Neck profiles

Jazzaferri

When Michael Dunn and I were talking wood for my guitars he still had some lovely 50 year old !(he had had the, that long) Cedrella I think it is Spanish Cedar that was very very light and stiff. He recommended that of the several different neck woods that he had.

Of interest, I have several 40 plus year old quarter sawn 9/4 and 10/4 - 12 inch plus wide and 9-12 foot boards of Honduran Mahog in the basement.

noodlenot

A to C would be a tad high for the air resonance, though, at least in the instruments i´ve measured so far. most of them (just two GJ guitars though) fall beneath F and G#, averaging between F# and G.

anyway, the 1st neck mode on my altamira (the solid mahog model), using my very scientific measuring method , turned out to be 74 Hz (a bit above D2) - i was expecting it to be lower, TBH. the air resonance is around 96.5Hz (a bit below G2), but i don´t see in the spectrogram any evidence of coupling between neck and air, maybe the neck peak is too small, and gets masked by the big air peak? maybe my rig is just not accurate enough...
also, there seems to be no peak due to the back resonance. fun stuff!

noodlenot

Jazzaferri wrote:

When Michael Dunn and I were talking wood for my guitars he still had some lovely 50 year old !(he had had the, that long) Cedrella I think it is Spanish Cedar that was very very light and stiff. He recommended that of the several different neck woods that he had.

Of interest, I have several 40 plus year old quarter sawn 9/4 and 10/4 - 12 inch plus wide and 9-12 foot boards of Honduran Mahog in the basement.

can i have some of that hog.stuff? and did you end up with the spanish cedar neck? if so, i suppose it was reinforced, no?

Jazzaferri

On the nylon steing version no on the long scale ultrafox which has a truss rod the channel is lined with a thin layer of some dense hardwood that I cant remember.

It ismpretty sweet wood. If I decide to sell some I will let you know.

noodlenot

thanks! it was meant as a joke (or half joke), but if someday you´ll be crazy enough to let beautiful, stabled and seasoned wood go out the door, i might be able to help!

Steveareno

Ever since I spent a few frustrating years in the early 70's with an ultra slim mid 60's "pencil neck" J-45, I've had a fetish about guitar necks. That thing was 1 9/16" wide at the nut and was extremely frustrating trying to fit my fingers between the strings. It's a mystery why Gibson ever went that slim? Finally got rid of it and vowed never to get sucked into a narrow neck again. Moved on to Martins and Fenders, but was never satisifed until I played my first GJ SelMac style guitar. I love the combination of the big neck, long scale and unique strings. My Dell Arte Studio Hommage has the squarish, boxey profile and it took some getting used to, but I really like it. Plenty of room to move around and not get cramped. It's one piece walnut, a little over 1 3/4" wide at the nut, with nice rounded frets, ebony fretboard and comfortable radius.I did raise the action a little with shims. It's a great neck.
Swang on,

w3hs

Out of curiosity and long range planing, can owners of AJLs tell me if his guitars are more of a D or C shaped neck? I thought trying to add onto a relevant thread was better than starting a new one.

Jazzaferri

He says it about necks in both his book, building an archtop guitar and the DVD both of which I have and studied.

Any student of physics will tell you that for any given amount of energy input increasing the mass of a vibrating object will increase the amount of damping.

Given two identical guitars of the same material except ones having a thicker heavier neck of the same material will experience more damping and thus be less responsive.

There are other factors to consider though, material resonance, stiffness, density, and getting into the body, size and shape of cavity, soundboard. Just to name some of them.

In the end a guitar is a system, created by a craftsman, not a scientist. Each piece of the same species of wood is a little different and so it goes. For those who are interested Benedetto Cumpiano and a few others are worth reading to gain some insights into what we play.

Probably the best necks are very light but very stiff. Cedrella for example. But then that must be balanced to the rest of they guitar. Electro acoustic guitars probably have different needs than acoustic.

richter4208

Of course everyone's taste in neck shape is different. I had an absolutely awesome d500 that was perfect, but I have no use for a classical sized neck on a gypsy guitar (maybe for finger style but that's another conversation). I find the u shaped and d shapes slightly less annoying, but I don't want to have to get used to something on order to enjoy it. The c shape is a benchmark for comfort for me, unfortunately most inexpensive imports think everyone wants traditional. I'm hoping the Altamira will be the exception

Michael Bauer

Good gawd, every guitar I own has a unique neck (shape, thickness, scale, etc). I don't even think about it any more, and I don't think many people would after much time. The only necks I really hate are thin ones, like on '60s Gibsons (I'm with you, Steveareno!)and almost any Asian electric guitar (I know, there are a couple of exceptions). But otherwise, C, D, U, wide, narrow, long-scale, short scale, I play equally badly on them all.