some 10 years air dried Osage I am going to try to saw up soon. Whatever I build is going to have 5 piece Osage-Walnut neck with walnut body and most likely walnut top.

Next question still regarding necks is this. Les Pauls seem overly complicated build wise. 4-5ish degree neck angle. Why? Super steep 15-17 degree headstock angle. Why? I'm asking why in the context of it seems crazy they build them that complicated unless building them with those odd angles did not make them better some way. I think I read neck angle due to the carve of LP. I understand why the angled headstock, but why so steep. I also understand downward pressure but is enough to make that area weak/breakage prone necessary.

Someone tell me thats its all hog wash and a bolt on straight neck Les Paul is just as good as one with the set angled neck and steep downward angled headstock of normal LP's.

I have a 97-98ish Epiphone Eilte double F-hole Les Paul that I had not played in several years. I halfway wired it back up just to play it a bit and I'm wondering why I have been playing the Ibanez the last 4 years. The strange thing is I thought the Wizard neck was comfortable until I started playing the Epi again. I actually like the Epi's thicker and heavier neck profile much better. Not sure the radius numbers on either but I actually prefer the Epi radius better to I think. So now I'm really messed up on what I thought I wanted LOL.

...the concept of a silent guitar, by which the sole means of sound relied solely on pickups and an amplifier, was still mindblowing back in the late '40s or whenever the les paul was developed.....the designers were still stuck in the "archtop"(acoustic) mindset, for traditions sake, and so the paul had a needlessly dome-shaped top, a high bridge, a tailpiece, and thus a necessarily angled neck: essentially nothing but a violin copy, but solid, and with pickups.
the steep headstock angle i cannot really comment on, but i suppose it optimizes string pull angle force somehow. with mahogany, every bit of extra engineering counts; it is weak wood


ok, i volunteer for that job!

I'd say that's fairly accurate. I prefer a much less steep headstock angle than that myself (you don't need that much downward force) and I agree that such a minimal degree of neck angle can seem like a waste of time. I think it's mostly useful for improving aesthetic and perhaps a little bit of comfort, but a fairly small amount of mechanical advantage. I think some or most of the reasons people put Les Pauls on a pedestal are probably inaccurate, especially the idea that a set neck increases sustain. I don't think Les Pauls, or most guitars for that matter have that impressive of sustain really, better than Squire Strats, sure, but that's compared to junk. I think, and this is just my opinion mind you, that most players aren't accurately distinguishing what it is they like so much or want from a guitar. I listened to Malcolm Gladwells audiobook "Blink" and I think it really sheds light on this matter, revealing interesting evidence that suggests that people often become worse at describing things the more they think about it. So customer Joe may be telling you he wants infinite sustain, but it's possible what he really wants is a sharper attack, or simply, a guitar that stays in tune well.

I'd like to add my own experience regarding a neck through (actually a solid one piece) guitar I built from cocobolo. Keep in mind I don't have much to compare it to, but the sustain is impressive. You can consider this more of an attestment of a one piece cocobolo neck. The fact that the body is cocobolo may increase this, but I think most of what is going on is happening in the neck, and probably regardless of joint to body style. I still don't know if this is really a good thing or not; it might mean different things for different players, but I think what seems to happen with a higher level of sustain, at least in the case of this guitar, is that the level of sensitivity necessary to sound good is increased. It appears that little nuances of sound that are normally more subtle become more pronounced. Harmonics on other strings seem to ring out more unless you mute them. Better technique is required. This is probably not a good thing for most people. Now for distortion it doesn't mean much. That isn't really affected a whole lot by it, and it sounds great distorted. But I think in the right hands this guitar can make music that musicians appreciate more so than the typical listener, as it brings out those subtleties, and with good technique and some feeling, I hope someone can use it to make some great music that feels "real" or "genuine".

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Paul Reed Smith as I understand set out to make a better Les Paul, so looking at those instruments may be a good start to see what changes were made. The headstock angle is steeper then it needs to be on an LP, that, combined with the massive truss rod bolt area, no backstrap or volute, makes for a weekness, if an LP falls, it breaks.

To some extent, the neck angle benefits some playing ergonomics, some left hand and right hand help, the left comes in slightly to the body allowing less wrist bend, and the right has a bit more room for picking as the strings are higher off the body of the guitar.

A solid body electric to a great extent is the opposite of an archtop for jazz. The jazz sound is attack-decay, sustain is not the goal, projection and tone rule. The electric is about sustain, and as a result, the technique in playing electric is about controlling the sustain.

I have done 2 neck throughs, but the appeal to me is not the sustain, but the lack of an extra precise joint, and the strength. I hollowed my wings as much as possible, I also hollowed the neck through part in the body area. Once you get used to a 5 pound guitar, hard to go back to something heavy.

My pup choice is an EMG 89x with the LR baggs piezos in the bridge. I will credit most of the great sustain to the electronics. After that, as a guess, I would go to carbon in the neck and a harder FB wood to improve sustain.
Nice bit of sustain at about 8:30: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiYuGPBc ... ure=relmfu

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best. sustain. evarr. like, omg. at 4:14... hendrix, with a lowly bolt on strat, that has no sustain because its a bolt on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9AaQQbvT4M

A wall of Marshalls on 10 feeding back like crazy can also help sustain somewhat.... its what a guitar rings like when its played clean at low volumes (or acoustically strummed unplugged) that really determines whether a guitar sustains well IMHO..... with that wall of Marshalls a bailing wire strung between two nails would sustain well....lol
I also think that some of those videos posted like Vai and such,.. are so heavily processed signal chains that it borders on not mattering what the guitar is about even - but thats just my opinion... buffering compression sustainers etc can keep a signal level forever - but a guitar a cord and amp - then we can talk sustain...
Hendrix at least was pre-buffer era pedalled... a God endowed talent with fingers as long as a fan rake and technique still ahead of its time - Love you Jimi, & thank you.

Cheers
Charliewood

I love the sound of my Les Paul. I'm guessing but I'd bet they originally built the Les Paul with the neck angled to get the strings at a height off the body that more or less reflected where acoustic arch tops had them. I think that may also explain why the bodies were carved as well....to keep things in the vein of an arch top.

....and the string height is the one thing I hate about the Les Paul...so when I designed my first guitar the simplest way to get the strings at the height of a Strat, which I like, was to eliminate the neck angle like a Strat. So essentially, I made a set neck Strat from Sapele with Maple facings, with a 24.6" scale like the Les Paul and then used humbucker pickups.

Incidently...I don't think the maple facings on Les Pauls were never intended to purposefully create a "bright" tone...as many people believe. Maple is tintable, paintable, and can be sunburst. It's also a great deal less expensive than mahogany when you consider that 8/4 mahogany is a great deal easier to acquire than 10/4. Adding a maple facing to a body coming out of an 8/4 piece of mahogany is CONSIDERABLY cheaper than using 10/4 lumber.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Zlurgh very nice playing, and I could not tell the difference. Maybe short phrases played back maybe you could but overall no I could not. Since you did away with the neck angle how much headstock angle did you use? Did you carve the top or leave flat?

The first guitar had a 15 degree headstock angle. 12 degrees for all the subsequent builds.

The guitar top is carved...in order to produce the layered design pictured. A lot of things can be done artistically with layers that couldn't be done leaving things flat.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Wow thats beautiful! Really gorgeous, any links to more of your work? Thanks again to everyone chiming in. This build will probably be a long drawn out deal. I wish I had the knowledge to just dive into it, but since I don't I am going to take it very, very slow.

viewtopic.php?f=10123&t=33257

That's #2.

I documented builds #1-#5 here on this site. I've built 17 so far and I'm a few weeks away from having 11 finished and playable. Also in the process of making parts for #18-#22...a new semi-hollow body model.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic