Scallop

[gw_guitars]

Hi,

Finally in the process of fretting but what's haunting me is: should I scallop the upper frets?

I've done a search but couldn't get a satisfying answer.

Why scallop:

1: It looks cool

2: Steve Vai has it

3: Ritchie Blackmore has it

4: None of my other guitars have it

5: There must be a good reason for it

6: It looks extremely cool (did I mention this?)

I want to scallop from the 14th fret up to the 24th

What is the main reason for a scallop?

I don't think it's something tonewise. I think it's all about playability.

Please your opinion

Gerard

[Nitefly SA]

people do it for different reasons, yngwie does it to get a better grip on the strings, vai does it to get easy playability on the upper frets and some people do it for vibrato bends. i think the notes come out a little clearer and and its a little easier to play but its harder to play fast, and scalloping isnt great for chords.

[MidnightLamp]

I believe that it's a bit of both. The neck scallop allows you to play a bit faster (in my opinion), allows you to have HUGE vibrato by pushing down on the strings (no frets in the way), and provides a brighter tone as there are no frets in the way. One big dissadvantage is for chording. To barre down something upon scalloped frets takes a lot of practice as it's easy to A) hurt your fingers fast B)pull chords out of tune by pressing down notes.

I'd suggest full neck scallop of the steve vai 21-24 scallop...why? Try playing voodoo child with a scalloped neck starting at 14...it's feel really odd because the E blues box steps onto the 15th and 14th fret lots of times.

Just my $0.02..

Nish

[Maiden69]

OK, to tell you the truth, you have to find out for yourself. I have 2 guitars scalloped right now, one from the 12 up and the other full. I like the way they feel a lot, and the reason the others are not scalloped is because I got lazy, since it is a tedious very time consuming job.

You have to do a guitar and play it and don't expect to fall in love with it the very 1st minute you play it, you have to get use to it, and the issue of better vibrato by pushing the strings down, is BS in my opinion, not to go against whats posted above, but because it is a lot easier to slide the string from side to side than waisting your energy pushing it down.

If you like to feel the fretboard as you slide up and down the neck, this is not for you, since the frets will feel like super jumbo frets once they are done. I like the feel on the Gibson frets better than the one on Fender or Jackson necks, since they are lower they tend to make the frets feel less bumpy.

One last thing, before you do it, read the introduction that Brian posted in the tutorial on the main site about how far to scallop, this is most important, you don't want to go to far, it will kill the look of the neck, and mess up the inlays.

Good luck