Acoustic Guitar Necks: An Acoustic Guitar Would be a Drum Without It!

Have you ever considered how important acoustic guitar necks are to acoustic guitars?

One of the its biggest jobs is to be and stay structurally sound enough to hold the string tension without too much deformation.

It must also stay stable under this tense condition!

Roughly, the average string tension on guitars is from 15 to 20 lbs. So the total string tension could be 90 to 120 lbs on a six steel string acoustic guitar.

(Most string manufactures have tension charts by string type and size on their websites for checking the tension.)

Go to your string manufacturers website and look at their string tension chart.

That is why it is so important to have truss rods or other embedded reinforcements there.

Most new truss rods are adjustable so you can straigten acoustic guitar necks or put a little backset in them to keep the strings from buzzing against the frets.

Be very careful in adjusting the trussrod.

Many have been broken in the adjustment process.

It is a major ordeal to replace a truss rod.

It is not hard to adjust a truss rod. Just do it with care.

I cover truss rod adjustent in other ares of my site.

Other parts of the neck include:

The fret or fingerboard

The position markers

The frets

The headstock

The headplate
The heel

The tuning machines

The barrel (the neck)

The dovetail or tenon

The nut

All of these parts work together to give its adequate stiffness, correct alignment, and its ability to be played easily without buzzing.

Most acoustic guitar necks are made from wood, although I have played a guitar once with a machined aluminum neck.

Seems it would be susceptible to extreme temperature changes.

Most wooden necks are made from mahogany, maple, spanish cedar, sapele, cherry and walnut.

Wood is a great material and doesn't react violently to heat and cold change within a reasonable range.

Moisture or humidity is not a great problem if the neck is sealed and finished properly.

Many players swear by a dovetail joint but I have had much sucess with mortise and tenon bolt-ons also.

Unless you are a stickler for dovetail joints, mortise and tenon joints hold up great and should not be a sticking point in choosing an acoustic guitar.

There's more about acoustic guitars. Take a look at Acoustic Guitar Parts

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