What Do All These Terms Mean!?!

(A Guide to Selecting a Custom Built Guitar)

 

A couple of years before I started building my own guitars, I looked into hiring a local luthiery to build one for me.  I was never really satisfied with the usual brand name guitars floating around the music stores.  I was looking for a hybrid.  Something that felt and played more like a Fender, but sounded like a vintage Les Paul.  I had done lots of research into guitar construction and what kinds of things might affect the tone, but I hadn’t had any hands-on building experience.  I thought I had enough info written down so that he would know just what I wanted, when he hit me with an important question that left me totally stumped.  “What fretboard radius do you want?”   I really had no clue.  So, I went back to the local music store, played some different brands, and then found out what the radius was on the guitar I liked from the manufacturer’s specs.  In the end, the guy refused to build my dream guitar, which turned out to be an enormous blessing in disguise, because it led me to building guitars myself. 

Nowadays I have to balance wanting to give a customer just what he wants with the danger of overloading someone with too many technical questions.  Typically I find most people’s knowledge of what they want (or don’t want) in a guitar is mostly intuition based on their playing experiences with other guitars (i.e. I really like the feel of a vintage style Schmender neck).  So, in my breakdown of guitar terms, I’m adding lots of comparisons of well-known brands that most people are familiar with in order to give everyone a frame of reference.

 

The Neck and Playability:

How a neck “feels” when you play it is based primarily on four factors: Profile, Scale Length, Fretboard Radius, and Fret Size.

 

Profile

This is the one area most people find easiest to grasp (pun intended).  It’s the shape and size of the back of the neck.  Gibsons tend to have narrow, fat necks with a round shape.  Ibanez necks are typically ultra thin, and a bit wider, with a flat shaped back.  Fenders are usually average width and thickness, with either a V or an oval shaped back.

(The differences in these drawings are exaggerated, of course.) 

 

When I build necks, I don’t make them symmetrical.  The treble side is flatter like the V shape, while the bass side is rounder.  This makes them fit the shape of your hand better. I also change the profile gradually from a rounder shape around the first few frets to a more flat oval shape near the end of the neck.  This is to provide the greatest comfort whether you’re playing open chords or blazing high leads. 

 

Width

Okay, this is kind of the same thing as profile, but not exactly.  Nearly all necks are between 2 1/8” and 2 3/8” at the last fret, the most common width being 2 3/16.  At the nut, the width varies from 1 ½ to 1 ¾ , the most common being 1 11/16.

 

Scale Length

Scale length is the distance between the nut and the bridge of the guitar.  Nearly all Fender Guitars have a 25.5” scale length.  Les Pauls are 24.75”.  Paul Reed Smith and Carvin Guitars are in between at 25” even.  The longer the scale length, the greater the distance between frets.  This means more of a stretch for your fingers if you play all those “fancy chords,” but it also means you won’t feel like your fingers are getting all jammed together if you’re playing a fast lead on the higher frets.  Differences in scale length also affect the guitar’s tone.  Longer scale lengths have a brighter, clearer tone with somewhat more sustain, while shorter scale lengths produce a darker, fatter sound.

 

Fretboard Radius

You may never have noticed it, but guitar fretboards are radiused.  Flip any guitar over and take a look at the fretboard from the bottom of the neck, and you should be able to see an arch going across the fretboard.

This is to provide more playing comfort.  Rounder fretboards (those with a smaller radius) make it easier to play chords, but make it more difficult to bend strings when playing lead guitar.  Conversely, flatter fretboards make it easier to play lead and allow bent notes to ring freely, but some players find them less comfortable to play.  Vintage and vintage re-issue Fenders usually have a 7.5” radius.  More recent models vary from a 9.5” to a 12”.  Gibson Electrics have a 12” radius.  Paul Reed Smiths use a 10”.  “Shredder” guitars typically have a 14” or 15” radius.  Most acoustic manufacturers follow Martin’s lead and use a 16” radius.  In general, I always recommend a 12” radius.

 

Fret Size

People who say size doesn’t matter don’t play guitar.  Bigger frets make it easier to bend notes.  On the other hand, they feel like they’re in the way when you’re sliding notes or chords, and require a bit more pressure when holding down chords.  Nearly all manufacturers equip their guitars with medium frets these days, but personally I always go for jumbo instead.  Still, if you’re a slide player, or you’re getting a guitar with slide playing in mind, you should opt for medium or even the smaller vintage sizes.

 

Tone:

It would be virtually impossible to include a list of all the factors that affect the tone of an electric guitar.  First and foremost is the guitarist playing it.  If you put extra light gauge strings on an axe and use an ultra thin pick, you’re never gonna sound like Stevie Ray, no matter how much money you spend on pickups.  Anyway, since this is supposed to be about selecting a guitar, here are some of the major considerations you should be aware of:

Pickups – For more information, Click Here

 

Wood selection (Neck, Body, and Fingerboard)

In general, harder, denser woods have a brighter tone and more sustain, while lighter, more porous woods have more warmth.  For more information Click Here

 

Scale Length- Longer scale lengths have a brighter, clearer tone with somewhat more sustain, while shorter scale lengths produce a darker, fatter sound.

 

Neck Designs

There are essentially 3 different types of neck construction: Bolt-On, Set Neck, and Thru Body.

Bolt-on neck- This is the type pioneered by Leo Fender.  The neck fits into a “pocket” in the body about 5/8” deep and 3” long.  It is held firmly in place by 4 (or sometimes only 3) screws mounted from the back of the body. 

Advantages:

Disadvantages

 

Set (glued in) Neck – This is probably the oldest style of guitar construction.  Les Paul was the first to make an electric solidbody guitar with a glued in neck, but it has been used on acoustic guitars for centuries. 

Advantages

·        Thicker tone, with more bass and midrange

·        More sustain

Disadvantages

·        If neck is damaged in any way, it is difficult (not to mention usually too expensive) to replace

·        Again, the neck heel is usually quite bulky, although this can be corrected somewhat

Neck Thru - The first electric solidbody guitar ever sold, Bigsby’s one-off creation for Merle Travis, had a thru body neck.  Despite its superior tonal qualities, very few production shops build guitars with thru body necks because they require that the body and neck be finished simultaneously.  (That’s not much of a problem in small custom shops, but on a production line it becomes significantly more labor intensive.)

There are a handful of variations of the through the body design.  The most common is “wing” construction, where body sides are glued onto each side of the neck; but with the growing popularity of figured tops, more and more builders (myself included) are putting the tenon of the neck (the section of the neck beyond the end of the fingerboard) underneath the guitar top.

Advantages

·        The most sustain and fullest tonal response

·        Area around the neck heel and cutaways can be contoured for easy comfortable access to higher frets without any significant loss of tonality or structural integrity

·        For certain double-cutaway guitar shapes, this allows the neck pickup to be mounted at the end of the fingerboard without weakening the structural integrity of the neck joint.

Disadvantages

·        Neck cannot be replaced

·        Finish must be applied to neck and body simultaneously, thus driving up labor costs for mass manufacturers

 

Bridge

A fixed bridge like a Tune-o-matic style or a Hardtail will have more sustain than a floating bridge (a.k.a. Tremolo or Whammy Bar).  Bridges made from steel have a brighter, more biting tone than those made from brass.

Body Construction

In general, a bigger body will have a smoother, more midrangey tone to it, while a thinner body will sound brighter.  Semi-Hollow bodies or bodies that have tone chambers (hollow cavities routed out of a solidbody covered by the guitar top) have even more of a bass response, while losing much of the glassy biting attack of a typical solidbody. 

 

Home