Figured Necks

Discussion of newer designs, copies and reissue offset-waist instruments.
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berlinbetty
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Re: Figured Necks

Post by berlinbetty » Wed Dec 27, 2006 8:03 am

Mr M wrote: yeah i was thinking, it is a really good way to get people to buy them!

i bet it doesn't cost fender much more money at all, it's really a great selling point!
  It kinda sounds like you're calling me "an easy mark"!  ;)
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Mr M
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Re: Figured Necks

Post by Mr M » Wed Dec 27, 2006 8:29 am

berlinbetty wrote:
Mr M wrote: yeah i was thinking, it is a really good way to get people to buy them!

i bet it doesn't cost fender much more money at all, it's really a great selling point!
  It kinda sounds like you're calling me "an easy mark"!   ;)
dude i am too then! i wanted it just because the neck!

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Re: Figured Necks

Post by glimmertwin » Wed Dec 27, 2006 9:25 am

Are the Squire's veneered flame though?  Sounds like it might be a relatively inexpensive way to add a high end feature to a low end guitar by veneering or just providing a seperate "cap" of flame on the fingerboard.  Kudos to Fender for giving you at least a little something at a lower price point.

It's funny because figured woods are actually considered "defective" in terms of the properties it has opposed to normal grained wood - but visually they are highly valued.  I made a tele with some light flame on it and applied a darker stain to the open grain of the neck and then sanded back(so the darker stain was only in the grain) and then applied my normal stain and it "popped" out of the finish when I clear coated it.  It looked fantastic!
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berlinbetty
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Re: Figured Necks

Post by berlinbetty » Wed Dec 27, 2006 10:07 am

  I'm not sure what veneered flame is, but on these squier necks, only the fingerboard is birdseye.  The rest of the (two piece) neck is just plain, old, garden-variety maple...  But, ironically enough, the neck with the birdseye maple fingerboard had a sh*tty nut!  What're ya gonna do?  ::)
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Re: Figured Necks

Post by flatfiver » Wed Dec 27, 2006 10:36 am

glimmertwin wrote: Are the Squire's veneered flame though?
It's funny because figured woods are actually considered "defective" in terms of the properties it has opposed to normal grained wood - but visually they are highly valued.
Nope, definitely not veneers: it's pretty random.  Some of the guitars we get in at the store have flame on the necks but most don't.  I'm guessing it's cheaper for them to occasionally throw a piece of sub-par maple that happens to be flamed on a Squier than to bother with separating it out, possibly going with the "defective wood" idea.
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Re: Figured Necks

Post by glimmertwin » Wed Dec 27, 2006 4:46 pm

berlinbetty wrote:   I'm not sure what veneered flame is, but on these squier necks, only the fingerboard is birdseye. 
A veneer is a slimmer piece of usually a more expensive wood glued on top of the surface of a less expensive wood.  For instance, most inexpensive furniture you would buy at the Target/Wal Mart mega shopping stores are veneered woods over plywood.  It helps to keep cost down while producing a product that looks nicer.  Generally on furniture the veneer is very thin and doesn't wear particuarly well as chips reveal the plywood underneath.

On guitars you see it more commonly on bodies than necks.  In this case, sounds like a veneer of flamed maple was placed over regular maple in the same way a veneered rosewood fretboard(as opposed to a slab or "cap") is placed over a maple neck.

Here is what a veneered rosewood fretboard looks like:
http://www.ksvintage.com/jimshine/image ... FEB72B.JPG

...and here is what a slab one looks like - see how much more wood is there?
http://zeus.lunarpages.com/~jimshi2/jaz ... ntric2.jpg
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berlinbetty
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Re: Figured Necks

Post by berlinbetty » Wed Dec 27, 2006 9:26 pm

  Thanks, glimmer!  You learn something new everyday.  I can now say that my squier '51 neck has a slab of birdseye on it.  Sha-winggg!!
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Re: Figured Necks

Post by mezcalhead » Thu Dec 28, 2006 12:05 am

The situation is a little different for the Fender veneered rosewood fingerboards .. it isn't strictly speaking a veneer, but a round laminate, and it was apparently done to improve stability more than anything .. the joint between the two pieces is curved and resists lateral flexing more than a straight joint would.

Since the rosewood is cut in a curved shape before application, it doesn't save much wood  compared to if it were cut in a flat shape and then bent so it could be applied to the rounded maple neck (which is what veneer would mean).

But that's a particular case .. usually veneers are for looks of course as glimmertwin says.
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