A guitar needs a tight neck joint

The neck joint is the heart of the guitar, loose and you lose sustain and in many cases, the neck becomes unstable. With a good, well made tight neck joint a guitar will always sound better – you will hear it in the sustain.

I always make sure that any neck I build must be able, when pushed into the pocket, to hold up the guitar without the securing bolts. It’s almost a force fit. As you can see in the picture, I can physically lift the guitar body by the neck so that it is hangs unaided. The fit alone between neck & pocket should be enough to hold the body.

A last test is to take a thin piece of card or thin plectrum and try and squeeze it into the side crack of the neck and pocket. If I can slide it in, I know the neck will loose sustain.

*If you look closely at the pocket in the pic, you’ll see that the neck isn’t quite flush yet. When I’m bolting the neck to the body the neck is given a final push to make the fit as tight as possible. When holding up the body by the un-bolted neck, the weight of the ash body pulling down causes this small 1mm gap. ( Thought I better add this last bit before I get forum comments pointing it out )