# Comparison of Custom Guitar Neck Profiles



## narad (Nov 21, 2015)

Hey guys,

So a while ago I was complaining on here that I wish there was a good way to measure necks so that I could better describe to builders what I'm looking for. I was told to "Google contour gauges". Yada, yada, yada, now I have a gauge, here are some profiles.

The granularity of the gauge bits are not super fine and there's definitely a bit of aliasing and artifacting going on as I import and trace them through Illustrator, but it's enough to give you an idea:

Daemoness:





[/url]daemoness by Jason Naradowsky, on Flickr[/IMG]

ViK:




[/url]vik by Jason Naradowsky, on Flickr[/IMG]

Strandberg:



strandberg by Jason Naradowsky, on Flickr

I have a few more profiles on the laptop but not processed, maybe get around to it next weekend.

Disclaimer: The only way I've found to measure these and preserve comparability between profiles also introduces one compounding factor -- fret height and string gauge. Imagine the black line is your hand on the top of the strings, not the fretboard. Along those lines, this is just my attempt to document and help out other people. These profiles aren't excruciatingly accurate and builders might not agree with how I present them here. Hopefully I will continue to update this post and improve the process to make them even more faithful to reality.


----------



## Lemonbaby (Nov 23, 2015)

Just wondering: are both the ViK and strandberg neck getting thicker towards the 12th fret?


----------



## Lorcan Ward (Nov 23, 2015)

I was surprised at the width of the fretboard on the Strandberg. I thought the Daemoness would have been wider than both. The neck on the Vik and Strandberg also gets thinner as it goes up.


----------



## narad (Nov 23, 2015)

Lemonbaby said:


> Just wondering: are both the ViK and strandberg neck getting thicker towards the 12th fret?



The opposite. The ViK is maybe in the realm of error/negligible difference, but the main surface of the Strandberg does seem that way. 



Lorcan Ward said:


> I was surprised at the width of the fretboard on the Strandberg. I thought the Daemoness would have been wider than both. The neck on the Vik and Strandberg also gets thinner as it goes up.



Note the Strandberg is an 8. Will have to wait for .strandberg* #100 to do the 7-string endurneck measurements.


----------



## Deegatron (Nov 23, 2015)

I hate to be a boob here but I really don't think any of these drawings are usable even for comparison purposes....

First off. including the strings in the measurement simply does not work... the necks should taper towards the nut... not the other way around...

second... these drawings are not nearly accurate enough... you can tell by the bumps and dips etc. neck profiles is one of the places where a small change can make a big difference in feel. Asymmetrical vs symmetrical for example makes a huge difference and doesn't have to be particularly pronounced.

If you want something actually usable out of this I would recommend you print off each drawing to scale... cut it out and then test fit vs the actual neck... then re-work your drawings until you get perfect fit with zero gaps. this would also be a good time to mark the edges of the fretboard and note the fretboard radius.... then you can adjust your drawings to remove the strings from the equation....


----------



## narad (Nov 23, 2015)

Deegatron said:


> I hate to be a boob here but I really don't think any of these drawings are usable even for comparison purposes....



Obviously for comparison purposes they're fine - you can see how the Daemoness has strong shoulders, you can see what kind of angles the endurneck imposes and how much thinner certain parts will feel where on the board, etc. which is exactly what I wanted to see. Lots of ways to improve, but clearly the differences between these 3 are quite obvious. Boobing is fine - this is an iterative thing and I had a good sense going into this that the first way wouldn't wind up being the best way.



Deegatron said:


> First off. including the strings in the measurement simply does not work... the necks should taper towards the nut... not the other way around...



Yea, it is good that you bring this up. Naturally I also expected these to taper in that direction, and merely said, "well, you learn something every day" upon taking these measurements. I wasn't thinking about the effect of the board's radius. I have a new way of measuring that seems to work on the strandberg and can hopefully be extended to the others if I can get a decent vice.



Deegatron said:


> second... these drawings are not nearly accurate enough... you can tell by the bumps and dips etc. neck profiles is one of the places where a small change can make a big difference in feel. Asymmetrical vs symmetrical for example makes a huge difference and doesn't have to be particularly pronounced.



Again, the contour gauge is not particularly fine, so there are bumps and dips. These aren't for printing out (yet) - you have to use your common sense to provide some smoothing. If I were to trace in Illustrator the sketches instead of having them algorithmically traced, they'd be better. The next iteration will probably be done that way.



Deegatron said:


> If you want something actually usable out of this I would recommend you print off each drawing to scale... cut it out and then test fit vs the actual neck... then re-work your drawings until you get perfect fit with zero gaps. this would also be a good time to mark the edges of the fretboard and note the fretboard radius.... then you can adjust your drawings to remove the strings from the equation....



Yea, that's not happening. I go to work and stuff. I think the new measurements will be entirely useable for comparison purposes.


----------

