How to Choose The Right Guitar Neck?
Right Guitar Neck – Over time, various industries from various fields often innovate in terms of marketing the products/services they offer. Starting from initially only offering the products/services they made, then making the products/services needed by the market, until finally accommodating the market to perform user customization of the products offered, in order to suit the needs of consumers.
Yep, that’s more or less the journey of marketing innovation that occurs in the midst of society. But that’s enough for us to talk about marketing, let the experts discuss it, hehe.
So what is the relationship between the above discussion and the title of this article? As friends know (especially friends who play guitar instruments), the shape of the neck on the guitar is one of the crucial factors that can determine the guitarist’s playing, because each individual has different shapes and sizes of fingers.
As I mentioned earlier, with the development of the times, finally there are various kinds of product variations offered by guitar manufacturers. Starting from the shape, size, and material used, to the finishing.
For the guitar neck case, friends who have played guitar for a long time may not have too much difficulty in choosing the right guitar neck shape, but for some friends who are still “learning” about guitar, it’s definitely different. Well, in this article I will discuss the guitar neck itself, from its shape and radius.
Shape
In general, the shape of the right guitar neck is described with the alphabet that corresponds to the shape of the guitar neck, such as C, D, U, V.
C-shaped
You could say this is the general form of guitars that exist today. This shape has an oval shape which according to many people is suitable for playing various styles with this neck. Generally not as thick as U and V shapes.
Many guitars such as the Fender Stratocaster today have a “modern C Shape” neck or what is sometimes described as a thin, traditional C-shape.
V-Shaped
There are two types of V-shape that are popular in the market: soft V and hard V, where the “soft V” shape tends to be more oval than the “hard V” shape. This form is commonly used on old school guitars, one of which is Eric Clapton’s signature series produced by Fender.
U-Shaped
“Chunky and rounded”, that’s the term that is often used for this neck shape. Some guitarists generally refer to it as a baseball bat. Generally, this form is less desirable by shredders, but it all comes back to their individual tastes, hehe.
D-Shaped
The neck shape is most often used by shredder guitarists. What distinguishes this shape from the C-shape is that this shape tends to have a flatter contour when compared to the C-shaped
Radius
To ensure the “feel” of a Right Guitar Neck, we will not lose the so-called radius. Actually, what is meant by radius? So, you could say the radius is a measure to determine the curvature, or you could say how convex the fretboard on a guitar is.
If you are currently holding a guitar (especially if it’s an electric guitar), you can immediately see that the fretboard on the guitar is not flat, so the curve on the fretboard is called the radius. For simplicity, the larger/longer the radius, the flatter a fretboard will be.
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Short vs Long Radius
Like the scale on the guitar (see the previous post) both have their own advantages and disadvantages. For guitars that have a short radius, users tend to find it easier to play chords on that guitar, be it basic, inversion, or extension chords, and it’s also easier to do vibrato on a guitar with a short radius.
However, shredders, generally prefer a guitar with a larger/longer fretboard radius, because in terms of playability, a guitar with a large radius is more likely to have its strings set closer to the fretboard.
Hopefully, the above description can help a few more friends who are still confused about choosing the right neck shape. But like the previous conclusion, it all comes back to your own style of play.
By determining the style that we will play, it will be easier to determine the Right Guitar Neck that we will use.
