Neck joints: bolts, m&t, dovetails old, dovetails new

[warfrat73]

Originally Posted by cliff_the_stiff

Richard Hoover wrote his opinion about it on the SCGC website.
I’ve been lit up in here trying to explain his point, so rather than making that attempt again, you can just look up.
But to answer your question regarding instrumentation to measure…
after getting lit up here about my comments on wave transference through the neck joint I decided to test it using my guitars. I have at least one of each of those types of neck joint- I pulled out the decibel reader on my phone, and a tuning fork.
I ding the fork and place the ball end on the treble side of the bridge, and readd the decibel level- then ding the fork again, placing it on the headstock and read the decibel-
In each measure I noticed about a 25-30 reduction in decibels when measured at the head. the dovetail joints and M&T were louder by about 5%.
My Taylor all hog performed as well as the dovetail, but my Nick Lucas clone with a bolt on neck had the most volume loss.
But at the end of the day, the bolt on neck guitars still sound great, and I won’t hesitate to look at any guitars built with one.

This may all be 100% accurate... but it's way too small of a sample size and too many variables to be meaningful. Aside from the Nick Lucas, how many of them have 13th fret neck joints? What does the amount of resonance at the headstock actually tell us in practical terms? What's the mass of the bridge/bridge plate system? What's the mass of the headstock with tuners? How stiff is the neck?

Not trying to "light you up," but this is hardly a smoking gun.

[J Patrick]

Yes sometimes we hear what we want to hear……But sometimes we hear….or don’t hear
what we’re listening for…..it doesn’t really matter what makes the sound we want to hear but knowing what features contribute to it can be helpful….

[lowrider]

Just to add a little fuel to the fire, has any else noticed that the builders who use a dovetail joint say that they use it because it’s the best sounding way to make a guitar. The builders who use bolt on don’t say that it sounds better. They say that it’s easier to make a guitar that way and that in the future it’s easier to do a neck reset.

Makes me wonder?!

[warfrat73]

I mean, it is pretty conspicuous that Richard Hoover says it makes a difference and Dana Bourgeois says it doesn't. And they're both trying to sell more units of the thing they make. And they both make great guitars.

[drtedtan]

Originally Posted by lowrider

Just to add a little fuel to the fire, has any else noticed that the builders who use a dovetail joint say that they use it because it’s the best sounding way to make a guitar. The builders who use bolt on don’t say that it sounds better. They say that it’s easier to make a guitar that way and that in the future it’s easier to do a neck reset.

Makes me wonder?!

I’ve been fortunate to be able to play lots of guitars over the years. Some I’ve owned, some belonged to friends, and some I played in shops when traveling through various music cities (Nashville, LA, Seattle, Austin, Memphis, etc.) when visit family or on vacation

I’ve played several pre-war Martins and Gibsons; I’ve played dozens of luthier built instruments, including two Olsons and a Ryan; I’ve played several guitars by each of the small shop builders (Bourgois, Collings, Goodall, Huss & Dalton, Santa Cruz., etc.).

What have I found through playing all those instruments? There are world class guitars out there with dovetail neck joints and there are world class guitars out there with bolt on neck joints - neither inherently sounds better. Find the individual guitar(s) that work for you and get busy making music.

[David Eastwood]

In this perpetually repeating discussion, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone articulate what a neck joint sounds like.

The amusement continues.

[Kevin G String]

Originally Posted by David Eastwood

In this perpetually repeating discussion, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone articulate what a neck joint sounds like.

The amusement continues.

The neck joint on my Martin 000 - 28 sounds like roasted bananas. Does that help? ;0)

[Robin, Wales]

Originally Posted by Shortfinger

Why might Martin's "traditional" joint, a dovetail, result in superior tone than, say, a bolted or screwed connection?

And if nothing beats a dovetail, no matter its size, why would anybody buy a Taylor?

Who has done the hard work of analyzing this with insrumentation? One would have to build guitars of identical specs and absolutely identical woods but with differing neck joints to really even begin, no?

I've read subjective commentary here, but it all sounds like chat around the Coke machine out on the porch. Where's the data? If a joint's tight, how could it, with all its mass, no matter its geometry and components, affect the vibratory action of a guitar's soundboard?

It doesn't affect the vibratory action of the guitar's soundboard. It effects the vibrations going into the soundbox.

Try this yourself. Take a BIC biro or pencil or chopstick or something similar in plastic or soft wood. Place it gently on the 6th string between frets 2 and 3. Play the string and it will give a dull thud. Now tip the biro or whatever up to an angle of 45 deg and let the butt on it touch the fretboard and the edge of it touch the string gently. Play the string and the note will ring out louder. All this demonstrates is that you are now getting the vibrations into the fretboard/neck and back to the body of the guitar - and how important the vibration transfer from the nut or frets back to the body is in creating your guitar's tone.

It doesn't answer the question of "which neck joint is best" but it does demonstrate that the frets, fretboard, neck material, neck joint etc are all very important in creating the timbre of any guitar.

Personally, a sign of a "good" guitar to me is one where I can feel the neck kicking in my hand as I play. Then I know that the whole instrument is working for me.

[Wellington]

Just popping in as I do with these threads to say I'm in the "makes no difference to me" team unless its epoxied, i hate that. I'd probably prefer bolt on as it makes resets easier, but none of mine are bolt on. My beloved Guild is dovetail and sounds amazing, my LL16 is dovetail i believe, and my S&P and Godin are epoxied unfortunately.

[cliff_the_stiff]

Originally Posted by warfrat73

This may all be 100% accurate... but it's way too small of a sample size and too many variables to be meaningful. Aside from the Nick Lucas, how many of them have 13th fret neck joints? What does the amount of resonance at the headstock actually tell us in practical terms? What's the mass of the bridge/bridge plate system? What's the mass of the headstock with tuners? How stiff is the neck?

Not trying to "light you up," but this is hardly a smoking gun.

Nope. it’s a guitar. and they’re not smoking at all.
My intent was to illustrate how indiscernibly close they were. But thanks for reminding me about commenting on this topic.
Just last week I was listening to old zeppelin recordings and thought Page really should be playing a guitar with more neck mass.

[Alan Carruth]

British designer and wood worker David Pye wrote:
" Where the problem is old, the old solutions will nearly always be best (unless a new technique has been introduced) because it is inconceivable that all of the designers of ten or twenty generations will have been fools"

All guitar makers experiment all the time to try to make a 'better' guitar. Most experiments fail, but once in a while one succeeds. When it does everybody copies it, and that new feature becomes part of the 'standard'. After centuries of this the designs we have are pretty good: everything that works is already in there.

One corollary of this is that the difference between an 'average' one and a 'great' one is actually pretty small in objective terms, but, at the same time, it matters a lot. Hand makers try to figure out ways to pick the best sets of wood, and work with dimensions and so on to get a little bit closer to 'perfect'. Factories make standard designs using more or less random sets of wood. They can get decent results on average by working carefully, but once in a while, just by chance, an instrument comes out much better (or worse) than average. Better quality control in production usually ups the 'standard of mediocrity', but it's possible to find an outstanding one even in more 'affordable' lines if you want to play through enough of them.

[warfrat73]

Originally Posted by cliff_the_stiff

Nope. it’s a guitar. and they’re not smoking at all.
My intent was to illustrate how indiscernibly close they were. But thanks for reminding me about commenting on this topic.

I'm sorry if you found my post a bit too direct, and if I misread the intent of your post, which I took to mean that there was a measurable and meaningful difference, because you didn't clarify that second part of it.

My point is simply that, even setting aside the small sample size, it's unclear what you were actually measuring in the tests you described because there are too many variables that are uncontrolled.

[ProfChris]

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

British designer and wood worker David Pye wrote:
" Where the problem is old, the old solutions will nearly always be best (unless a new technique has been introduced) because it is inconceivable that all of the designers of ten or twenty generations will have been fools"

All guitar makers experiment all the time to try to make a 'better' guitar. Most experiments fail, but once in a while one succeeds. When it does everybody copies it, and that new feature becomes part of the 'standard'. After centuries of this the designs we have are pretty good: everything that works is already in there.

Two things might be changing the 'best' solution I think.

One is that the hardware to make bolt-on necks is nowadays cheap, readily available and light. The two hex socket bolts and threaded inserts I used to attach the neck of the guitar I just finished building weigh less than one tuner, and I'd have added far more mass by using sealed as opposed to open back tuners. I doubt the added mass at the neck joint makes a significant difference to the sound, though there is no way to find out.*

More importantly, buyers of high-end guitars (specifically Martins) seem to be expressing concerns about future ease of repair when it comes to the almost inevitable neck reset. As I understand it Martin used to reset necks for original owners in the US under warranty, no matter how old the guitar, but have recently changed how they interpret that warranty. Necks are now only reset if Martin thinks the need was caused by defective workmanship or materials, not by the inevitable process of folding up which all acoustics try to do. So Martin buyers used not to care about this issue, but are now starting to. Other high end makers might be seeing future repairability as a selling point, and so are adopting neck joints which meet that market demand. If so, from their point of view the definition of 'best' now includes repairability. Couple that with light, cheap hardware and you can see why the dovetail might fall out of favour over time.

*I've just thought of a way to experiment, though I doubt if even Alan will want to spend time doing it:

1. Make a guitar with a dovetail neck, but drill it for the later addition of bolts and inserts. Record its sound in all the ways that Alan has described elsewhere.

2. Remove the neck, add the bolts and inserts, and repeat the recording.

3. Remove the neck, cut off the wings of the dovetail, and glue the cutoffs to the side of the dovetail socket (converting it to bolt-on mortice and tenon). Record again.

Now we have 3 sets of comparable data, but only from one instrument. Repeat this 100 times or so on different instruments to check that any differences are consistent.

[Jwills57]

It's a funny deal, I guess, but this topic is just up and running on a thread on the Acoustic Life forum, which is the United Kingdom equivalent of the AGF. Guitar nerds like most of us hash this around every few months. The topic of guitar neck joints came up over there because a bloke had just bought two Fylde guitars, beautiful instruments by the way, and one of the videos linked to the thread showed that the Fylde neck joint is just a simple butt joint, no mortise and tenon at all, held on with a couple of bolts. I guess there's lots of ways to scale the fish. I would think a simple butt joint would be not the best choice, but obviously Fylde has been making wonderful instruments for a long time using this old technology, so who am I to say. Then there's a guitar maker named Rory Dowling of Taran Guitars in Scotland who has engineered his own unique joint, which is truly an incredible piece of work. His guitars are to die for, by the way. If you're interested in this topic, you might check out some pics and videos of his guitar construction techniques. I can't even begin to explain the approach, but obviously he's put a massive amount of thought into what he's doing.

[DanR]

Martin's traditional neck joint works fine for me. Then again, Collings bolt on joint is fine as well.