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Old 05-07-2010, 01:13 AM
harvl harvl is offline
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I like to think of myself as somewhat of an expert on neck joints....in fact my reputation hinges on them...(pun intended)

In 1972 I started with dovetails and then moved to a doweled mortise and tenon in 1980, then to bolt-on. In my experience any one of them properly executed will allow for no tonal loss, which is really the issue right? I built my first bolt-on neck in 1988 and I have never looked back. The only difference I have ever seen from one to another is that the side benefits of the bolt-on far outweigh those of any of the others: ease of construction, ease of alteration and being able to finish necks and bodies separately.

Then there's Voyage Air....

The joint on Voyage Air is essentially a bolt-on, the hinge really doesn't do anything once the neck is in the playing position, in fact string tension is necessary to fully mate the 2 halves of the fretboard. You would think that this would cause some loss of signal but if anything the Voyage Air neck seems to apply more energy to the top than my standard bolt-on guitars. I think it has something to do with the fact that, by design, the tension of the strings is directly applied to the fretboard and not spread out over the entire heel. Thom Bresh has his Voyage Air set up so that the bolt is about 2 turns loose for his preferred string height (a ridiculous .050 under the bass strings...) as he travels he can adjust the the string height if he's somewhere that the climate raises his action. Even with essentially no heel contact until the fretboard there is no loss.

I'm not advocating one over the other though. Despite the benefits to the bolt-on there is something very cool about a well executed dovetail. Keeping a tie with the original craft of guitars is a worthy endeavor and let's face it, there are instruments made with dovetails that have been around a long time.

Of course... a folding dovetail would not be a good thing.....
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Harvey Leach
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