Skinny necks, chunky necks, medium necks...

[zorrow]

How can you quantify a guitar neck's thickness? Is there any trustable measure to determine whether a neck is medium, skinny or chunky?

[cynic]

I measured the one's I'm most familiar with at the 1st and 12th and use them as my preference guide. Profile can still make a good deal of difference where a thicker neck can feel thinner and vice versa.

Start with what you have and are most familiar with, and go from there.

I think most go with 50's Gibson is thick, 59 Gibson is medium, 60 Gibson in thin. I don't agree with it, just something I see being used.

[crunchee]

I measured the one's I'm most familiar with at the 1st and 12th and use them as my preference guide.

How, and with what? There must be some kind of universal industry guideline...or at least a known method as used by a major guitar maker. Anybody know? Maybe murkat can weigh in on this.

[cynic]

I measured the one's I'm most familiar with at the 1st and 12th and use them as my preference guide.

How, and with what? There must be some kind of universal industry guideline...or at least a known method as used by a major guitar maker. Anybody know? Maybe murkat can weigh in on this.

I used a digital caliper like these..

I had never paid much attention to actual measurements until I had a custom done where everything was built to my spec. I didn't realize how many of "my" spec's were unknowns. Until then, I'd just always gone with the goldilocks method, "too thick... too thin... just right". I took all my favorites and started measuring and taking notes. I also measured quite a few of my friends guitars, about 20 in all. I narrowed it down to three that felt about as uncompromisingly perfect as I could imagine, and averaging them I came up with "my" spec.

[FrankieIII]

Pre '59 Gibson LP reissues = Thick

'93 - '98 double-cut, set-neck, USA Hamers = Medium

Ibanez Wizard neck = Thin

[murkat]

No pun intended, but its all over the place...

there are so many variables.

What has become common place is to

gauge, compare a neck of what is popular.

50's fenders, gibsons

60's fenders, gibsons

7o's fenders, gibsons, Hamer, Dean, misc.

Moderns~ Ibanez

Charvel

a few others.

All with "Iconic" quick refernce points.

So, if you mention a certain Brand, era, type, you can almost get a verbal description of a said neck profile and feel.

At the GCS, depends on the neck sander's attitude that day... A few 100 shaped that day will be about the same per model, but, thats for that day....

Leo Fender was going on vaca on his new yacht. He instructed specifically to the neck shaper to do it just like this one.

Leo came back and the shaper had made about 300 necks with a V to the back of them. Leo was pissed and threw them out, fired the guy.

Geo, behind Leo's back, retrieved the V necks and ran them. The rest is history. True story.

[velorush]

I measured the one's I'm most familiar with at the 1st and 12th and use them as my preference guide.

How, and with what? There must be some kind of universal industry guideline...or at least a known method as used by a major guitar maker. Anybody know? Maybe murkat can weigh in on this.

I used a digital caliper

Only an old-school analog caliper for me! No measurement loss from the D/A conversion, just pure analog goodness! - actually it's because I have had my old one for many years and I'm too cheap to pony up for a new digital one.

I think the 1st and 12th fret(board, not actually the fret) measurements are pretty standard, but like others have said, that really doesn't give the complete picture. Some might remember me posting measurements from my '83 Phantom and how close they were to my N7 Am Std Strat (so called "modern C"), however, I was selling the Phantom solely because I couldn't get along with the neck - the Strat, however, felt and still feels fine. The Phantom was more of a D shape. I think measurements, along with profile, can help, but there is nothing like actually playing the thing (for a while) to see if it's going to work.