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Old 04-18-2009, 11:26 AM
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ljguitar ljguitar is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: wyoming
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Hi Sordid...
First things first - hello and welcome to the forum.

All I base my opinions on is playing a lot of guitars and chatting with some builders - and two of my own collection.

My main two handbuilts are the mellowest toned instruments I own and they are both warm and fat-toned. One has a dovetail neck joint, and the other bolt-on neck. The brightest toned guitar in my collection - dove tail. Cheapest (but still great sounding) - bolt on.

I don't think you could empirically attribute tonal characteristics to the style neck joint. Most luthiers would not switch if it were going to affect their signature tone or the integrity of the instruments they build. Several I have been privileged to play examples from ''both sides'' and couldn't detect any differences that I'd attribute to a neck design change, and in fact could not tell you which side of the equation without asking the builders.

From the luthiers I've asked about it, all claimed there was no detectable change in the tone of their instruments when they switched their building techniques from one to the other.

There are still some builders who only build dovetail or mortise-n-tenon and make claims about it being better - but that seems more like commercial talk to me than reality. It wouldn't keep me from owning one of theirs if it had killer tone and playability and I had the dollars (with my 4 acoustics, I own two of each).
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