Lunch Report : 2013-08-26

Hello GbL. This is a busy week to be a lunch reporter, but oh well! Here we go.

Lunch:
Frozen hask browns AKA potato cakes. I have to drink left over Lipton tea beacuse I haven't replaced the Brooke Bond stash yet.

Guitars / G&L

I found this interview with Ken Parker interesting:
http://www.kenparkerarchtops.com/ParkerTQRDec09.pdf

Here's Parker's thoughts on maple:
"If we have a piece of hard maple that is a half inch by a half inch thick and perfectly straight, you can take it and lean on it for awhile, let go and it’s not straight anymore, and it will never be straight again. Maple is goo in my mind. It’s not a stiff, resilient material. Mahogany is a stiff, resilient material."

Question: What do you prefer for a neck wood?
I really like maple, really like mahogany, and am less fond of some other woods (like walnut) but that's for sound reasons, not stability. Does your preference drive you towards the Fender family of instruments (Fender/Music Man/G&L) vs. more Gibsony brands?


...more (probably short) lunch report tomorrow. I really enjoyed the Parker interview and hope you do too.

-Brock

Had a piece of pumpkin bread with cream cheese marbling and have an egg and bacon taco waiting for me.

I prefer maple necks and with a satin finish. Somehow the wood feels better to me and I like the added visibility of lighter tinted woods compared to dark woods like rosewood or ebony.

I think rosewood often looks drab and would choose ebony if going for a dark wood. Many finishes look better with maple or ebony rather than rosewood because the brown doesn't quite compliment or blend, IMO.

EDIT: I have not had a chance to read the article. I took the simple approach to the question. I am on the road at lunch and cannot devote that much attention to this. I'll just 2nd the sentiment that Leo and George did not see the need to get away from maple. I also wonder why necks are often maple with different fretboards. I'd be interested in a different base with a maple fretboard if only for aesthetics if not strength. And as Louis Cyfer mentioned in another thread, most options are visual and so I accept that and make choices from the selection available. I do understand strength is a concern though my choice may not display that.

Last edited by Salmon on Tue Aug 27, 2013 11:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Brock, I had Mac & Dons breakfast burritos for lunch. We were traveling.

I went through the Ken Parker interview in detail. The guy makes a lot of sense. I always thought he knew what he was doing. The Parker necks are awesome. I have a Southern Nitefly (Tele style) and I wouldn't sell it. My daughter loves it and uses it on gigs at times. It is the most stable neck I have ever owned.

Speaking of necks, I think that we are used to whatever the manufacturer does. Gibson does Mahogany, Fender,G&L and many others do maple. Maple seems to work as long as you adjust it. If you left it in the closet for years , who knows what it will do. I think that a composite neck could be the best but the only one I know of is Moses. I would like to know what the perfect material is but I have many G&Ls and haven't had a bad one yet. I cannot say the same for Fender. Sounds like you are busy Brock. Are you still doing TV productions? If so, can you lay some good stuff on us this week?-- Darwin

Pineapple and passionfruit Fruit salad for me , very tropical.
Clearly Ken is a Gibson man more than a Fender.
I agree with most of what he says but if Maple was not good for necks I think Leo and co would have learnt from there Fender mistakes. But clearly at G&L they continued to use maple. And Mahogany is not that hard a timber.
Anthony

Ther are some other interesting neck materials. Travis Bean, Ovation and Kramer used aluminum; then there were the Modulus Graphite necks--Ibanez used these on some guitars. Parker and Steinberger used composites.

Gibson uses mahogany, but uses maple on almost all of its top-line instruments. But then you have PRS using necks made entirely of rosewood.

And then you have the fingerboard material. I like them all, a lot of it has to do with cosmetics. I like the feel of ebony, and I have maple and rosewood too. But I think if I were going to have a guitar custom-built, my first choice might be high-grade Brazilian rosewood. The Gibsons, Fenders and Martins I've played with brw boards have a ring to them...can't describe it, but I know I like it.

Bill

Where's that video of the sales rep bouncing on a maple (bi-cut?) neck ?
You guys know what I'm talking about?

...and how many broken/cracked mahogany Gibson headstocks are out there ?

I like the Modulus better than the Moses necks. Moses leaves an air space inside and it is a little too hollow sounding for me...probably better for jazz relative to the Modulus' rock solid feel .
The Status neck on my MM bass is awesome.

Never had a Parker but I like the design and concepts. The bridge assembly with the curvy saddles always catch my eye.

The old mahogany from that pool table I have has a dry woody taptone that sounds like a wooden bell.
I'm tempted to make some marimba style instrument with some of it.

Good to see you at the helm Brock,
Get some fresh tea for yourself ! You must be busy.

elwood

Hi Brock
Good to see you up for the LR’s again and looking forward to some interesting stuff this week.

I'll try and read the article when I have a few more minutes to spare later this evening. I have to agree with Anthony regarding the maple necks … a lot of guitars have been made by a lot of manufacture’s over a lot of years with maple necks. If there was a fundamental flaw I’m sure they would have changed some time ago. But I’ll certainly give it a second thought the next time I spec a guitar with the half inch by half inch maple neck without a truss rod :-).

Where's that video of the sales rep bouncing on a maple (bi-cut?) neck ? … and how many broken/cracked mahogany Gibson headstocks are out there ?

Ah yes grasshopper the reed knows it is a good thing to bend in the wind ….

Cheers, Robbie

Where's that video of the sales rep bouncing on a maple (bi-cut?) neck ?
You guys know what I'm talking about?

Here it is:
[youtube]buNuMAok4L4[/youtube]
Factory part starts around the 3:00 marker, the neck part at 3:15!

I have one PRS with an Indian Rosewood neck. That unfinished wood feels bvery good to the hand; one might even call it sexy. But that would be about the only special thing. Don't care to much about the wood of the neck as long as it feels good in my big hands. Same can be said for neck finishes. I like the satin finishes on my Ovations and some of my newer G&Ls but am the happiest when I have played them so much there is a nice natural shine on them especially the upper half where the thumb tends to slide around.

One thing confuses me about the Ken Parker interview. Looking at the pictures of his acoustic guitar it seems the sides and the neck are curly maple. The neck part may be a veneer or what not but the interview does not provide any clarification or I must have overlooked it. In any case, although I understand hist statement on the elasticity of maple and how he had to repair necks all the time, I do not fully grasp what his beef with maple is and how his example of resilience (or the lack thereof in the case of maple) has anything to do with it. You bend a steel rod beyond its deformation point and it wont come back either.


- Jos

Jos,
You da' man !
I tried all sorts of searches...I knew I saw it in the waking world...LOL
thank you

Jos,
You da' man !
I tried all sorts of searches...I knew I saw it in the waking world...LOL
thank you

Now you better bookmark the damn thing! (As I did )

- Jos

I love the ovangkol neck on my fretless Warwick. I'm not sure how much is the wood itself and how much is the profile, but it is the fastest neck on any of my basses. Having fresh wax on it makes it feel even better. Serious Warwick fans argue that the earlier wenge necks were even better, but I haven't noticed a big difference on the couple I've played.



Ken

I like the idea of a mahogany necked, mahogany bodied G-200/ASAT Deluxe, it'd sound pretty different to the current models.

Don't think I agree with Mr. Parker on maple being goo.

I think there are some varieties of maple that are softer than others.

I like to think that hard rock maple is of the more resilient kind.

But then again if offered the choice between maple and mahogany neck strength would not be among the first things I would think about, it would be the overall tone difference.

Are you still doing TV productions? If so, can you lay some good stuff on us this week?-- Darwin

The TV projects are shelved until (at the latest) 2015. I really do think they'll return. It's me, so they really do stand a chance of returning.

-Brock