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I always felt that as a student one should use the most difficult but proven construction methods, so that he can understand how it's done. Once he mastered the skill, then we can talk about shortcuts.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Let's get this Neck reset factor in to some perspective. A neck reset isn't major restoration work and it happens once in 25 or so years. After that ? Maybe never, maybe another 40 or 50 years. In that sense it's hardly a major expense when we are referring to expensive hand made Guitars. The running costs of an expensive instrument are pretty minimal. People 'lose' more money on the devaluation of their ipads in the first year! the real cost of cell phones are even worse. I really don't think it's much of a factor unless the Guitar is relatively cheap, then the Neck reset becomes a high proportion of the cost. Let's face it, compared to the vast majority of hobbies playing Guitar has to be one of the cheapest. . . . or at least it can be. The cost of a reset probably works out at around $15 per year. In a single month I waste more than that buying tools I wish I hadn't purchased.

The '$15 per year' is a nice rationalization of the simple fact that you're out a couple hundred bucks in one go when you need the reset. You don't write it off as a per-month expense, you bear the cost immediately. It's an 'unnecessary' additional cost if you're not strongly attached to dovetails.

I have no interest in trying or learning a dovetail, just as I have very limited interest in building vintage replica instruments in terms of shape or ornamentation. I would rather master hand-cut dovetails for furniture joinery (because it looks pretty and I do enjoy working with hand tools) than master a joint I don't plan to work on. I also don't really have ambitions to do repair work for anyone other than myself, so that is also a major factor.

Yes I know, that's why I wrote 'let's get it into some perspective'. It's not a big cost considering it's once every couple of decades or more. It's less than many charge to re -French Polish a classical guitar ($400 - $550). It can be about the price of a re-fret.
Use what you want. I don't make SS's. Doesn't matter one bit to me.

What? I've done many a neck reset and a few full restoration on old no name parlor guitars and so on. The future repair man will analyze the worth of a guitar and determine whether or not it's feasible to do a reset and if it's a bolt on it's a no brainer that will cost little. Big win for any future customer.



Without having my notes on me I'd say the first 10-ish guitars I built were dove tails. That was 20 years ago and Taylor started coming out with the butt joint bolt on neck which many people resisted. (apparently this still goes on today) Eventually I decided to give it a try. I liked it. After some time I tried the Cumpiano M&T joint and that sure seemed like a fine way of solving the problem. Then my 12 sting guitar with a butt bolt on joint started getting high action. I could have just lowered the saddle but then I read here on the forum about flossing. So with a 100 grit strip of sand paper and about ten minutes of my time the action was set perfectly again with no lose of saddle height which could affect tone. Also there was really no perceived fret board drop off over the body extension.

I'm using a butt joint again and probably will continue to do so except for Selmer type heels which are very thin and require an M&T.

In my humble opinion the only pro to using a dovetail is that there are still traditionalists that will have it no other way.

I keep reading the comments about neck reset costs and no one has considered the fact that a bolt on reset though easier is not free. Most shops charge by the estimated time involved and a bolt on still takes about 1/2 the time as a dovetail unless it is a Taylor which is even quicker to do.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
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Busato guitars didn't use a dovetail. The neck heel is glued flat on the neck block, using casein glue, I think. Castelluccia did the same but there is a 15 mm approx. hole in the flat neck block. Both of these are pretty highly regarded gypsy guitars with Selmer-style heels. I'm not saying that it's a good practice, just that butt joints have been used in the instance you mention.

cheers

Ok interesting to know, thanks. I had to look up what casein glue is. Apparently you can paint with it, glue with it and even make cheese with it. What wonderful stuff.

And make bridge pins with it!

One point I didn't see made.

If a neck needs reset 20 years after it's built, it's likely that for the last 5-10 years the guitar had a bit too high action so was not in ideal playing condition. That's a bummer. I love old Martin guitars but I've seen many of them with way too high action but the owner either didn't want to send the guitar away for 3 or 4 months or didn't have $400 to spend on a neck reset (or both) so they just live with an instrument in poor playing condition.

With a decent designed bolt-on neck you can make small neck reset adjustments in 10-15 min while changing strings. If you need to unglue the fretboard extension, it's not a huge job requiring a lot of time or large risk of finish damage. So what I'll throw out here is that a bolt-on neck is less costly to keep in ideal playing condition.......and I'll also add it's more likely that a bolt-on neck instrument will be maintained in ideal playing condition as resets are less costly and can be turned around much quicker.

So if you define a great guitar as having great tone and playability, it seems a bolt-on neck may provide a way to realize half that equation more consistently over the life of the guitar.

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

Not really. You keep lowering the saddle and ramp until you can't go any lower. Then reset and make a new saddle. I have shaved a 1/16 off the bridge to prolong the inevitable. But you probably wouldn't want to do that on an $$ vintage guitar.

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Pat

Most shops charge by the estimated time involved and a bolt on still takes about 1/2 the time as a dovetail

A wise shop or luthier will also take into account the risks of damage, and steaming-off a neck creates a real risk. There are many brands and/or models of guitars I simply won't reset and will turn the owner away. Anything with a laminated neck block and/or neck that is dovetailed is a no-go for me. Not worth the risk...

I'll also chime-in and state that a bolted neck is not a shortcut, nor a time saver. In fact, it takes less time to make and set a dovetailed neck than a bolted one, and Bob Taylor proved it. So did I, when in '99 I did the entire year's guitars with dovetails, then resumed bolting them as I had done since '96, and still do to this day. There was zero advantage to the dovetailed guitars. Not tone, not power, not nothing. But the fact that a bolted system allows the guitar's action and setup to be easily fine-tuned, when freshly strung up, or 10/20/40 years later, that it makes no sense to me to use a dovetail. None. I've also never lost a client because of the bolted neck. If we stop and think about it, more high end luthiers and high end small factories use bolted necks today than dovetails, and in a rather interesting twist, --ALL-- of the world's cheapest instruments have glued-on necks, with most of them being dovetailed. At a factory level, a dovetailed neck is way, way quicker and simpler; it's all done by machine, then glued together. A bolted neck requires holes to be drilled rather precisely, inserts put in place(carefully or you crack the heel), and a person needs to reach-in and put-in the bolts and tighten them up(again, not too tight, or you risk breaking the heel, not too loose or it'll come loose later), and of course, there's the added cost of the bolts, inserts, washers, tools, etc...., which for a factory building 50,000 or 100,000 guitars per year can add up to a 1/4 million dollars or more. A dovetail? A pair of jigs, a router and a router bit. Or a CNC....

ot really. You keep lowering the saddle and ramp until you can't go any lower. Then reset and make a new saddle. I have shaved a 1/16 off the bridge to prolong the inevitable.

For all those years, that guitar was NOT at optimum playing condition. Every design has an ideal saddle height, so cutting it down isn't a great solution. And shaving 1/16" of a bridge, unless it was an oversized bridge, simply means that when the time comes, and it will, for the neck to finally be reset, you now also need to change the bridge. In the end, you've only put off the inevitable, all the while living with a guitar that wasn't at its best, and when all is said and done, you've nearly doubled the cost of the reset(by having to also replace the bridge). What did you gain? Nothing....

With a bolted neck, 9 times out of ten, that neck angle could have been flossed and in ten minutes, the action would be back to where the player wants it. Considering the time it takes to shave and re-shape a saddle, total time for the flossing is but a few minutes! Most of the time, I won't even remove the strings. In fact, I never do. Just loosen them enough to get my hand inside to loosen the bolts...

For me, it was the risk factor of disassembling the dovetail that gave me pause about using the joint.
Grumpy's points are well taken. I think of the repair issues when choosing any building techniques.
Future ease of repair-ability and adjustability settled the point in our shop.
Bolt on for us.
As for sound--wasn't that the original question?-- I also played Rick Turner's guitar.
Holy cow, the neck doesn't even touch the body but via three pieces of hardware.
And it is a monster!

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Thinking. Bolt on, dovetail, Butt, Spline. Perhaps it's an idea to Shellac the soundboard where the fretboard is glued (if indeed it is glued). I suspect that a few coats of very thin Shellac will make releasing the board a little easier. Maybe. I'll have to do some tests.

I'll only add that as you lower the saddle, you are likely loosing tone and/or volume. So back to the definition I used (which likely isn't accepted by everyone) that a great guitar must have great tone and great playability, you are loosing tone either in quality of sound and/or volume by lowering the saddle. So I think the point still stands (at least in my mind ).

I don't have the experience in repair that many good folks on this forum do so I'll ask a question. How many old Taylor guitars do you see come in with high action? How does that compare to the number of Martin guitars you see with high action? I can't recall playing a Taylor with a really high action but I've played lots of old Martins with really high action. Is this just an example of my limited experience or does this represent reality? If true, that is a revealing piece of information.

For the record, if I found a Taylor with a really high action......I'll bet it wouldn't take long to correct that problem........

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

I think every guitar has an optimum "range" of saddle height in a practical sense. Hopefully it was made at the upper end of that. As far as shaving a bridge, It's all relative. I probably wouldn't do it on anything worth over $800.

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Pat

Darryl, The difference you see between the number of Taylors vs. Martins requiring neck resets is most likely a factor of the age of the guitars. The average Martin is a lot older.

Straight from the factory I see more Martins with high action than Taylors.

From the 60's and 70's, I don't see ANY Taylor's with high action, ever. (Hah hah, I know. I nevr see any of Bob's earliest work).

I've seen plenty of settled in 80's and 90's Taylors and Martins, I think they've settled in about the same over the years.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

One thing nobody's mentioned: is it even a good idea for sound to be transmitted through the neck? My last guitar, for whatever reason, transmits sound through the neck exceptionally well. It can be a little annoying, as finger noises etc are amplified almost as though there were a piezo pickup in the neck. Perhaps it adds little richness and volume, but it doesn't seem to me to be as important as a lot of other things.

BTW, it's a butt joint bolt-on. I would venture that the transmission has more to do with the glued in solid steel truss rod, walnut construction, and (possibly) the thicker-than-standard fretboard.

Another thing I noticed is that the sound transmission dramatically increased after I dowelled the heel. It was very evident when tapping it. This was kind of strange and unexpected. I've dowelled heels before and not noticed anything. This time I used a walnut dowel and HHG. Perhaps that made a difference.