# Number of pieces in the neck? What effect?



## thinkpad20 (May 13, 2009)

I had thought that the more pieces in the neck the stronger it is, but there are lots of very nice guitars (custom and production) built with one-piece necks... what's the story here? Is it just for the tone contribution then? What are the advantages/disadvantages of one-piece versus 3, 5, 7 etc piece necks?


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## Cheesebuiscut (May 13, 2009)

The more pieces the stronger the neck is, which allows you to use weaker pieces of wood to make it.

with a very nice quality piece of wood you only need 1 piece. That's why some people look down on multiple piece necks. Why ibanez started off with 1 piece necks (wizard 1) then moved to 3 piece necks when they started becoming more popular (super wizard) and then moved to as far as 5 piece necks when they were mass producing as much as other bigname companies.

Supposedly the stripes offer different tones too.

That's at least what I've been told feel free to correct me if I'm wrong anyone.


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## NewEyesOpen (May 13, 2009)

I own a 5 piece prestige Wizard II and a one piece with bubinga reinforcement strip. Love em both and they both play and sound incredible.

I do think that more pieces to a neck makes it stronger, but one solid piece of maple is pretty "rock hard", too.


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## hufschmid (May 13, 2009)

Some prefer laminates, some prefer one piece necks....

One piece necks are more difficult to find then when you laminate many piece to make up for the width of a neck....

A laminate neck is cheaper to build then a one piece neck, try and find an awesome one piece flamed maple quatersawn board to build a one piece neck and you will see what i'm talking about....

Here is the contradiction, laminated necks are not necessarely stronger, wood moves and a laminated neck can warp. I have already seen warps in many laminated necks...

Some historical makers have exclusively used 1 pieces necks like for exemple the very famous jazz guitars from D'Angelico, Fender guitars, Many Martin guitars etc etc....

Like this one here built in 1951










I only use one pieces necks, occassionaly I laminate a strip of mahogany in the center if i'm using maple...

The laminates will not bring any tone change, actually because of the glue joints, there is no benefits to what it will bring to the tone of the instrument.

The advantages of a laminate neck can also be cosmetical since it looks cool and can really bring out the looks of the instrument.

There is some misunderstanding sometimes when people talk about laminated neck and reinforcement strips inside the neck, thats really 2 seperate things which have nothing to do with each other....

You can have a one piece neck with a truss rod and 2 graphite bars inside for exemple....

Laminating a neck then adding 2 graphite rods inside is overdone and can actually dampen the neck and kill all of its vibrations.

You can also build a one piece neck, resaw it in half and re glue it with the grains matching against each other so if that one side moves, the other will fight against it.... 

Many guitars are also built this way....

Morality, both ways work great, both ways have proven to be great in the history of guitars, its a matter of personal preferences 

EDIT: an other misunderstanding here... 

A guitar which has a one piece neck but which has a scarf joint at the headstock is not a one piece neck since 2 parts have been used and glued in order to build the neck..... 

A one piece neck is only when you use 1 piece to build the neck without gluying parts together.... 

Just like a fender neck for exemple...



NewEyesOpen said:


> but one solid piece of maple is pretty "rock hard", too.



Here again it depends which maple we are talking about, if its rock maple like birdseye maple (the strongest of all) then there is no need to laminate, rock maple is very stable.


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## Adamh1331 (May 13, 2009)

I think its more cosmetic and to make the neck stronger but different woods have different tones.


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## synrgy (May 13, 2009)

I love how in threads like these, Patrick always _nails it_ in a single post, yet people always still feel compelled to _speculate_ beyond that.


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## Cheesebuiscut (May 13, 2009)

Go pat


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## hufschmid (May 13, 2009)

synrgy said:


> I love how in threads like these, Patrick always _nails it_ in a single post, yet people always still feel compelled to _speculate_ beyond that.



 I dont clame to have the true science, I only talk about something when I know what I'm talking about... 
Some others may have completely different opinions so I try and stay neutral, I'm just trying to help thats all 

Most of the neck problems come from wood seasoning problems....


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## MTech (May 13, 2009)

hufschmid said:


> A laminate neck is cheaper to build then a one piece neck, try and find an awesome one piece flamed maple quatersawn board to build a one piece neck and you will see what i'm talking about....
> 
> Here is the contradiction, laminated necks are not necessarely stronger, wood moves and a laminated neck can warp. I have already seen warps in many laminated necks...
> 
> ...



Glad we had a builder post all of this to clear things up. I way always into 1 piece necks a lot more though sometimes laminate's look cool cause of a different color stripe etc.. I was told though that the reason so many use the laminate is what you said that it's cheaper, and easier to find the wood. Plus along with the easier to find most of the laminate necks come on imports and I was told they can't locally source the wood large enough to do a proper angle on the headstock.


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## thinkpad20 (May 13, 2009)

Thanks Pat! Good to know... and yes I was referring to neck laminations not scarf joint vs fender-style headstock 

So just to clarify, does a laminated neck allow you to, say, make a neck thinner without warping? Do you need a really nice piece of wood, say QS birdseye maple, to have a non-laminated neck that can be made as thin as say a Parker or Ibanez and not worry about bending and warping?

And you're sure it doesn't affect the tone? Like there isn't a difference between, say, a mahogany/maple neck and a mahogany/rosewood neck?


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## Apophis (May 13, 2009)

My few cents 



hufschmid said:


> One piece necks are more difficult to find then when you laminate many piece to make up for the width of a neck....
> 
> A laminate neck is cheaper to build then a one piece neck, try and find an awesome one piece flamed maple quatersawn board to build a one piece neck and you will see what i'm talking about....



 but ONLY when we are going to use some expensive woods, figured woods, not regular like maple, mahogany etc.
In other cases laminated necks are more expensive to do, cause making then involves a lot more work, like preparing woods, gluing and all that stuff, so at the end we need more time to make them, what means money 
Of course if luthier will use dome shit-wood to make laminated shit-neck it can be cheaper than one piece neck of course.



hufschmid said:


> Here is the contradiction, laminated necks are not necessarely stronger, wood moves and a laminated neck can warp. I have already seen warps in many laminated necks...



I think we use that word "strong" in a wrong way. Cause talking about laminated necks we don't talk about its "strength" we talk more about its anti-wrap abilities, cause pieces of wood work against each other wrap forces.



hufschmid said:


> I only use one pieces necks, occassionaly I laminate a strip of mahogany in the center if i'm using maple...



I spoke about that method with Mike Sherman and he told me that this is the worst method you can imagine, cause when we connecting strong wood like maple with softer like mahogany, you make that maple neck weaker (anti-wrap abilities are weaker) than it was at the beginning 



hufschmid said:


> The laminates will not bring any tone change, actually because of the glue joints, there is no benefits to what it will bring to the tone of the instrument.
> 
> The advantages of a laminate neck can also be cosmetical since it looks cool and can really bring out the looks of the instrument.



Yes, laminations means nothing tone-wise when we combine the same woods - maple/maple etc, but means a lot in other cases.

Look - I can agreed when luthier has skills and tools, cause if not when we will combine light colored woods there will be visible "scar" where they were glued together. Also when we laminate light colored woods together that force we use for lamination has to be applied almost in the same amount in every point of gluing wood or that "scar" will be 100% there, what is hard to do.
When we use dark colored woods that problem dissapears 
That's why there are always combination dark/light woods, cause it looks great, but also help to avoid that "scar" I was talking about


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## hufschmid (May 13, 2009)

thinkpad20 said:


> So just to clarify, does a laminated neck allow you to, say, make a neck thinner without warping?



Like I just said, any wood can warp, you dont mention also how thick will be your laminates and how much laminates you want to use?

Some super thin necks on those brands you mention have no laminates at all and work great.... Its all about how stable and well seasoned the wood is.....

About the tone of the woods in the laminates, I have explained in this thread here what I think about wood, check it out:

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/sevenstring-guitars/76746-is-tone-wood-overblown-9.html#post1503320

And just like the post of Apophis, you can see that there are many different aproaches and differences in experience and that there is no bad ways in the techniques of building the necks when well built...



Apophis said:


> That's why there are always combination dark/light woods, cause it looks great, but also help to avoid that "scar" I was talking about



 also Luth makers use this technique all the time when they make up the body soundbox because they cant make perfect joints so by using darker woods they can hide those micro gaps



Apophis said:


> but ONLY when we are going to use some expensive woods, figured woods, not regular like maple, mahogany etc.
> In other cases laminated necks are more expensive to do, cause making then involves a lot more work, like preparing woods, gluing and all that stuff, so at the end we need more time to make them, what means money
> Of course if luthier will use dome shit-wood to make laminated shit-neck it can be cheaper than one piece neck of course.


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## MTech (May 13, 2009)

thinkpad20 said:


> So just to clarify, does a laminated neck allow you to, say, make a neck thinner without warping? Do you need a really nice piece of wood, say QS birdseye maple, to have a non-laminated neck that can be made as thin as say a Parker or Ibanez and not worry about bending and warping?


There's companies that make necks thin out of one piece of wood like that.. Granted a scarf joint technically isn't 1 piece, the whole neck is and the headstock is another piece. So that shows you you can have it done. Plus look at the EBJP models or Rico Jrs and I want to say KXK is 1 piece as well aren't they?


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## Apophis (May 13, 2009)

It may sound strange from me, cause I'm laminated neck enthusiast  but to make super-shred thin neck you need 1 PIECE NECK, no lamination at all, cause it will make that neck worse  but only in one condition - that piece of wood has to be PERFECT or you will have a banana really quick



hufschmid said:


> And just like the post of Apophis, you can see that there are many different aproaches and differences in experience and that there is no bad ways in the techniques of building the necks when well built...


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## hufschmid (May 13, 2009)

Apophis said:


> that piece of wood has to be PERFECT or you will have a banana really quick


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## thinkpad20 (May 13, 2009)

Apophis said:


> It may sound strange from me, cause I'm laminated neck enthusiast  but to make super-shred thin neck you need 1 PIECE NECK, no lamination at all, cause it will make that neck worse  but only in one condition - that piece of wood has to be PERFECT or you will have a banana really quick



I'm just asking because my RG7620 has a one-piece maple neck (with a scarf joint) and I had to get the board planed and refretted because I had an S-curve going on... I don't know if that was because of the wood, the frets, environment conditions, etc... and it's been fine ever since, but it's made me wary of one-piece necks :\ 

Why would you have problems with laminations in a super thin neck?


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## technomancer (May 13, 2009)

MTech said:


> There's companies that make necks thin out of one piece of wood like that.. Granted a scarf joint technically isn't 1 piece, the whole neck is and the headstock is another piece. So that shows you you can have it done. Plus look at the EBJP models or Rico Jrs and I want to say KXK is 1 piece as well aren't they?



KxKs are typically 3 piece maple laminate with the grain patterns set against each other to help prevent warping. KxKs also have graphite reinforcement rods.


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## Apophis (May 13, 2009)

thinkpad20 said:


> I'm just asking because my RG7620 has a one-piece maple neck (with a scarf joint) and I had to get the board planed and refretted because I had an S-curve going on... I don't know if that was because of the wood, the frets, environment conditions, etc... and it's been fine ever since, but it's made me wary of one-piece necks :\
> 
> Why would you have problems with laminations in a super thin neck?



being hones it may be everything all you said together. Don't expect ultra quality from mass-production models - sad but true.

second part ...
it's the nature of wood, thin pieces are not strong enough, you have to use so many of them to make that neck extra-strong that you will end making a ply-wood.


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## MTech (May 14, 2009)

technomancer said:


> KxKs are typically 3 piece maple laminate with the grain patterns set against each other to help prevent warping. KxKs also have graphite reinforcement rods.



Ahh.. I knew somebody could chime in what they use. I couldn't remember what they used as I didn't really pay attention to how many pieces it was, I was too busy flipping out how thin the neck was. It was pretty much exactly like the Red Rusty Cooley model.


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