Gear reviews, how to, lessons and vlogs from Atlanta/Nashville based guitarist Rhett Shull. Subscribe to stay up to date on everything happening in Rhett's musical endeavors.
Friend of mine had two “dead” sounding Strats and swapped the necks. Both guitars improved and he found the mass of the necks and bodies were originally out of balance. I believe, as he does, that it’s the mass/balance that makes the difference. You said yourself that the neck profiles were different on the necks you used so this might give you a difference in mass. Food for thought…?
The slight changes in action, the nut and fret material, and your differences in playing position and strength are gonna be the biggest differences for tone tbh. The material differences are so small nobody should be paying more for a specific one other than "it looks cool". You can get the same and more difference and nuance anywhere else in the chain. Snappier? Higher value pots. Warmer? Lower value pots. Mids? Tone controls, pickup height, playing position..
The difference to me is obvious. I expected the difference btween theRosewood and the Maple. I figured that there *might* be a slight difference between the roasted and regular maple, not only because of the way the wood was roasted or not, but also because the roasted one was finished. I have rosewood, roasted maple, and std maple strats. I didn’t want my bias coming into play, so I closed my eyes during the rosewood to maple tests, and the difference was VERY obvious to me. The roasewood had a rolled off top end, more in the middle, and a softer attack. Exactly what I expected. But I did not expect the disparity to be as big as it was, esp in the mids.The roasted maple sort of split the differenc e, but was closer to the maple. IDK why Rhett thinks that the mids were scooped on the roasted. It had more mids than the regular maple, and a slight roll off on the top end, but near as much as with the rosewood. If you can imagine a scale of warm to bright, where the rosewood is on the warm end, and the maple is on the bright end, the roasted maple is going to be about 25% to 30% closer to the warm side than the maple. IOW, if Rosewood is 10, and maple is 0 on a tone scale, the roasted maple would sit at 3. Hope that makes sense. Which is better? For country or funk, I’d pick the standard maple. For jazzier more mellow tones, I’d take the rosewood. The roasted maple is the better all-arounder. If you listen to the clips at 12:48 and at 12:59 - the roasted retains the clarity of the maple, but has some of that mid warmth of the rosewood. Unless I was playing jazz, where maybe I rolled off the tone pot, or some older R&B (where I would use Rosewood for those two), I would go with the roasted. Full bodied single lines, but not harsh and overly bright like the maple, and greater string to string clarity than the rosewood. For rock and fusion, perfect! The roasted does sound very rich though when playing chords. Stuff like The Wind Cries Mary and Castles Made of Sand or Lenny, I’d definitely go with the rosewood for the richness. Through on some dirt and the richness becomes less apparent, and that’s where the roasted maple shines. Clarity and mids, not harsh. I wonder where ebony would fit in all this? I would *guess* that it would sit somewhere between the Maple and Roasted maple. I’m wondering because I’m about to put an ebony fingerboard (maple shaft) neck onto a strat. I went with ebony because I wanted the snap of maple, and the dark aesthetic look of the ebony (it’s going on a black paisly strat).
Could definitely hear a difference. Which confirmed what people say about maple v rosewood fretboard. However, for completeness there should have been two rosewood and two maple. So you have the controls to show that it wasnt just a difference in necks altogether. Ie rosewood 1 v rosewood 2. Maple 1 v maple 2.
Well, don't know if it the record but I don't hear any difference. The difference is in your fingers and then the mic you select and then the amp and the guitar body but here you keep always the same.
Another comparison could be: One piece maple neck compared to maple neck with glued maple fretboard. I do believe the gluing in of fretboard could be creating the difference, or part of it. Or thin, C-shaped 60's one piece maple neck compared to thick D-shaped 50's one piece maple neck. Also, two identical necks being compared, just as a calibration, to rule out that it's simply neck-to-neck variations.
Olympic white with tortoise shell .. I owned and original first issue 1959.. I bought it used in 1969 for $285. I loved y guitar and played it all the time. In 1983 it was stolen from a breaking. Every time I see a white jazzmaster, I want my old one back. I bought other one in 2013.. . However, it just was not the same.
Couldn't the difference reside in the fact you've loosen the strings when switching necks? From my experience the sound brightens a bit when when release the strings for some time, even without new ones. I don't know. Just a thought!
I'm very glad you actually went to the trouble to change necks on the same guitar. I noticed them exactly as Rhett, the darkest tone is the Rosewood. Next up in brightness is the scalloped neck, then the maple fingerboard is obviously the brightest.
There's absolutely nothing scientific about this... No frequency response graphs, different neck ages and finishes, god knows how similar the nut slots and the bow of the neck was. The slightly brighter tone could have come from a too straight neck, hence the strings would bounce on the frets more and thus deleting a lot of the roundness/low end of the sound. Next time have the luthier on the spot setting it up, showing nut height, neck bow and so on. New strings for every playthru, cuz one thing you can count on, string will be more consistent than wood... But as Rhett said, it's about the feel and how hard you have to work to get the sound you want. Nobody's gonna go "oh this sounds bad, if only he had a maple fretboard..."
I bought a rosewood neck for my Sire S7 (strat) which came with a stock heavily roasted maple neck. I can completely hear & feel a difference. So much so I now have two of the same guitar one stock roasted maple & one with the rosewood neck.
Funny thing is I have been sitting on a very similar video for quite some time. Great Video Rhett. Check mine coming out in a few weeks. Boomer Guitarist!
It's tough to test, even like this. Take a week, and blind test the results again, take another week and do the same, and then gather your results to compare. Your ears will hear differently depending on the day and the environment, we are biological creatures.
I am a researcher at the largest technical university in Germany. Taking physics into account there must be a difference. I think the only debate can be whether the effect is large enough to worry about compared to easier adjustable factors such as amp settings, string choice or even pickup height. Also there is absolutely no reason why fancy looking and rare wood types should be sonically better. But to everyone who says the wood cannot have an effect: just remember that your pickup works on the relative vibration of your string in relation to the pickup. Now touch your pickup when you play a note. It is mooving. So this changes the relative movement in relation to the string. And of course the stability/material of the neck has an influence on its vibration. If the neck and nut moove that changes the relatove movement to the pickup again. It really is quite a complex system.
Any tube amp will perform like any other. It's all about the signal you put into it and the speakers you use. You just need to know what pwr you need from 5w to 100w. No matter what tubes you use, they all work the same.
The only thing that needs to be roasted is Rhett... Rosewood usually has more bass to it, if the frets are crowned really round with chrome or steel hardware this will sound scooped, Maple has a tighter low end with more mid-range and only an increase in high-end if there's a tremendous amount of polyurethane on the board, roasted maple just sounds dead, The roasting process breaks down the cell walls so that they don't expand and contract, but the problem with this is that the neck loses some of its resistive tensile strength, which plays a huge role in resonance.
so the 50's road worn sounds the best to my ears, but they all sound different. Curious as to whether the ret wire is the same on all three necks? Hope I didn't miss that...
I would have bet the farm there would be no noticeable difference, but I was wrong. The maple neck is brighter with more definition. Adjusting for the flatter radius on the "roaster" might have raised the height of the E strings over the pickups? I always wondered about this but not many people had the necks to do a definitive test. Thanks
Thanks for testing, Rhett ! I love that you did it undistorted. For me the Rosewood neck sounds a bit more mellow and not so snappy because of filtering the highs and reducing the resonance through the softer rosewood. But I think, with a wee bit of rolling down the highs with the Tone-Pot you can reach the same mellow sound with a maple neck.
Cool experiment! You should, however, have put on a new string set for each change of necks. When you take the tension of the strings it will loose grime and dirt, so they will naturally brighten up when you put on the same set of strings again.
The point is to sound like YOU playing a Strat, not like Jimi or John Mayer, Clapton, etc. Yeah it's nice to get/have that Strat sound. But as everyone from Nuno Bettencourt to Steve Vai, Dweezil Zappa, etc have said about Eddie VH's rig, "I still sound like me. I don't sound like him". As well you shouldn't. You'll get that Strat sound no matter if you played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Personality Crisis, Wipeout, etc.
I’m subscribed. Love your content. I watched eyes open, then rewatched eyes closed. If I can’t tell a difference in your playing I promise my playing won’t crack the code. I’m just enjoying playing and what looks cool to youplays cool to you
I think maple has more high mids and highs. I like the roasted maple the most, which i did not expect. I usualy dont like those kind of sounds, but in some way i thought it was snappy but also warm. The rosewood had more low mids and lows. It also had less 5000hz+ but had a bit of highs left. It also fealt scooped around the high mids
Very good video Rhett! But for a proper comparison you should also make sure that the setups between swaps are absolulety the same. Different string actions give different results, even with small differences, so as different neck bowings etc. The different "snap" you hear could come from the string hitting the fret and this could mean that the guitar was set differently (or not). I hope you considered these aspects for the test!
I never loved the sound and the feeling of a maple neck on a strat (I'm a jazz player, what did you expect!). And yes, I tried many, replaced rosewood necks by maple necks on strats more than once, and alway, there was a difference to me. Maple is scooped, rosewood is more mid-forward and "woody" for my ears, believe it or not. But the height of the strings, general setup and so on. is a lot more important for sure. Don't know why, but on telecasters 50s, maple sounds very good to me however... For me, the neck is so much more important than the body for the sound of an electric guitar : it's like a bow who reacts to the strings tension, and that suppleness is - I guess - the key of the difference between necks. I never felt in love with a maple neck stratocaster, custom shop or Squier, that's it... and it's better for me, because there already are too many guitars I need to own and love but can't afford 😂 And as small of a difference the wood of a neck makes, in a mix, it can put your guitar in front of the band (for maple) or sitting behind (with rosewood)... for a professional musician, it IS a huge difference!
hey, i was wondering about something. is it possible that there could be any difference in tone by swaping necks that are the same? like 3 rosewood neck or 3 mapple of the same fabric. I mean... by nature, any peace of wood is not 100% identical to the other. So my real question is: is it only the diffenrence in the essence of the wood that changes the tone ? or could it be also the diffenrence between the pieces of wood? knowing that they can come from the same or different tree... In that case all guitare in the world should sound slighly diffrent yes? this made me curious also lol. thanks for the video !
Dr Groovy settled this question about 10 years ago: it makes no difference on an electric guitar. The people that say it does like Mr. PRS are bullshit artists that want to sell you more expensive guitars. I couldn't hear any differences in this presentation that could not be explained by the playing technique and the fact that the strings have aged from the first neck to the last neck.
Tonewood propaganda .... that's words that only make me lol, cause it's so stupid! I guess that is only "fear", fear that there is something about guitars, that can't be controlled by me, ..... did I buy the guitar with the wrong neck wood? Oh my god ..... ah, its only tonewood propaganda, ...... puh, so I was lucky about that! Understand? ;-) When you been working on thousands of guitars, you know what is propaganda, and what's not! For sure!
