Official Luthiers Forum!

Just wondering if people have any thoughts on the drawbore pinned neck joint suggested in Cumpiano. I looked over the voluminous posts on the subject of neck joints that recently came up, and didn't notice any discussion of this method specifically (though maybe it was referred to in other terms.) I would appreciate any perspectives you all may have.

Thanks,

Dylan

It is obsolete. Cumpiano doesn't even use it anymore.

I agree it's obsolete and very cumbersome too. But if you want to do it then it will make an excellent joint. You need to go to the authors web site and see what updates he's done. It's not just the neck joint but also the work board and some other things.

Thanks for your responses. I'm fond of the joint partly because I've used it in furniture quite a bit, and I have a lot of faith in it. It also seems like a good option for those of us only using hand tools. I don't really like the idea of a bolt on neck (just as a personal bias), and a dovetailed neck seems pretty tricky without a router.

Dylan: Have you thought of the possibility of neck resets down the road. Any wood removed from the cheeks of the heel are going to tend to loosen the joint.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Yeah, those new fangled helical screw bolts just don't have a sufficient track record.

It's obsolete, as is most of Cumopiano's book compared to what he does now.

Here's his thoughts on the neck joint.

http://www.cumpiano.com/Home/Articles/S ... block.html

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Old growth, shmold growth!

It can't be that difficult to plug and redrill those holes, when the time for a neck set comes. That said, a dovetail joint is not hard to do with a saw and chisels, and probably a better choice if you don't like bolts.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I use bolts, but can see how some would not like it if they are into the hand tool mojo. But, I would expect the (hand cut) dovetail to really appeal to these folks. The pinned joint seems to me to have all of the disadvantages of the other two methods. That said, I haven't tried it. . . but I can only imagine the headaches involved in setting the pins through the soundhole; taking it apart for reset later. . . yikes.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

The other thing about the pinned neck, the pins are visible on a cutaway guitar as two plugs in the side of the neck joint in the cutaway.

But anyways, consensus seems to be they are obsolete.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Seems it could be modified to have an eccentric middle section that engaged the neck tenon and would solve many of the stated problems. Could even be blind on one side to deal with the cutaway as long as there was a way to grab and twist the open end.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.