In Guitar Making, It’s the Details that Matter

A couple articles ago, I talked about things on a guitar you can’t see, but are of the utmost importance to the quality of the instrument. I’d now like to go deeper into some of those unseen details in guitar neck making that make a difference. This list is a small percentage of what’s really going on, so please take each one as an example of the craft.

Gluing in the frets. In my old repair shop, there were several instruments that kept returning after gigs because the frets had again become unlevel. If I took a very flat file and started to level the frets, the volume of the squeaking of the frets as I filed was really loud. I realized that these guitars had never had their frets glued in. It seemed clear that the fretshad to be glued into the slots, so when someone sweats into the instrument at a gig, the frets do not change height. I learned, after interviewing Ted McCarty, that the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo in the ’50s glued the frets in with fish glue. I tried it once. It stunk, and I never used it again. But gluing frets in has been important to me since day one. The glue makes a mold around the teeth of the fretwire to hold the frets in place. Another reason to glue the frets in is that on some ’60s Martins, for example, the frets would lift up on the treble side and the high-E string would get caught underneath the fret. So, glue the frets in or you’re going to have a long-term problem. By the way, using a water-based glue is like adding all the water back to the fretboard that you spent months drying out. I like super glue because it doesn’t have any water in it.

“Terry Kath, the great guitar player from Chicago, once told me, ‘Most guitars won’t play in tune down near the nut, and I search and search for guitars that will.’”

Fret positions. When I was young, there was an article in Guitar Player that described how to calculate fret positions by using the 12th root of two. The number is 1.0594631. And the reason I remember the number is because calculators didn’t have memory at the time, and I had to keep entering the number over and over again. One day, someone came into my shop and said, “I can’t play in tune with the keyboard player when I am playing lines near the nut.” I said, “That’s hard for me to believe, but I’ll check it.” Sure enough, the first few frets were out of tune with the open nut even though I had calculated the 1st frets’ positions perfectly. Turns out the nut needed to be moved so that it would play in tune down there (in the same way you have to adjust the intonation at the bridge end). Terry Kath, the great guitar player from Chicago, once told me, “Most guitars won’t play in tune down near the nut, and I search and search for guitars that will.” Getting the frets, the nut, and the bridge in the right positions is incredibly important. You’d be surprised that this is not always a given.

Neck shape. I was once at Dave’s Guitar Shop in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in his upstairs guitar museum, and got to compare early ’50s Tele, old Les Paul, and early Strat neck shapes. What was so surprising was how close the neck shapes were, including the thumb round-over (where the side dots are). I was later able to scan a lot of these necks and compare them with a computer, and, damn, they were really close. What was different was the radius of the fretboards. Some of them were more curved than others, and the old Gibsons’ radii were not what the internet says they should be. So, it’s pretty hard to understand from the specs alone how a neck is going to feel in your hands. In my mind, there’s a common shape that your hand feels comfortable with, and then all the extensions that make 7-string guitars, 12-strings, acoustic instruments, and modern Ibanez/flat-radius type instruments are other artforms altogether.

At PRS, we often think of guitars in terms of looks, feel, and sound. If it looks good, you’ll probably pick it up. If it feels good in your hands and rings for a long time when you strum it acoustically, you’ll probably plug it in. If it sounds good plugged in, there’s a good chance you’re hooked.