Almost afraid to ask this… bolt on acoustics

[John Damon]

I have an old Epiphone ft120 that has a bolt on neck. It sounds terrible and zero sustain compared to my glued on mortise and tenon necked guitars. What if I glued the neck into the pocket? (The guitar has an actual neck pocket like a telecaster has) I’m not worried about the neck never coming off, I can do any repair that might come up. I’m curious about the sound- it IS a plywood guitar so there’s that working against it. Has anyone tried this?

[Alan Carruth]

The only differences I've seen between bolt-ons and glued-ons is attributable to the weight of the hardware assuming both of them keep the neck in place. My 'test mule' has a neck that is held on by the string tension, with only a small bolt through the heel into a T-nut to keep the neck from folding up. The neck only touches the body at the fingerboard stub. I don't find the sound to be particularly different from what I'd expect from the same box with a glued on neck. Putting a fill block in between the neck end and the body to snug the bolt down on makes no difference. A tuning fork on the headstock drives the top the same way as it would with a glued neck.

It is possible that the neck can move relative to the body, and that could introduce losses that would cut into sustain. I'm more inclined to think that it's just a 'dead' guitar.

[Mark McLean]

I'm with Alan here. In general a bolt-on neck does not sound inferior to a glued joint - all else being equal. Is the bolted joint seated well and tight? Maybe this is just a bad guitar, or has something else wrong with it (have you checked for loose braces, lifting bridge?). Is this one of those Epiphones with the adjustable bridge hardware? That contraption tended to be a real tone killer in the Epi and Gibson models that it was used in. If it has that you might want to check that it is put together correctly and that the saddle is in contact with the bridge and not floating around. I haven't done it, but people have described big improvement by removing that style of bridge and replacing it with a traditional wood and saddle bridge.
Here is dear old Frank Ford tackling a Hummingbird to remove all of that hardware (probably different from your Epi in details, but the principle is the same):
http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Luthier ... rdbr1.html

[John Damon]

It DOES have the adjustable bridge! Looks to be aluminum. I bet that’s it. I’ll put a new bridge and saddle on it at some point. Thanks for the tip!