Do you really need Carbon Fiber in a neck ?

[ahvia_musicom]

Another factor is that good quartersawn hardwood lumber is getting more scarce. The trees being harvested are smaller than in the past, and quartersawn or rift-sawn lumber produces less yield per log than plain-sawing. Flat-sawn/plain-sawn planks aren't as stable as quartersawn, because the grain lines are oriented parallel to the string plane, unlike quartersawn, where the grain is oriented perpendicular to the string plane.

Adding a couple of channels for CF or Ti rods is easy to do in a production process, without having to change to a multi-laminated neck blank.

hi darren i got this from potvin's facebook,

Juha Ruokangas When I studied guitar making back in the early 90's, we got an assignment to test the stiffness / bend-strength of hard maple. So we planed a bunch of square (thickness=width) sticks. We had some slow growth stuff with tight grain, some faster grown, and pieces with straight grain, and some with grain run-out...The test environment was really simple - the pieces were planed to identical size, and we clamped them one by one to the end of a workbench and hung a weight to the other end and measured how much did the piece bend. In ALL the tests, without exception, the pieces bent the least when stressed to the flatsawn direction. I did these testings 20 years ago so I felt I had to refresh my memory, so this morning I pulled on my long white coat, squared a piece of straight grained hard maple, went to our secret wood research laboratory in the shop cellar, clamped the piece of maple to my scientifically approved test bench and hung an old Mercedes Benz break disc to the other end of the stick. I measured the amount of bending of this single piece of maple to both directions - flatsawn and quarter sawn. See the pics. The QS direction this piece of maple bent about 5mm more than to the flat sawn direction. This is very similar result to our school tests, which were done in a more controlled environment than my quick test today. Myth Busted! Test it yourself and you'll see. There's a lot more to making a good neck though - as anyone knows who has built enough guitars to really understand how these materials behave... Pic 1 - the test environment, sorry about the blurry image, too much secret stuff goin' on in the cellar...


Juha Ruokangas Pic 2 - the readings on my measuring stick - I measured the amount of bending using an aluminum spirit level (distance from floor to the lower edge of the maple stick).







i do agree with juha and jack briggs though that no two woods even if they are the same species are alike

 

[Necromagnon]

Interesting talk.
Imo, CF is pretty useless unless the neck has been poorly made/designed. Truss rods are used for decades and works pretty great, with well selected woods. But sure it's a bit of security for neck stability, but not necessary and a bit too hyped nowadays.
In another hand (and it's personnal feeling), I'm not a huge fan of "stiffer-than-rock" necks, just because if one thing goes a bit wrong, the neck being too stiff prevents the use of the TR. It should not happen, obviously, on a well designed and built neck, but call me a pessimistic.

It's also laminated with a fretboard and has a truss rod in it.

The fretboard here is almost useless. It just keeps the truss rod in the channel. It terms of bending stiffness, the freboard being slotted, it won't help a bit. But yeah, the neck being not so long (it seems), laminated, and with a truss rod, it obviously holds really well 100 kg.

Love hufscmid guitars too

The guitars are nice, but the guy is a total d***...

 

[Halffarmer]

The guitars are nice, but the guy is a total d***...

Why?

 

[BouhZik]

Because his feet do not touch the ground anymore. One of those luthier who think they are gods since they are good at building guitars.
This guy (correct if I'm wrong) ban himself from here because he was not allowed to promote his stuff. I wish he do the same thing on French forums. I mean, sometime its like he pay some fanboys to bump threads with his name in it... Its boring.
To me, he is arrogant, pretentious and haughty. The definition of a d... . I dont care how good a builder he is. I'll never give this guy my money. /2c

 

[jephjacques]

I remember a bass builder (I think it was Sadowsky) back in the 90s saying he thought carbon fiber rods were completely unnecessary. Your average bass has way higher string tension than your average guitar IIRC so if basses don't need 'em I don't see why guitars would.

The one thing I think they might bring to the table is additional stability on super-thin necks, and I imagine they help counteract some of the wood's natural expansion and contraction due to climate changes. But I've certainly never owned a guitar and thought "man, if only this thing had CF in the neck it would be PERFECT"

 

[TemjinStrife]

It has several properties that makes it well suited for this. Notice how Ibanez are using these now

It sounds fancy?

 

[MF_Kitten]

It sounds fancy?

It does!

 

[jephjacques]

Titanium and CF are nice and all but I refuse to accept anything short of unicorn horn reinforcements in my guitar necks