A friend of mine recently did a tour of the Collings factory and then told me that they put spring steel bars in their necks. I'm really curious what the full story there is, but haven't been been able to find anything online, besides this: http://artisanguitars.com/specification ... tar-necks/, which doesn't say much.
Anybody got any ideas there?
Collings Guitars "Tone Bars"
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Paul Rhoney
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- Location: Vancouver, WA USA
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Mario Proulx
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Re: Collings Guitars "Tone Bars"
Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
They use two strips of thin spring steel(looks to me like common 1/2" wide ACME band...) on either side of the truss rod through the heel area to stiffen that part of the neck to prevent the neck from flexing and perhaps requiring a neck reset with time. If it has any tonal consequences it was an afterthought.
As for weighing neck blanks and matching them to bodies/styles, a lot of us do that, too. Heavier bodies get my lightest necks, and vicey versey...
They use two strips of thin spring steel(looks to me like common 1/2" wide ACME band...) on either side of the truss rod through the heel area to stiffen that part of the neck to prevent the neck from flexing and perhaps requiring a neck reset with time. If it has any tonal consequences it was an afterthought.
As for weighing neck blanks and matching them to bodies/styles, a lot of us do that, too. Heavier bodies get my lightest necks, and vicey versey...
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Paul Rhoney
- Posts: 183
- Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:34 pm
- Location: Vancouver, WA USA
Re: Collings Guitars "Tone Bars"
Interesting. I was thinking that long spring steel strips set in a arc and suspended in a neck would be crazy weird but possibly a ton of fun (if wholly untraditional), when I heard about this. But just two small strips in the heel for rigidity? Womp-womp, boring.
As for weight, I get what you're saying, and I'll catalog that in my brain. I handle weight totally differently, but then I also only build electrics.
As for weight, I get what you're saying, and I'll catalog that in my brain. I handle weight totally differently, but then I also only build electrics.
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Mario Proulx
- Posts: 821
- Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:08 pm
Re: Collings Guitars "Tone Bars"
The strips are about 8 or ten inches long, at most. Many builders are adding carbon fiber in the same area for the same reason.
Necks definitely flex in the heel area, more so than I used to believe. I tossed together a dreadnought from reject parts for a friend's 8 year old son in 2001, with a very skinny and slim neck. I was having to reset that neck every summer, it seemed, and I was assuming at first that it was the rather lightly braced cedar top and medium gauge strings that were the cause, but after a while, I realized that the top looked fine, and checking with a square, the ribs hadn't shifted measurably. A few years ago, we put a real neck on it(the kid's turned into a monster guitarist!), and it's been rock-solid since then, so it WAS the neck that was moving at the heel area all along.
Bill Collings is nobody's fool; a couple of inexpensive steel strips of negligible weight is cheap insurance!
Necks definitely flex in the heel area, more so than I used to believe. I tossed together a dreadnought from reject parts for a friend's 8 year old son in 2001, with a very skinny and slim neck. I was having to reset that neck every summer, it seemed, and I was assuming at first that it was the rather lightly braced cedar top and medium gauge strings that were the cause, but after a while, I realized that the top looked fine, and checking with a square, the ribs hadn't shifted measurably. A few years ago, we put a real neck on it(the kid's turned into a monster guitarist!), and it's been rock-solid since then, so it WAS the neck that was moving at the heel area all along.
Bill Collings is nobody's fool; a couple of inexpensive steel strips of negligible weight is cheap insurance!