Whatever your choice of guitar at the moment, your ability to play it depends on an intimate physical relationship between your fretting hand and your guitar's neck. How picky are you when entering into that relationship? You may be the type of player who demands a guitar neck with very specific details—anything else just isn't right. It's sort of a guitar-playing version of monogamy.
Or you may be into an open relationship: "Just give me a guitar and I'll play it." In either case—and before I extend this analogy too far for my own good—it can help to know why you like what you like, and maybe also glimpse what you might be missing.
The simple request I received to write an article about guitar-neck design quickly turned into an extensive list of topics I wanted to cover. Any attempt to sort these topics into categories—those that affect feel and playability, versus those that affect tone, versus those based on construction—is sure to cause controversy. In fact, many can't be separated. To create some sort of organization, I'll just loosely group them, cover the points one by one, and ask for forgiveness later.
Feel and Playability
Neck profile. When picking up a guitar, perhaps the first thought to hit you—at least in terms of playability—is the feel of its neck. There are two related factors to consider: the thickness of the neck and its profile shape.
Preferences vary widely. Before discussing neck shapes, it may help to ponder variations in hand sizes—a basic design consideration. A large male hand is approximately 27-percent bigger than a small female hand. A large guitar neck (such as a Fender U-shaped neck) is only about 17-percent thicker than Fender's standard thin neck. Therefore, typical neck thicknesses don't span a range as varied as players' hand sizes.
Perhaps an even more pertinent measure concerns the curvature—the distance you feel as you wrap your hand around the back of the neck. (Picture a tape measure wrapping under from the 6th string to the 1st string.) On typical guitar necks, that distance varies by less than 10 percent. If you're at either end of the hand-size spectrum, you may have a right to complain because you'll be forced to adapt.
For a guitar to play properly, its neck needs to have a slight bow. This is called relief, and it allows the strings to vibrate over the fretboard without hitting the frets.
Something else to consider: While you're playing, different parts of your thumb contact the back of the neck. With barre chords, your thumb may be flat against the center of the curve, the neck's thickest part. When playing complex chords, your thumb's tip may be in contact. When playing basic riffs, your thumb may rest at the edge of the fretboard. When flying up and down the neck, your thumb may not touch it at all. Or for replicating a Merle Travis/Chet Atkins style of playing, your thumb may be fully wrapped around the neck, fretting a thumping bass line on the low-E string.
Some necks are carved with an asymmetrical profile that's intended to improve playability. It's not a new idea. Among Gretsch's "Seven Points of Supremacy" attributed to their 1939 Synchromatic was a "non-pressure" neck designed to relieve finger strain. This was referred to as the "Miracle Neck" in later years (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1 — In Gretsch's 1951 catalog, the 6192 and 6193 models are described as having a patented "Miracle Neck." This design o ered an asymmetrical pro le for enhanced playability.
Neck finish. Another factor that can elicit strong opinions is how a builder seals the back of a wooden neck to protect it from sweat, skin oils, and the elements. A glossy polyurethane or nitrocellulose finish will feel different from a satin or Tung oil finish. The latter two can allow your hand to more easily slide along the neck, especially on a hot and sticky day.
There's no easy way to change your current guitar's neck to a Tung-oil finish. It requires sanding the finish down to bare wood. Before taking that drastic measure, try sprinkling baby powder on your hand if you think your neck is slowing you down.
Fretwire. If you play violin, cello, or fretless bass, fret size is a non-issue. Guitarists, however, need to consider the fact that fretwire comes in various sizes. Frets are made from an alloy containing 18 percent nickel-silver (a misnomer, because there's no actual silver—which is a good thing, or we'd probably see people melting down our precious vintage instruments).
Early Fender guitars used relatively narrow frets: approximately .080" inches wide and .043" tall. Gibson frets are typically wider and just microscopically shorter. Wide frets can be just over .100", and taller frets around .050". There are too many variables in playing styles and individual finger physiology to generalize about what fretwire may be more or less appropriate for different situations. Like many other guitar-related specs, it's a matter of personal preference. Also, it can be difficult to A-B compare different fretwire sizes. You can try spending a few hours in a friendly guitar shop, but neck shapes and string gauges are likely to vary as well, which can confuse the issue.
Though less common, scalloped fretboards are related to fretwire height. On a scalloped fretboard, the space between frets is dished to keep the fingertips from touching the fretboard wood. These cylindrically concave shapes are great for certain techniques. Think of the incredible bends a sitar player produces. A sitar's arched and elevated frets keep the player's fingers off the fretboard and eliminate any friction against the wood. Scalloped fretboards replicate that for a guitar. With a height of .058", the largest size fretwire can approach a scalloped feel. To get a sense for this, try playing some Ibanez models that sport jumbo frets on this order.
Also, it surprises a few guitarists when I mention that a pressed string doesn't contact the fretboard. Rather, it spans the frets. Unless you have woefully low frets or super-light strings, the string itself won't contact the wood.
Scale length. The distance between the nut and the bridge determines the length of the strings, and this is known as scale length.That measurement won't be entirely precise, however, because intonation adjustments or an angled bar bridge results in variations in the length of each string. A more accurate way to determine scale length: measure the distance from the nut to the 12th fret and multiply by two.
Scale lengths can vary considerably. John Lennon's 325 Rickenbacker had a scale of just 20.75". A "3/4 size" guitar, such as the Guild M-65, has a scale of 22.5". Gibson's Les Paul measures 24.75". A Fender Telecaster's neck is longer at 25.5". Scale length for a baritone guitar can be much higher, like Danelectro's 29.75" neck.
Given identical strings, longer necks require more tension to get into tune. Put another way, shorter scales allow heavier strings to be used with comparatively less tension. It's something to consider if you think you'd like the effect of having more metal driving your pickups.
Fretboard radii. Classical guitar fretboards typically have no radius—they're completely flat. The fretboards on steel-string acoustics will have a cylinder-like radius along their entire length. That's true of electric guitar fretboards as well, although conical shapes are also possible. In the latter case, the radius starts tighter and then flattens out as you go higher up the neck. A neck with a compound radius is less prone to buzzing during string bends.
Vintage Fender guitars have a radius of 7.25", which is noticeably curved. Other guitar fretboards are flatter. The fretboards on Taylor and Martin acoustics typically have a 15" and 16" radius, respectively. Guild acoustics have a 12" radius. In a perfect world, the bridge saddle will match the fretboard radius, but that's not always the case.
Some players prefer a smaller fretboard radius for playing chords—especially barre chords—because it mimics the finger's curve. But others prefer all the strings to be at the same height (or close to it), citing an increase in picking and fretting speed when the string plane is relatively flat.
If your guitar has a 1-piece neck with an angled headstock, you don't need to knock it over to experience a headstock crack or break. Knocking over the case may be sufficient to impart a whiplash injury.
Fretboard width. This is typically measured at the nut, and 1 11/16" is a common width. Acoustic guitarists appreciate a little more space between strings to accommodate fingerpicking, so flattops often have a 1 3/4" fretboard width.
Rickenbacker necks can be notoriously narrow—1 5/8", for example—although models vary. Some manufacturers also offer specs for fretboard width at the 12th fret (2 1/8" for a Martin D-28) or at the high end of the fretboard (just over 2 1/4" for a Gibson Les Paul).
Tone
Neck and fretboard material. Different woods used for the neck impart different characteristics. Harder woods, such as maple, result in a brighter tone. Mahogany, which is softer, will warm things up. Fretboard wood also has an effect—ebony will surpass maple and far surpass rosewood for brightness. (For characteristics of these and more than two dozen other woods, check out Warmoth's handy " Tone-O-Meter" ratings.)
Headstock mass. The idea that adding mass to the headstock will increase sustain and affect tone is controversial. Some guitar brands, such as Epiphone and the highly regarded Froggy Bottom flattops, have oversized headstocks. Is there a sonic payoff or is this simply a cosmetic decision? Rather than opining here, I suggest you test this theory by simply clamping a capo to the headstock of your guitar. Let us all know what happens, if anything.
Construction
Headstock angle. Angling the headstock allows the strings to pull tightly against the nut as they make their way to the tuning pegs, and it's an ancient technique for stringed-instrument makers. Headstock angles can range from zero to a full 90 degrees—although the latter will only apply if you play lute.
Fig. 2 (top) — On 1-piece necks, the headstock's angle causes the grain to run across the headstock, which can put it at risk structurally. Fig. 4 (bottom) — Fender headstocks forgo an angle, and instead drop the surface down, keeping the wood grain in line.
Illustrations by Dan Formosa
An angled headstock on a 1-piece neck has two disadvantages. First, it requires a larger piece of wood for construction. Second, the headstock is more susceptible to breaking, and this is related to wood grain. On a 1-piece neck, the wood is cut so that the grain follows the neck's length—that is, until it reaches the angled headstock, where the grain then cuts across (Fig. 2). The greater the angle, the more it cuts through. Lute makers solved that problem long ago by attaching a separate piece for the headstock, putting the grain in line with the headstock angle. Many guitar makers today do the same.
If your guitar has a 1-piece neck with an angled headstock, you don't need to knock it over to experience a headstock crack or break. Knocking over the case may be sufficient to impart a whiplash injury.
Fig. 3 — A scarf joint adds the headstock as a separate piece, keeping the wood grain in line with the headstock for a stronger part. Taylor Guitars uses an S-shaped cut to join the neck and headstock. While more aesthetically pleasing than a typical straight scarf joint, this "wave" cut also offers increased glue surface and thus provides a stronger connection.
Photo courtesy of Taylor Guitars
Andy Powers, master guitar designer at Taylor Guitars, reports that since the company moved to headstocks with the grain aligned, the number of broken headstocks they see has been reduced to almost zero. Taylor's separate headstocks were first fitted to the neck using a finger joint. It was super strong, but due to staining differences, the crown shape that resulted was noticeable and odd. Taylor subsequently changed to a scarf joint—an angled cut in the neck. But instead of using the more typical straight cut, they chose a subtle S-shaped cut. This increases the glue area compared to a straight cut, and it looks better (Fig. 3).Fender guitars take a different approach, as shown in Fig. 4. To keep manufacturing simple, necks are made from a flat piece of maple with no headstock angle. The front surface of the headstock sits below the fretboard, providing the strings with an angle at the nut, although the 1st and 2nd strings require retainers (aka string trees) to increase the otherwise shallow angle and keep the strings from rattling in the nut slots as they head to the tuners.
Heel. When carving a single-piece neck, the heel, like the headstock, requires a sizable block of wood for construction, and much of this valuable material ultimately ends up as waste. Because of this, the heel is often added as a separate part, using (hopefully) a piece of wood cut from the same block as the neck, so the color matches and the connection can be hidden.
Prior to the 1930s, the only hope to prevent forward bowing was to make necks strong enough to withstand string pull, and this was done by incorporating pieces of wood or steel into the neck assembly to reinforce it. The introduction of an adjustable truss rod changed that. This is a metal bar buried within the neck, running along its length. Any bow in the neck is adjusted by a nut positioned at one end of the rod. Depending on the manufacturer, you access this truss rod nut either at the headstock (revealed by removing the truss rod cover) or at the body end of the neck.
Given identical strings, longer necks require more tension to get into tune. Put another way, shorter scales allow heavier strings to be used with comparatively less tension.
Truss rod design. For a guitar to play properly, its neck needs to have a slight bow. This is called relief, and it allows the strings to vibrate over the fretboard without hitting the frets. Changing to heavier strings will produce more of a bow, as a result of increased pull on the neck. A reverse bow will cause buzzing, as a fretted string will also contact the frets higher up the neck.
The amount of neck relief depends on personal preference, but measured at the 7th fret, it's on the order of .010", or about the diameter of a light-gauge 1st string. You can use feeler gauges to measure this, or even a business card. Here's the technique for checking fretboard relief: Capo or press and hold the 6th string at the 1st fret, then fret and hold the string at the 14th fret. With the 6th string acting as a straightedge, you can now measure the string clearance at the 7th fret. Repeat the process with the 1st string. If you tap either string against the 7th fret while pinning it at the 1st and 14th frets, you'll get an immediate sense of your current neck relief. It's a quick way to keep tabs on this important parameter, which can shift due to seasonal changes or when you change the brand or gauge of strings.
Thaddeus McHugh's 1923 truss rod patent for Gibson shows a curved metal rod buried along the center of the neck (Fig. 5). When the nut at the end of the rod is tightened, a neck bowed by string tension straightens out. From a side view, the rod curves down at its far ends.
Fig. 5 (top) — Here's Thaddeus McHugh's 1923 truss rod patent for Gibson. Intended for use with softer woods, this truss rod curves up in the middle, which is opposite from modern designs. Fig. 6 (bottom) — In Leo Fender's 1964 patent, the truss rod dips down in the middle, which is the approach widely used today. Tightening the truss rod forces it to straighten, pushing the middle of the neck up, eliminating any bow.
Colorized patent drawings by Dan Formosa
In contrast, virtually all single truss rods used today—including Gibson's—curve up at the ends. It's a design that positions the middle of the rod lower in the neck. Fig. 6 shows a 1964 patent drawing for Fender's truss rod, which uses this "cupped" design. With this shallow concave curve, tightening the rod forces it to straighten, pushing the middle of the neck up to eliminate any bow.
With a single truss rod design, tightening compresses the neck lengthwise, as the wood reacts to the rod's increased tension. Also, the curved channel required for a single truss rod is tricky to manufacture. A later development is the double-rod truss rod, which is intended to address these two issues. One rod resists the lengthwise compression of the neck, while the other creates the bow. Manufacturing is easier because the double-rod assembly requires only a straight slot in the neck. Some double-rod models are also able to create a bow in either direction. A downside to the double-rod design? Some added weight in the neck.
Fig. 7 (top) — One of the classic methods for attaching the guitar's neck to its body, the dovetail joint dates back at least as far as ancient Egypt. Fig. 8 (bottom) — The two sections of a mortise-and-tenon joint—like the dovetail joint—are traditionally bonded with hot hide glue.
Illustrations by Dan Formosa
Neck joints. Historically, the two methods used to attach the neck to the body are the dovetail joint (Fig. 7) and mortise-and-tenon joint (Fig. 8). Traditionally bonded with heated hide glue, both joints are designed to be strong and permanent. In fact, in an early ad, Gibson proclaimed its dovetail joint "unbreakable" (Fig. 9).
Fig. 9 — Confident in the strength of their dovetail joint, Gibson declared it "unbreakable" in this 1934 mandolin ad.
As effective and strong as they are, these joints have one disadvantage: When it comes time to reset the neck—which is especially common with acoustic steel-string guitars—removing it is tricky. It takes a skilled pro to steam the joint and loosen it. (This requires temporarily removing a fret above the neck joint, drilling a small hole in the open slot, and carefully heating the glue so it releases its grip on the joint.)
Although not well-received at its 1951 introduction, Leo Fender's simple solution to this thorny problem was to forego either of these two traditional woodworking joints and bolt a heelless neck onto the body. This made Fenders much less expensive to manufacture—both in terms of labor and materials—and it also worked really well.
In 1999, Taylor Guitars bucked flattop tradition by introducing a bolt-on neck system for its guitars. Super-precise computer numerical control (CNC) neck-cutting machinery assures a flawless fit. Neck resets on these instruments can be done in mere minutes, and a luthier can employ accurately machined wood shims to tweak the neck angle. But the bolt-on idea isn't new. Kay Kraft was using this technique to affix necks to their acoustic guitars in the 1930s.
Over and out. We've covered a lot of ground in this overview of the obvious and not-so-obvious decisions that went into your guitar neck's design, and there's more to investigate within each topic. And we didn't get into tuners—obvious neck components that deserve an article of their own—nor did we explore how your string choice affects the neck because that would have taken us a bit off topic. But for now, if we've shed light on what caused you to become infatuated with your current guitar's neck in the first place, then mission accomplished. Better yet: Perhaps the next time you have a chance encounter with a different neck, you'll have the basis for establishing a whole new and rewarding relationship.
Oh, the Shape I'm In
Illustration courtesy of fender.com
Fender describes its neck profiles using the letters C, U, and V. Though these profiles have many period-specific subdivisions, such as '50s V or '70s C, and variations in thicknesses ("deep U shape" or "modern C shape"), the idea is to convey the basic neck contour using familiar, easy-to-visualize symbols. Over the years, Fender's approach has been adopted by other manufacturers and evolved to include such colorful descriptions as "boat V" and "modern vintage."
It's worth noting that for about a decade starting in the early '60s, Fender also used the letters A, B, C, and D to indicate neck width at the nut (1 1/2", 1 5/8", 1 3/4", and 1 7/8", respectively). Because these letters were stamped on the end of the necks, they are sometimes mistaken for neck-profile designations, but are actually unrelated.
When it comes to neck profiles, there's no right or wrong, so play around. Remember that your initial encounter with another guitar may be brief, so don't simply go with your first impression. Keep an open mind because your opinion can change if you spend time adjusting to—or maybe even living with—a different guitar neck for a while.
[Updated 8/18/21]
Submarine Pickups boss Pete Roe at his workstation.
Still, we think we know what pickups should sound and look like. Lucky for us, there have always been plenty of pickup builders who aren’t so convinced. These are the makers who devised the ceramic-magnet pickup, gold-foils, and active, high-gain pickups. In 2025, nearly 100 years after the first pickup bestowed upon a humble lap-steel guitar the power to blast our ears with soundwaves, there’s no shortage of free-thinking, independent wire-winders coming up with new ways to translate vibrating steel strings into thrilling music.
Joe Naylor, Chris Mills, and Pete Roe are three of them. As the creative mind behind Reverend Guitars, Naylor developed the Railhammer pickup, which combines both rail and pole-piece design. Mills, in Pennsylvania, builds his own ZUZU guitars with wildly shaped, custom-designed pickups. And in the U.K., Roe developed his own line of hexaphonic pickups to achieve the ultimate in string separation and note definition. All three of them told us how they created their novel noisemakers.
Joe Naylor - Railhammer Pickups
Joe Naylor, pictured here, started designing Railhammers out of personal necessity: He needed a pickup that could handle both pristine cleans and crushing distortion back to back.
Like virtually all guitar players, Joe Naylor was on a personal tone quest. Based in Troy, Michigan, Naylor helped launch Reverend Guitars in 1996, and in the late ’90s, he was writing and playing music that involved both clean and distorted movements in one song. He liked his neck pickup for the clean parts, but it was too muddy for high-gain playing. He didn’t want to switch pickups, which would change the sound altogether.
He set out to design a neck pickup that could represent both ends of the spectrum with even fidelity. That led him to a unique design concept: a thin, steel rail under the three thicker, low-end strings, and three traditional pole pieces for the higher strings, both working with a bar magnet underneath. At just about a millimeter thick, rails, Naylor explains, only interact with a narrow section of the thicker strings, eliminating excess low-end information. Pole pieces, at about six millimeters in diameter, pick up a much wider and less focused window of the higher strings, which works to keep them fat and full. “If you go back and look at some of the early rail pickups—Bill Lawrence’s and things like that—the low end is very tight,” says Naylor. “It’s almost like your tone is being EQ’d perfectly, but it’s being done by the pickup itself.”
That idea formed the basis for Railhammer Pickups, which began official operations in 2012. Naylor built the first prototype in his basement, and it sounded great from the start, so he expanded the format to a bridge pickup. That worked out, too. “I decided, ‘Maybe I’m onto something here,’” says Naylor. Despite the additional engineering, Railhammers have remained passive pickups, with fairly conventional magnets—including alnico 5s and ceramics—wires, and structures. Naylor says this combines the clarity of active pickups with the “thick, organic tone” of passive pickups.
“It’s almost like your tone is being EQ’d perfectly, but it’s being done by the pickup itself.” —Joe Naylor
The biggest difficulty Naylor faced was in the physical construction of the pickups. He designed and ordered custom molds for the pickup’s bobbins, which cost a good chunk of money. But once those were in hand, the Railhammers didn’t need much fiddling. Despite their size differences, the rail and pole pieces produce level volume outputs for balanced response across all six strings.
Naylor’s formula has built a significant following among heavy-music players. Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan is a Railhammer player with several signature models; ditto Reeves Gabrels, the Cure guitarist and David Bowie collaborator. Bob Balch from Fu Manchu and Kyle Shutt from the Sword have signatures, too, and other players include Code Orange’s Reba Meyers, Gogol Bordello’s Boris Pelekh, and Voivod’s Dan “Chewy” Mongrain.
Chris Mills - ZUZU Pickups
When Chris Mills started building his own electric guitars, he decided to build his own components for them, too. He suspected that in the course of the market’s natural thinning of the product herd, plenty of exciting options had been left unrealized. He started working with non-traditional components and winding in non-traditional ways, which turned him on to the idea that things could be done differently. “I learned early on that there are all kinds of sonic worlds out there to be discovered,” says Mills.
Eventually, he zeroed in on the particular sound of a 5-way-switch Stratocaster in positions two and four: Something glassy and clear, but fatter and more dimensional. In Mills’ practice, “dimensional” refers to the varying and sometimes simultaneous sound qualities attained from, say, a finger pad versus a fingernail. “I didn’t want just one thing,” says Mills. “I wanted multiple things happening at once.”
Mills wanted something that split the difference between a humbucker’s fullness and the Strat’s plucky verve, all in clean contexts. But he didn’t want an active pickup; he wanted a passive, drop-in solution to maximize appeal. To achieve the end tone, Mills wired his bobbins in parallel to create “interposed signal processing,” a key piece of his patented design. “I found that when I [signal processed] both of them, I got too much of one particular quality, and I wanted that dimensionality that comes with two qualities simultaneously, so that was essential,” explains Mills.
Mills loved the sound of alnico 5 blade magnets, so he worked with a 3D modeling engineer to design plastic bobbins that could accommodate both the blades and the number of turns of wire he desired. This got granular—a millimeter taller, a millimeter wider—until they came out exactly right. Then came the struggle of fitting them into a humbucker cover. Some key advice from experts helped Mills save on space to make the squeeze happen.
Mills’ ZUZUbuckers don’t have the traditional pole pieces and screws of most humbuckers, so he uses the screw holes on the cover as “portholes” looking in on a luxe abalone design. And his patented “curved-coil” pickups feature a unique winding method to mix up the tonal profile while maintaining presence across all frequencies.
“I learned early on that there are all kinds of sonic worlds out there to be discovered.” —Chris Mills
Mills has also patented a single-coil pickup with a curved coil, which he developed to get a different tonal quality by changing the relative location of the poles to one another and to the bridge. Within that design is another patented design feature: reducing the number of turns at the bass end of the coil. “Pretty much every pickup maker suggests that you lower the bass end [of the pickup] to compensate for the fact that it's louder than the treble end,” says Mills. “That'll work, but doing so alters the quality and clarity of the bass end. My innovation enables you to keep the bass end up high toward the strings.”
Even Mills’ drop-in pickups tend to look fairly distinct, but his more custom designs, like his curved-coil pickup, are downright baroque. Because his designs don’t rely on typical pickup construction, there aren’t the usual visual cues, like screws popping out of a humbucker cover, or pole pieces on a single-coil pickup. (Mills does preserve a whiff of these ideals with “portholes” on his pickup covers that reveal that pickup below.) Currently, he’s excited by the abalone-shell finish inserts he’s loading on top of his ZUZUbuckers, which peek through the aforementioned portholes.
“It all comes down to the challenge that we face in this industry of having something that’s original and distinctive, and also knowing that with every choice you make, you risk alienating those who prefer a more traditional and familiar look,” says Mills.
Pete Roe - Submarine Pickups
Roe’s stick-on Submarine pickups give individual strings their own miniature pickup, each with discrete, siloed signals that can be manipulated on their own. Ever wanted to have a fuzz only on the treble strings, or an echo applied just to the low-register strings? Submarine can achieve that.
Pete Roe says that at the start, his limited amount of knowledge about guitar pickups was a kind of superpower. If he had known how hard it would be to get to where he is now, he likely wouldn’t have started. He also would’ve worked in a totally different way. But hindsight is 20/20.
Roe was working in singer-songwriter territory and looking to add some bass to his sound. He didn’t want to go down the looping path, so he stuck with octave pedals, but even these weren’t satisfactory for him. He started winding his own basic pickups, using drills, spools of wire, and magnets he’d bought off the internet. Like most other builders, he wanted to make passive pickups—he played lots of acoustic guitar, and his experiences trying to find last-minute replacement batteries for most acoustic pickups left him scarred.
Roe started building a multiphonic pickup: a unit with multiple discrete “pickups” within one housing. In traditional pickups, the vibration from the strings is converted into a voltage in the 6-string-wide coils of wire within the pickup. In multiphonic pickups, there are individual coils beneath each string. That means they’re quite tiny—Roe likens each coil to the size of a Tylenol pill. “Because you’re making stuff small, it actually works better because it’s not picking up signals from adjacent strings,” says Roe. “If you’ve got it set up correctly, there’s very, very little crosstalk.”
With his Submarine Pickups, Roe began by creating the flagship Submarine: a quick-stick pickup designed to isolate and enhance the signals of two strings. The SubPro and SubSix expanded the concept to true hexaphonic capability. Each string has a designated coil, which on the SubPro combine into four separate switchable outputs; the SubSix counts six outputs. The pickups use two mini output jacks, with triple-band male connectors to carry three signals each. Explains Roe: “If you had a two-channel output setup, you could have E, A, and D strings going to one side, and G, B, and E to the other. Or you could have E and A going to one, the middle two strings muted, and the B and E going to a different channel.” Each output has a 3-position switch, which toggles between one of two channels, or mute.
“I’m just saying there’s some unexplored territory at the beginning of the signal chain. If you start looking inside your guitar, then it opens up a world of opportunities.” —Pete Roe
This all might seem a little overly complicated, but Roe sees it as a simplification. He says when most people think about their sound, they see its origin in the guitar as fixed, only manipulatable later in the chain via pedals, amp settings, or speaker decisions. “I’m not saying that’s wrong,” says Roe. “I’m just saying there’s some unexplored territory at the beginning of the signal chain. If you start looking inside your guitar, then it opens up a world of opportunities which may or may not be useful to you. Our customers tend to be the ones who are curious and looking for something new that they can’t achieve in a different way.
“If each string has its own channel, you can start to get some really surprising effects by using those six channels as a group,” continues Roe. “You could pan the strings across the stereo field, which as an effect is really powerful. You suddenly have this really wide, panoramic guitar sound. But then when you start applying familiar effects to the strings in isolation, you can end up with some really surprising textural sounds that you just can’t achieve in any other way. You can get some very different sounds if you’re applying these distortions to strings in isolation. You can get that kind of lead guitar sound that sort of cuts through everything, this really pure, monophonic sound. That sounds very different because what you don’t get is this thing called intermodulation distortion, which is the muddiness, essentially, that you get from playing chords that are more complex than roots and fifths with a load of distortion.” And despite the powerful hardware, the pickups don’t require any soldering or labor. Using a “nanosuction” technology similar to what geckos possess, the pickups simply adhere to the guitar’s body. Submarine’s manuals provide clear instruction on how to rig up the pickups.
“An analogy I like to use is: Say you’re remixing a track,” explains Roe. “If you get the stems, you can actually do a much better job, because you can dig inside and see how the thing is put together. Essentially, Submarine is doing that to guitars. It’s allowing guitarists and producers to look inside the instrument and rebuild it from its constituent parts in new and exciting ways.”
Offering precise tuning accuracy and a super bright display screen, the Crazy Little Thing is approximately the size of your guitar pick – easy to use, unobtrusive and utterly dependable.
Housed in a sturdy shell, the Crazy Little Thing can be rotated for easy viewing from any angle, and its amazingly bright display makes it perfect for the sunniest outdoor stages or the darkest indoor studios. You can clip it to the front of your headstock or on the back of your headstock for extra-discreet usage – and you can easily adjust the display to accommodate your preference.
As the newest addition to Snark’s innovative line of headstock tuners, the Crazy Little Thing is rechargeable (no batteries!) and comes with a USB-C cable/adapter for easy charging. Its display screen includes a battery gauge, so you can easily tell when it’s time to recharge.
The Crazy Little Thing’s highly responsive tuning sensor works great with a broad range of instruments, including electric and acoustic guitar, bass, ukulele, mandolin and more. It also offers adjustable pitch calibration: its default reference pitch is A440, but also offers pitch calibration at 432Hz and 442 Hz.
Snark’s Crazy Little Thing rechargeable headstock tuner carries a street price of $21.99. For more information visit snarktuners.com.
At 26, Blu DeTiger is the youngest musician ever to have a signature Fender bass guitar. The Fender Limited Player Plus x Blu DeTiger Jazz Bass, announced in September, pays tribute to the bassist and singer’s far-reaching impact and cultural sway. She’s played with Caroline Polachek, Bleachers, FLETCHER, Olivia Rodrigo, and more, and released her own LP in March 2024. In 2023, Forbes feature her on their top 30 Under 30 list of musicians. So how did DeTiger work her way to the top?
DeTiger opens up on this episode of Wong Notes about her career so far, which started at a School of Rock camp at age seven. That’s where she started performing and learning to gig with others—she played at CBGB’s before she turned 10. DeTiger took workshops with Victor Wooten at Berklee followed and studied under Steven Wolf, but years of DJing around New York City, which hammered in the hottest basslines in funk and disco, also imprinted on her style. (Larry Graham is DeTiger’s slap-bass hero.)
DeTiger and Wong dish on the ups and downs of touring and session life, collaborating with pop artists to make “timeless” pop songs, and how to get gigs. DeTiger’s advice? “You gotta be a good hang.”
