One Or Multi Piece Guitar Neck?

[nollock]

Is a guitar neck better made from a single piece of maple or from 2 or more splices? Given the choice which would you go for assuming strength and stability is the main concern.

cheers,

chris

[feylya]

Well by using a laminate neck you get the strengths of all the neck woods combined which usually makes it stronger...

[Batfink]

Not that i really have any great expertise in what i'm doing but i would strongly suggest a laminate neck if you're design is going to have an angled back headstock ala' Gibson / Jackson etc.

Jem

[westhemann]

strength and stability being the main concern(which for a guitar neck it usually is.)

i would do a 3 or 5 piece every time.plus a 5 piece just looks so dang cool.

but the extra stiffness of the neck seems to transfer to your tone and sustain as well.

[nollock]

Thats settled that then :-)

Wes: Do you mean a laminate neck will improve tone / sustain?

cheers,

chris

[westhemann]

Wes: Do you mean a laminate neck will improve tone / sustain?

tone is a subjective thing...in my opinion you do not "improve" tone,you change it.it is your preferences that matter

sustain on the other hand can be quantified.and i hear a difference in sustain on a multilaminate neck.i believe because of the extra stiffness

[RGGR]

With the new thin Ibanez Wizard II necks. (I have one of those on my RG2550EXGK).

Ibanez went from their almost solid previous design (which was prone to some neck snapping/braking at top nut area) to a new 3 piece maple design with volute.

Not only does this new neck look real good, it;s also one of the thinnest out there in guitarland. I suspect they went to laminate design to cope with the thinner design. Cause this simply adds cost to guitar building process and that's somethings these major companies are not a big fan of.

The laminates (when done right) can add additional strength to the guitarneck. And using 5 or 6 piece design with contrasting colors.....it simply looks awesome.

With nice piece of bird eyes maple or so, I would recommend using the one piece design. It simply looks better.

[PerryL]

I'm by no means good at building necks but the first neck I built was made from 3 pieces of maple I bought from home depot and it turned out ok. I laminated the 3 pieces and cut out the side profile and added a peghead laminate to make it look better. It had a Martin style truss rod from stew.

Since it was my first neck it came out less than perfect But it gave me the knowledge of how and what NOT to do. My next neck will be a spliced peghead with a scarf joint from curly maple.

[westhemann]

With the new thin Ibanez Wizard II necks.

the wizard II neck is actually thicker than the original wizard...i have both

[RGGR]

Actually I made a mistake the new Super Wizard is on the RG2550, not the Wizard II.

This new Super Wizard is tad thinner as old Wizard.

See this link: In table is old Super Wizard.

http://www.jemsite.com/axes/htm_features/necks.htm

With Super Wizard specs:

New Wizard, Super 25.5" 17.0 19.0 43.0 56.0 430

And not being a fan of baseball bat size necks......this neck is awesome (for me). ;-)