NECK-THROUGH GUITAR DESIGN VS. BOLT-ON

   The ‘Guitarist Collective’ has never really understood the issues of solidbody guitar design—that aspect of the industry has always been a toy mill for teens where it really lives, after all—so I thought I’d weigh in and let fly with my not-surprisingly-strong opinions regarding this, as well as some other aspects of design, purely on a for-whatever-it’s-worth basis.

   I prefer bolt-on over neck-through, and here’s why: Hardwoods (like maple) which have enough strength and structural integrity to be used for a neck are too dense and rigid to vibrate much, sympathetically with the strings, and this of course kills tone. Mahogany is an exception here, but you’d better like a dark sound. Besides, necks can wear out and die or get broken; it’s nice to be able to replace a neck and not the whole instrument. And a bolt-on design, done right, is plenty strong. Just ask my Tele.

   Choice of wood for the body runs along the same lines, and of course has the biggest effect (along with bridge design) on tone. It’s long been the rage to have bodies of hard, dense-but-pretty wood with interesting-looking grain; this has always struck me as a prime example of the extremity to which crowd psychology can compromise an individual’s decision making paradigms. F’rinstance, I’ve NEVER met a solid maple body that sounded good to me; they all sound trebly, rigid and uptight. Ditto Walnut.
Alder is a softer, more responsive wood whose popularity for both guitar and bass bodies is due to its capacity to vibrate and respond—but you wouldn’t want to use it for a neck, as with a neck-through design.
Finding a piece of wood that can respond to the mids and lows is difficult enough, and you’ll never get there with hardwoods. Finding a body with balanced response over the whole range of the instrument is almost impossible, but I’ve seen a few; I even own one. It’s doable.

   Where and how the bridge transduces the energy from the strings into the body is a sacred marriage (which the vast majority of designs get all wrong—the rampant ineptitude of most bridge designs being a likely subject for another rant in the near future) and the wood needs to be able to respond to that energy. I look at a solidbody as being en lieu of an acoustic instrument, like a violin. A good solid body should sound good unplugged; a REALLY good one, lying face-up in your hands, should vibrate against your palms to the sound of your speaking voice. The aging and curing of the body wood is also a huge factor here, but aged and cured hardwood will always be dense. The growing popularity of chambered design is a good development; I think it heralds the ‘growing up’ of the industry, at least in certain circles and companies.

   “So, what’s your favorite wood for a solid body guitar?” I hear you ask. Well…
Allan Holdsworth introduced me to a Malaysian softwood called Jelutan, which is almost like balsa wood. Some of you might recall his white Charvel from the IOU days; it had a Jelutan body. We traded axes for several weeks; I was amazed at the thing’s responsiveness. It sounded like a chambered acoustic / electric unplugged.  Years went by and I finally got my own Jelutan body (it’s on my main workhorse Frankenstrat) and I’m going to have another built soon…what a great wood.

More to come.