Flat Sawn Neck Truss Rod

[boundsteelblues]

The wood for my neck is a piece of flat sawn tiger maple. I was going to use a stew-mac hotrod 2 way 1/8" adjustable truss rod, but then I ran across the comment below online. Do I need to rethink and go with the basic one way truss rod? I was doing a straight headstock.

"The Flat sawn neck tends to have a more mellow tone and is more pliable so it is better for use with vintage style, single acting truss rods and does very well with a hard finish but can also be left unfinshed as well."

[fryovanni]

The wood for my neck is a piece of flat sawn tiger maple. I was going to use a stew-mac hotrod 2 way 1/8" adjustable truss rod, but then I ran across the comment below online. Do I need to rethink and go with the basic one way truss rod? I was doing a straight headstock.

"The Flat sawn neck tends to have a more mellow tone and is more pliable so it is better for use with vintage style, single acting truss rods and does very well with a hard finish but can also be left unfinshed as well."

Ummm... The comment does not make a whole lot of sense to me.

Flat sawn= Mellow tone. Can't see why?

Flat sawn= More Pliable. Not what I have found to be true with maple.

Vintage Single acting is better for these reasons. Again I don't see the logic. Some prefer vintage for certain reasons, but you also lose double acting adjustability(which with a curly wood could be a plus, as figured wood may be less stable at times).

Hard finish or no finish is best. Again the statement makes no real sense.

Curly wood will tend to be a little less stiff compaired to straight clear wood do to grain angles and runnout, but that is not mentioned. Personally, I like two way truss rods. Hot rods work fine, although I switched to allieds double acting rods because I prefer them over hot rods(hot rods do work fine though).

Rich

P.S. Maybe I am missing something in the context of the above statements. Do you have a link to where it was posted?

[Mattia]

The comment, as Rich says, seems grounded in myth-speak rather than anything based on fact. Maple with no finish will turn very nasty looking right quick.

Also, consider this: almost every single Fender guitar ever made has a flatsawn maple neck.

[boundsteelblues]

Here's the link.

I had searched on flat sawn quarter sawn to get information about them.

http://musikraft.3dcartstores.com/Quarter-...n_c_14-1-1.html

[fryovanni]

Here's the link.

I had searched on flat sawn quarter sawn to get information about them.

http://musikraft.3dcartstores.com/Quarter-...n_c_14-1-1.html

Several statements on that page make no sense. Things like stating quartersawn and flatsawn wood are different in density, that is not true. They state there is a great difference in the strength of the two orientations, that is an over exageration at best. They state quartersawn is very straight and rigid and flat is pliable, which does not really hold much water. They state figures such as birdsey and flamey(curly) figure is most often flatsawn. Birdsey is displayed best in flatsawn, but curly is best displayed on quarter. They state the grain in quartersawn wood appears as dots that almost look digital. The "dots" they are talking about are ray flecks (medullary rays), the grain lines appear as just that grain lines. They state quartersawn is more dimensionally stable, and this is technically true. The longtitudinal shrinks/expands the least(that would be the same flat or quarter), radial shrinkage/expansion is the second lowest and that would be side to side(which is the second largest dimension on a neck) when the wood is quartersawn, and finally the tangential expansion/shrinkage being the greatest would relate to the thickness of the neck(in quartersawn wood) which is the smallest dimension. It is worth noting that the width and depth of a neck are not very large and straight up shrinkage and expansion under normall conditions are going to be mild(either orientation). It would be a really different story if you were looking at a 1/8" thick soundboard that is 16" wide(quite a large difference in dimensions and major differences in shrinkgage or expansion will make for huge changes).

Now if they build a "quartersawn" and a "flatsawn" neck differently(different design and or components), then maybe they are describing the differences in the two neck designs. I bought a musikraft neck about 12-15 years ago. It is quartersawn, and machined reasonably well. I can't say I ever have been fond of it though, and it now sets on a shelf collecting dust. They have been around for a while now so I am sure they know what they are doing, but I have no idea why the information page reads the way it does.

Rich

Edited August 7, 2008 by fryovanni