merciful-evans Posted October 7, 2015 Share Posted October 7, 2015 Long Tenon Neck Joint. I came across this term reading about MIJ (Made In Japan) LP copies. The author is a MIJ collector and places much importance on the advantage of Long Tenon Neck construction. Not so much for structural integrity, but for ‘sustain’. I feel somewhat sceptical, but I am curious to know what the luthiers here think. The first link is an image of the comparative Short, Transitional & Long methods of joining. My link image This next link is the page where the image originates http://www.latesixtieslespauls.com/middle.asp web explanation Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
american cheez Posted October 7, 2015 Share Posted October 7, 2015 i'm certainly no expert. but once i had a guitar whose tenon was so long it went all the way across the underside of the neck pickup. that guitar had serious sustain. whether it was the tenon or not, i don't know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pesh Posted October 8, 2015 Share Posted October 8, 2015 I can hardly call myself a luthier at this point; I'm only just building my first LP now. But the benefits of sustain are completely understandable. I've got a ridiculous design in all my stuff for a hollow body with a tenon that extends all the way to the bridge, so effectively the neck becomes a centre-block. It might just be easier, if I ever come to making such a beast, to have an almost thru-neck design, making the neck and centre block from a single piece. I can imagine it does have some structural benefits on a guitar with a heel scallop; consider a les Paul Axcess, for example. More surface area of the neck bound with the body is better when you're chopping out a lot of the material. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merciful-evans Posted October 8, 2015 Author Share Posted October 8, 2015 Interesting point about the ‘through’ neck, because… I once asked a luthier about sustain. He had no hesitation is saying it was principally about the neck. I had never heard this said before. As he had some 40 years of building experience, I took it on board. I have a through-neck guitar, but I wouldn’t say it has greater sustain than anything else I’ve used. If fact, I came across this article a while ago which challenges many such assumptions. Fortunately I found it again : http://www.cycfi.com/2013/11/sustain-myth-science/ It actually says that a bolt on neck gives greater sustain. I don’t know, but to my ears an LP has lots of sustain with or without the long tenon neck joint. Logically it must be attributable to ‘something’ or maybe several ‘somethings’ ?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted October 8, 2015 Share Posted October 8, 2015 Of all the things that make a guitar have "sustain", neck tenon is way, way low on the list. One reason the LP has the "sustain" has more to do with the resonant frequency of the guitar, it's weight, the tonality of it. A darker sounding guitar that has more emphasis on the bass and mids will SEEM to have longer sustain because it's the treble frequencies that die out first. So a note played on an LP will sound the same longer than one on an acoustic, or a brighter sounding guitar. Wood density, stiffness, weight, bridge coupling, materials of the bridge will all have a greater effect on the sound and tonality of the guitar than how the neck is attached. When it comes to the neck, there IS a lot of truth to that. We tend to focus on the body, but the neck accounts for at LEAST half of the string length, so that long piece of wood sticking out from the body where ONE SIDE of the played note happens is a huge factor. I think the thickness of the neck is a big factor, and even more so, when dealing with mahogany, a relatively flexible wood compared to maple, the thickness of the hog neck plays a bigger factor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabs Posted October 8, 2015 Share Posted October 8, 2015 Hmm... Its very hard to quantify a single piece of a guitar design that makes that much difference... With guitars its more about the overall effect of EVERYTHING on your guitar and the way its designed... Neck angle and bridge type makes a huge difference too.. In saying that, one of my guitars is made from Beechwood, which is not a normal guitar wood.. YET it turned out one of the better guitars I made in terms of sound and sustain... And yes as Pesh said, it actually has a tenon that goes all the way to the bridge pickup area and it sustains really nicely... Theres a really good test you can do with electric guitars to feel the sustain... Strum the guitar open, and put your hand on the end of the headstock... With a guitar that vibrates well you can really feel it at the end of the headstock... Now im not even saying this means anything (cos its hard as I say to quantify this sort of stuff) but try it yourself.. you will see what I mean :) This one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pesh Posted October 8, 2015 Share Posted October 8, 2015 Just to quickly hijack the post; Rabs is this the most current build? I've not seen a thread on one of yours in a short while (probably blind); can you link it to me, please mate? You do love them P94 style p'ups Hmm... Its very hard to quantify a single piece of a guitar design that makes that much difference... With guitars its more about the overall effect of EVERYTHING on your guitar and the way its designed... Neck angle and bridge type makes a huge difference too.. In saying that, one of my guitars is made from Beechwood, which is not a normal guitar wood.. YET it turned out one of the better guitars I made in terms of sound and sustain... And yes as Pesh said, it actually has a tenon that goes all the way to the bridge pickup area and it sustains really nicely... Theres a really good test you can do with electric guitars to feel the sustain... Strum the guitar open, and put your hand on the end of the headstock... With a guitar that vibrates well you can really feel it at the end of the headstock... Now im not even saying this means anything (cos its hard as I say to quantify this sort of stuff) but try it yourself.. you will see what I mean :) This one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabs Posted October 8, 2015 Share Posted October 8, 2015 Just to quickly hijack the post; Rabs is this the most current build? I've not seen a thread on one of yours in a short while (probably blind); can you link it to me, please mate? You do love them P94 style p'ups :) yes I do indeed like those type of pickups... for two reasons... I LOVE P90s and if you use a humbucker sized one it means that if you want you can just swap them out easy for a proper humbucker.. so gives the user slightly more options without any need for any other mods...... And that's an old build from my last three which I made without any binding ... Theres a thread here if you want to look (the beech one starts half way down the second page) http://forum.gibson.com/index.php?/topic/113245-set-necks-ahoy-beech-and-oak-builds-finished/ And actually in the end I used normal humbuckers for that guitar I think I was just using those P90s as a test to make sure id cut the holes out to the right size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merciful-evans Posted October 9, 2015 Author Share Posted October 9, 2015 Guys, Thanks to all, Kuma, Pesh, Stein, Rabs, for your input. What you've said has made me think (see my sig) and makes good sense. Rabs, I love the look of your double cuts. I had a good nose 'round at your pics (I've done so before too). I've long thought the LP DC shape has 'almost' perfect symmetry. -evans Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabs Posted October 9, 2015 Share Posted October 9, 2015 Guys, Thanks to all, Kuma, Pesh, Stein, Rabs, for your input. What you've said has made me think (see my sig) and makes good sense. Rabs, I love the look of your double cuts. I had a good nose 'round at your pics (I've done so before too). I've long thought the LP DC shape has 'almost' perfect symmetry. -evans Thank you sir.. And yes.. the DC to me is the perfect shape... Great upper fret access and still every bit a Les Paul. Its been my favourite shape ever since I got my DC Special. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kitarist Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 Long tenon does have an impact but its questionable how much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the dog Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 its always about the length.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlie brown Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 There are those, who swear by them, "added sustain, and tonality," etc. Still other's that say they honestly cannot tell the difference, short or long, one to another. I guess, if you convince yourself, that it does make a difference, you'll "hear/feel" it. But, objectively, I have NO IDEA! All my LP's and SG's have plenty of sustain and tone. Some may have long neck tenons, and some may not. I (personally) don't care, or worry about it. But, whatever works, for the individual, is all that's really important, right?! CB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
capmaster Posted October 19, 2015 Share Posted October 19, 2015 No luthier here, so I have no experiences in evaluating wood blanks. All I write in the following is due to comparisons of a quite respectable number of guitars, including four or more each of the "Big Four" solidbody designs. First a point which honestly surprised me: There's next to no difference in rigidity and stiffness between mahogany and maple necks of similar profiles. Although Fender rarely uses mahogany, this includes both materials of both Gibson and Fender necks. All of the pegheads snapped off among pals were mahogany but also were angled, in contrast to most of the maple necks in their possessions. Maple may seem to have less tendency to break, but that could be due to the fact it's all sapwood, not heartwood as with mahogany and most other timbers. Even when dried properly, sapwood is less brittle than heartwood. Perceived sustain is strongly based on fundamentals. Therefore the term "dull note" mostly refers to a lack of the fundamental in the audible sound. Wider magnetic fields and neck pickups transduce fundamentals with higher level which makes slender single coils sound thinner, often misconceived as less sustain. Try the acoustic sound of a Stratocaster or a Telecaster featuring a piezo bridge - you will find no lack of sustain at all. Strats and Teles with typical humbuckers reveal that, too. Neck, body, materials, design and construction are not the culprits. Dull notes of many guitars are pretty close to each other. Those of Les Paul guitars, L6-Ses, Stratocasters and Telecasters are within two half notes. Typical SG deadspots are a small third below. Neck profiles and neck tenons shift them about no more than a half note. Furthermore, the fretboard timber has an audible impact on timbre, but affects deadspots negligibly. At the highest frets, that is past the neck heel, guitars behave significantly different. All of my single cuts, i. e. Les Paul guitars, L6-Ses and Telecasters, have no audible dull note there. My double cuts, SGs, Stratocasters and two Ibanezes, a bolt-on neck and a set-neck guitar each, clearly reveal deadspots there. Maybe more symmetry of the body means less sustain. However, and this didn't come as a big surprise to me, my only Explorer - the one from my avatar - doesn't fit into any scheme of all the previously mentioned guitars. Her dull notes are unobtrusive and hard to detect across all strings and along the entire fretboard. The highly asymmetrical body design may play an important role here - I don't have any other explanation. Finally, guitars may have live notes, too, and they can be as extreme as deadspots. My massive Les Paul Traditional - with a short neck tenon, by the way - and my American Deluxe Telecaster Ash have one each with a certain frequency distinctively growing in loudness for a while after string attack, no matter if fundamental or harmonic. It sounds like a feedback, even at low gain and low volume settings. However, these two are my most lively guitars in general, hard to beat for cutting through, and take most muting efforts to avoid unwanted string resonances. As you may expect, muting strings is a serious task with my Explorer, too. OK, a bit lengthy, but just my two cents... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golden Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 The only place I can REALLY tell a difference is the price tag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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