Neck Thre vs Set Neck vs Bolt On

[MT01]

It's commonly accepted that in terms of guitar sustain neck thru is king followed by set neck and bolt on is at the bottom of the pile. It goes in the same order when the cost of producing the guitar is concerned.

Having virtually no experience with neck thru and set neck guitars I was wondering on what your thoughts are regarding real life experiences with the various constructions.

Are neck thrus really worth the extra money over set necks?
Is there any scientific proof regarding sustain and neck construction?
How much of this issue is truth and how much of it is marketing hype designed sell guitars at higher prices and with marketable price brackets and lest not forget to stoke guitarist’s huge ego masturbation equipment fetishes?!?!


If bolt on necks suck so much then why are they on high end guitars such as the Caparisons, Ibanez JEMs (I know there are lots of Ibanez haters on here, so no need to rise to the bait!) and George Lynch KAMIKAZE-1 to name but a few? Also there are some mid-range guitars that I’m a little surprised are bolt on like as the Christian Olde Wolbers Signature Dinky (I doubt he plays that himself though!).


Your thoughts on the matter are most welcome!

 

[JonWormwood]

meh, if anything I just like the feel of a neck thru

 

[John_C]

If the wood of the neck is tonally/sustain wise very different from the body then neck thru vs set neck will make a big difference

 

[Razorjack]

Sustain comes from the impedance mismatch of the strings and the bridge/nut/body. The right density bridge, right saddle and nut material and the wood will all make a difference to the sustain of the instrument.

I wrote a paper on this in uni a few years back (i've got a copy in storage) and used a few different guitars as case studies. I managed to get the sustain of an Ibanez RG7321 (non-trem P.O.S 7 string) to match that of a nice 70's Les Paul Custom using about £10 worth of materials and a few hours of analyzing.

 

[DominikJW]

I wrote a paper on this in uni a few years back (i've got a copy in storage) and used a few different guitars as case studies. I managed to get the sustain of an Ibanez RG7321 (non-trem P.O.S 7 string) to match that of a nice 70's Les Paul Custom using about £10 worth of materials and a few hours of analyzing.

Interesting stuff man. Is it possible to take a look on that paper?

 

[phatfil]

that would be a VERY interesting read, Razorjack. i'm about to build a guitar. info like that would be huge.

 

[JBroll]

It's commonly accepted that in terms of guitar sustain neck thru is king followed by set neck and bolt on is at the bottom of the pile. It goes in the same order when the cost of producing the guitar is concerned.

Having virtually no experience with neck thru and set neck guitars I was wondering on what your thoughts are regarding real life experiences with the various constructions.

Are neck thrus really worth the extra money over set necks?
Is there any scientific proof regarding sustain and neck construction?
How much of this issue is truth and how much of it is marketing hype designed sell guitars at higher prices and with marketable price brackets and lest not forget to stoke guitarist’s huge ego masturbation equipment fetishes?!?!


If bolt on necks suck so much then why are they on high end guitars such as the Caparisons, Ibanez JEMs (I know there are lots of Ibanez haters on here, so no need to rise to the bait!) and George Lynch KAMIKAZE-1 to name but a few? Also there are some mid-range guitars that I’m a little surprised are bolt on like as the Christian Olde Wolbers Signature Dinky (I doubt he plays that himself though!).


Your thoughts on the matter are most welcome!

First, the tone of your post is incredibly slanted.

Each type has its own advantages - I like the feel of set-neck and neck-through more than bolt-ons... but all but one of my guitars is a bolt-on. Bolt-ons have the advantage of being harder to kill - if you kill the neck on a neck-through, you're left with electronics, hardware, and some scrap wood... I talked with Dino Cazares (Divine Heresy, Brujeria, Asesino, ex-FF) a few weeks back about this, and he used to have all of his tour guitars bolt-on because he'd throw them around and put them through the typical tour abuse and just get spare necks when necessary.

As far as 'scientific proof'... never say that again. Ever. Science may go centuries without disproving something, but it doesn't prove things - people only use that phrase when they're speaking very loosely or trying to sell something. For the actual question... I've heard arguments both ways and I don't care that much, but I'd like to see Razorjack's paper.

Jeff

 

[006]

Neck-thru and set neck deliver more sustain. Proof? It's called physics.

~006

 

[JBroll]

I haven't done (or seen) the math behind that one, so I don't go so far as to say that.

Jeff

 

[MT01]

Sustain comes from the impedance mismatch of the strings and the bridge/nut/body. The right density bridge, right saddle and nut material and the wood will all make a difference to the sustain of the instrument.

I wrote a paper on this in uni a few years back (i've got a copy in storage) and used a few different guitars as case studies. I managed to get the sustain of an Ibanez RG7321 (non-trem P.O.S 7 string) to match that of a nice 70's Les Paul Custom using about £10 worth of materials and a few hours of analyzing.

Interesting. I'd love to read the paper.

 

[Razorjack]

As far as 'scientific proof'... never say that again. Ever. Science may go centuries without disproving something, but it doesn't prove things - people only use that phrase when they're speaking very loosely or trying to sell something. For the actual question... I've heard arguments both ways and I don't care that much, but I'd like to see Razorjack's paper.

Jeff

If I ever get over to my storage place I'll try and dig it out. I've got a hardcopy and a few backups of all my uni work somewhere in the place.
Like you said, nothing was 'proved' by the paper and I'd have been stupid to even set out to try and do that.

I basically used the theories behind piano making and applied it to looking at the electric guitar. The end result was months of playing with guitars and using the uni's budget for parts with ultimately no conclusive evidence for anything, pretty much the perfect paper as far as I'm concerned!!

Bottom line, if it's good it's good. I found neck through guitars made with the highest quality parts and with theoretically perfect resonant frequencies that sounded deader than a parrot in a Monty Python sketch, and then found gems like the RG7321 that when fitted with a brass bridge and graphtech saddles & nut had sustain for days.

 

[JBroll]

I'd be more interested in how the 7321 and the LP compared after comparable improvements had been made to each.

Jeff

 

[Temps]

Neck-thru and set neck deliver more sustain. Proof? It's called physics.

~006

Somebody actually sat down with some sort of scientific measuring device and found just the opposite. Bolt-ons sustained the longest, set necks were in the middle, and the neck throughs the shortest.. although the difference was very small. Anyways, in my experience, the sustain of a guitar has much, much more to do with the quality of the setup than it does with the construction.

I don't understand sustain as a selling point, either.

Personally I like how bolt-ons respond the best - they are slightly more articulate and punchy. I like how neck-throughs feel the best though.

 

[fade_2_black]

Neck through quite often has much better accessibility to the higher frets as there is no massive lump created by the bolt on block thing.

 

[JBroll]

Somebody actually sat down with some sort of scientific measuring device and found just the opposite. Bolt-ons sustained the longest, set necks were in the middle, and the neck throughs the shortest.. although the difference was very small. Anyways, in my experience, the sustain of a guitar has much, much more to do with the quality of the setup than it does with the construction.

I don't understand sustain as a selling point, either.

Personally I like how bolt-ons respond the best - they are slightly more articulate and punchy. I like how neck-throughs feel the best though.

Citation would be good - however, for anything to be conclusively said there would have to be several guitars made from parts as similar as possible... otherwise anything could be dismissed as error from a small sample pool.

Jeff

 

[STINNETT]

There are plenty of bolt-on guitars out there that wipe the floor with set necks and neck-thrus. It's all about construction quality in that regard.

In my opinion, it's more about aesthetics and comfort than anything else when it comes to selecting a guitar. I don't think most bolt-on guitars are very comfortable - although I've handled some that were not bad. I prefer a fully sculpted heel that stays out of my way.

It's widely accepted that most bolt-on guitars have a little more initial snap or bite and maybe a slightly thinner or brighter tone - but I think that's debatable. Same thing with sustain, everybody says they have less sustain, but it's too hard to say for sure. However, I have a feeling that a Strat wouldn't sound like a Strat at all if it was a neck-thru.

 

[Temps]

Citation would be good - however, for anything to be conclusively said there would have to be several guitars made from parts as similar as possible... otherwise anything could be dismissed as error from a small sample pool.

Jeff

http://www.liutaiomottola.com/myth/neckJointSustain.htm

Small sample size, and for the real meat and potatoes it refers to a magazine article that is not available online from what I've seen.

 

[mintcheerios]

For what it's worth, I have a bolt-on Ibanez John Petrucci guitar which didn't have as much sustain as my neck-thru Schecter C-1 Classic for whatever reason. Of course there are many other factors like basswood vs mahogany, floyd rose vs tuneomatic bridge etc. My neck-thru Jackson also has more sustain than the Ibanez (not surprising since it specs similarly to the Schecter I had).

For bass I've heard that bolt-on gives a punchier sound while neck-thrus generally have more sustain.

 

[bibz]

The wood used is more important then the joint. And not just species, or tree, the actual piece of wood is what starts the whole thing sounding good.

 

[exoslime]

in my opinion the sustain is not really an argument.
the overall quality of the guitar (woods, hardware) does more affect the sustain then the neck/body connection.
Every decent guitar i played had a sustain more than enough, i think more important is how does the neck/body connection affects the tone and sound of the guitar.

i have 5-set neck guitars, 2 neck-through and one bolt-on, even with a floyd rose.
and guess what, the bolt-on with the floyd-rose got not lesser sustain then the neck through, also often tremolos are called sustain killers, i dont know that argument because i cannot understand it.

+1 also that the setup of the guitar can make a huge difference.

Since my guitars got different tunings, different strings, different string tensions, different pickups, different woods, different hardware (Original Floyd Rose, Schaller Floyd Rose, Stop-Tail w. Tunomatic, and Aluminium Wraparound) a comparision does not say anything,

On each guitar, i have some notes that have lesser sustain than others, no matter which specifications they are, but i assume this has to do with the frequency of the note and somehow it crashes with some components of the guitar and the ring-out dies earlier. when i detune the string a little bit, then the sustain is fine on the same fret position.
altough its not noticable when you usually play the guitar, but when you take your guitar and hit every note on the fretboard and let it ring out you can hear what i mean.

Playingwise, i like neckthrough guitars very much, because of the smooth change on the higher frets:
http://www.revivalband.at/SC607B/DSC00036.jpg

but for repairs etc. bolt on is also very good, if the neck is damaged or broken, you can easily replace it.