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From: Ross
Remote Name: 76.101.10.136
Date: 30 Apr 2007
Time: 08:31:24 -0400
Luthier’s Weblog 4/30/07 The neck has many hats to wear. It must present a comfortable interface and support for the player’s left hand. It must anchor the strings at the end of the fingerboard and locate the tuning machines. It must share with the bridge the duty of locating the strings in both the vertical and horizontal planes, via the nut. It must provide variable string relief to suit multiple playing styles and the vagaries of atmospheric conditions. The robot luthier considers the attributes of the best necks he has played. He notes that material used is of lesser consequence than how it is used. That said, he notes the greater resistance to abrasion of ebony over rosewood as a fingerboard material. He feels that a tall fret will provide a greater service life than a shorter fret, but that an overly wide fret will cause intonation and tone to suffer when it becomes worn. He weighs the cost benefit of extended fret life with stainless steel frets versus diminished string life with the harder frets, and having done some simple math computations, opts for softer nickel silver fret material. He sees that mahogany is very stable and easy to work as a neck wood, but that maple is stronger and just as stable when laminated construction is used. Comparing labor to material costs, he chooses mahogany for his finger style guitar, reserving the more costly laminated maple construction for the longer bass applications. He decides on using a simple single action truss rod, 3/16” steel in a curved routed channel the length of the unsupported neck. The more complicated double action rod, he believes, is unnecessary if he properly constructs the neck. There are, after all, no inherent physical forces pulling backward on the headstock, and inducing bow is only necessary if wood warpage or build-induced stress is present in the neck. Careful fingerboard-to-neck clamping and wood seasoning renders double action moot. Plus, the single action rod is cheap to fabricate. And simple. Simple is good. Sonically speaking, the neck makes an enormous contribution to the overall performance of the instrument. The builder decides that construction of his guitar must be done with an eye toward allowing the neck to make the box both louder and harmonically richer. This requires great thought. Or at least, great quantities of regular thought, of which he is more capable. Ross Teigen 8:04 am