24 Fret Necks Specs?

[Buck Radius]

ESAD

Edited May 18, 2007 by Buck Radius

[jnewman]

There is absolutely no reason why you can't have a 24 fret, 25.5" scale neck. You just need a slightly longer fretboard than you do for a 22 fret neck. I'm not sure what you mean about difficulties with neck pup placement. If you've been hoodwinked by all that "harmonic node" BS, it's just BS. The neck pup can be pretty much anywhere and will work fine, the further from the bridge pickup it is the more different they will sound.

You'll have to move things a bit from the standard Strat placement. If you just try to stick a 24 fret neck on a standard Strat body, you would either have to make the neck pocket a little longer towards the bridge or move the bridge toward the neck.

Edited April 12, 2007 by jnewman

[Woodenspoke]

I'm building my first guitar and I want to build a 24 fret neck. I will probably only have a bridge pup because of the difficulties with neck pup placement, but I'm looking for someone who has been successful with this. I'm building a 25.5 scale neck (standard Strat scale I guess) but I want the extra two frets.

Anyone have any advice or specs that worked. Is there any reason I should not try this with the 25.5 scale length?

Please let me know.

Buck

The longer the string length the more room between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge. Its a small difference but a difference none the less. Some people care about harmonics or pickup placement others dont, yes the fingerboard pickup will be off of a harmonic position and toward the bridge.

The real question you should ask yourself "can I really finger those tiny spaces at the 24th fret" or "will I ever finger at the 24th fret". Otherwise its been done a million times and works fine as Jnewman says everything moves a little toward the fingerboard. Just dont expect to find 24 frets designs from most books and plans. You will need to build your own body and neck generally. A large heal is also a negative to fingering in the higher frets so a bolt on neck and 24 frets is a waste of time in my play book.

Woodenspoke

[Buck Radius]

Thanks for the feedback. Since writing the initial post I have done a lot of thinking about the 24 frets and was already having second thoughts. I've decided to stick with 22 and just build in a slight overhang for the last fret (the book I'm using shows a 21 fret). I was taken in to a degree about the harmonic importance and so at this point I have only routed one Pup cavity, but I likely make another now. Thanks for the help.

Buck

There is absolutely no reason why you can't have a 24 fret, 25.5" scale neck. You just need a slightly longer fretboard than you do for a 22 fret neck. I'm not sure what you mean about difficulties with neck pup placement. If you've been hoodwinked by all that "harmonic node" BS, it's just BS. The neck pup can be pretty much anywhere and will work fine, the further from the bridge pickup it is the more different they will sound.

You'll have to move things a bit from the standard Strat placement. If you just try to stick a 24 fret neck on a standard Strat body, you would either have to make the neck pocket a little longer towards the bridge or move the bridge toward the neck.

[soapbarstrat]

I once swapped a 22 fret fret-board with a 24 fret fret-board. That put the end of the fret-board slightly into the neck pickup cavity, which was a humbucker, but the pickup still fit, because I didn't use a mounting ring. The neck pickup on that guitar sounded great, and the pole-pieces were not right under the 24th fret position.

[IbanezFreak666]

often even if you dont use the 24th fret for fretting, it makes a brillient marker for the harmonic, and makes it much easyer to judge where the harmonics are off the fretboard.

hardly anyone uses it but you can get some really nice harmonics in certain positions around the pickups. even if you dont use it much its a good lil trick to throw in at a gig

[westhemann]

You have never heard of Ibanez,Bc rich,etc....and you have never been to a guitar store of any type or looked at guitars on the internet?

I just don't nderstand.24 fret 25.5" scale guitars with both bridge and neck pickups are standard no matter how you slice it.I do not own a single guitar without those exact specs.