Quatersawn necks - do you have an opinion?

[Chiliwailer]

I have a quatersawn neck on my Custom Shop Jazz Bass, yet my two 1966 Precisions (and 95% of vintage and many 'standard' basses) are flatsawn.

I understand that quatersawn are less likely to warp lengthways than flatwsawn due to the grain in the wood following the neck in a parallel line, and I also understand the counter opinions that flatsawn necks are less prone to twisting across the width of the fingerboard.

But what I really want to enquirer about is tone. I've heard bassists and guitarists talking about the tone benefits or differences with quatersawn. I'm far too skeptical to have a firm opinion around this, I mean without trying a huge amount of basses, how we do know that the differences between quatersawn verses flatsawn are not just the same differences we hear in any basses because of wood or pickups? Even when they are the same make and model vast differences can be heard.

However I'm interested to know if anyone has achieved a firm and proven opinion?

[Mr. Foxen]

Two opposed pieces of quartersawn is best, can't twist due to opposed. The tone benefit is that warped necks sound dreadful.

[Chiliwailer]

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1381511999' post='2240173']
The tone benefit is that warped necks sound dreadful.
[/quote]

Love it, that might just be the opinion that nails it!

[Dingus]

It can be a little bit difficult to judge just how much difference quartersawing makes to the sound of a bass in so much as, because it's a relatively expensive way of manufacturing a neck, it tends to be found on more upmarket , high quality basses that tend to sound pretty good anyway, if you see what I mean .

Generally speaking though , expert opinion is pretty much unanimously in favour of the idea that the stiffer a bass neck , the better the sound in terms of eveness in reducing deadspots ect and overall dynamic projection of the notes . Mica Wickersham at Alembic, for example, once told me that of all the possible extra cost upgrades that you can pick as options on their basses, the one that has the most marked influence on the sound of the final bass is getting ebony laminates in the neck , in place of the usual pupleheart wood ones they use as standard, because they make for a much stiffer neck overall and give very tangible benefits in terms of sound.

Quartersawn is much stiffer than flatsawn in any instance and so should give some tonal benfits as a result . In the long-term , there are so many factors that can effect whether a bass neck stays true or develops a twist , but quartersawing probably helps minimise the risk a bit .

The Yamaha BB2024X has got a laminated quartersawn neck of maple with mahogany stringers and it feels so stiff and rigid that it's almost as if it's made out of stone, and I'm sure that it must contribute something to the remarkable sound of those basses, but , once again, there is so many other quality design features on that model that it is a synergy of many factors that make them sound so good in the final analysis .

Edited October 11, 2013 by Dingus

[4000]

The problem with this is that more rigid necks, although structurally advantageous, won't necessarily give a sound you prefer. I've yet to hear a graphite-necked bass I like the sound of. My main bass's neck was once described by John Diggins as "spongey" (although it never moves ), and yet that's my favourite-sounding of the many hundreds of basses I've played.

Steve Swallow has also commented on this, that a more rigid construction is not what he's after in terms of tone.

[Prime_BASS]

[quote name='4000' timestamp='1381534484' post='2240552']
The problem with this is that more rigid necks, although structurally advantageous, won't necessarily give a sound you prefer. I've yet to hear a graphite-necked bass I like the sound of. My main bass's neck was once described by John Diggins as "spongey" (although it never moves ), and yet that's my favourite-sounding of the many hundreds of basses I've played.

Steve Swallow has also commented on this, that a more rigid construction is not what he's after in terms of tone.
[/quote]

I don't know what people go on about the graphite sound. I got a status neck on my JB and it's sounds pretty much the same as before but with a lot more eveness in string output and of course no deadspots. I also never have to tune it up.

I can't say I've noticed a discerning difference between the vast amount of stuff I've owned. However I has a first year production Sterling, which had a birdseye maple neck, one piece. It had gone extremely soft and for made a negative impact on how it should have sounded.

[4000]

[quote name='Prime_BASS' timestamp='1381554120' post='2240588']


I don't know what people go on about the graphite sound. I got a status neck on my JB and it's sounds pretty much the same as before but with a lot more eveness in string output and of course no deadspots. I also never have to tune it up.

I can't say I've noticed a discerning difference between the vast amount of stuff I've owned. However I has a first year production Sterling, which had a birdseye maple neck, one piece. It had gone extremely soft and for made a negative impact on how it should have sounded.
[/quote]

Just because you can't discern a difference doesn't mean others can't. You could blindfold me, give me various 4001s and I bet I could tell you which have a shedua neck laminate. Also, it may be that the way you play means it doesn't sound particularly different, whereas the way I play it does.

[SparkBird]

Hi ,
I've been building , not every day, basses and guitars for 34 years , doesn't mean i know everything or i think i know everything. As i've, erm , progressed in years i see more variables and complexion in eveything .... but ....

My experiences lead me to believe that its rigidity that counts , not whether its QS or FS , but yes Qs would normally be more rigid but , not necessarily ... What i mean by that is wood grows on trees and even within one plank there can be more or less rigid sections .

What am i blabbing about ?

2 jazz basses, both mine so i know them, one 64 with a great rigid and straight neck and one 69/70 with a badly refretted neck which made it too flexible and left it a little bowed .
The 69 bass lacked definition in the all important low and low mid frequencies .
The 64 particularly well defined low and low mids tone .
Swapped the necks over , the poorly defined tone followed the neck .
Reshot the 69 fretboard and refretted it , now its nicely rigid with a vastly improved tone .

So i'm not comparing two same spce QS and FS necks. Well ok but thats not that easy, the vast majority of bolt ons are FS , really i've hardly seen any QS boltons .
Qs or part Qs necks are usually multi laminate .

So if you took a thick enough plank of decent quality eg maple you could cut two necks from it, one QS and one FS .
The QS might very well be more rigid than the FS , might not , nature is fickle like that.
And then using one body and pickup to A/B them ; i think some of us might hear a tonal difference , most likely in the definition department, it might even be glaring , but i doubt one neck wouldn necessarily sound 'better' that the other just different . That would just bring me back to my point about rigidty and definition in the lower register .
Finally something i'm sure about , even when you get a set of the woods ideal, perfect in every way to build the instrument with the tone your looking for . Nature can has the last word , it might not turn out as good as you expected.
Luthiers use experience to choose , but in the end its just [u]more or less educated guess work[/u] . Most won't tell you that , you'll get all the blah blah about how he does this or that and the wood is this and that, but there are good and bad surpises all the time . All he's really doing is greatly lessening the possibilty of a bad instrument , great ones are a bonus. That goes even more so for electric instruments because , there is no soundboard and bracing to tweek as there is with an acoustic .
So unless i'm missing the point , to answer to your question " However I'm interested to know if anyone has achieved a firm and proven opinion? "
I doubt it very much doubt it .
Everything you'll evey read or be told can be turned on its head by a bass that has all the wrong woods and sounds great , just listen and trust your ears , in my experience thats all that counts .
Good luck .
sorry does that read a little condescending ? not meant to be just trying to be helpful , i'm not much of a writer .

Edited October 12, 2013 by SparkBird

[Ou7shined]

Awesome ^

[Ou7shined]

[quote name='SparkBird' timestamp='1381583898' post='2240967']
......
sorry does that read a little condescending ? not meant to be just trying to be helpful , i'm not much of a writer .
[/quote]

Not at all it's refreshing to hear from experience rather than repeated rhetoric.

[SparkBird]

Oh and if wood wants to move it doesn't ask itself " am i allowed, am i QS" it just goes " wahoo i'm going this way buddy boy"
One of the three worst bowed necks i've ever seen was a single piece QS on a name brand .

[SparkBird]

[quote name='Ou7shined' timestamp='1381584610' post='2240977']
Not at all it's refreshing to hear from experience rather than repeated rhetoric.
[/quote]
Well thanks , i want be helpful , not a knowitall knobend .

BTW [font=tahoma, geneva, sans-serif], lmao -- "The worst thing about quotes found on the internet is you never really know if they are true or not." - Jimi Hendrix [/font]

[neepheid]

I am loving this.

[iiipopes]

Having played many hundreds instruments over the 38+ years of playing stringed instruments, and having owned dozens (Not all at one time, of course!), including just about every configuration possible: one-piece necks, two-piece necks, three-piece necks, all manner of fret/finger boards, bolt on and neck through, all different woods, including maple, mahogany, etc., my observations are:

1) clear straight grain with no run-out is more important than whether the neck is slab or quarter sawn;
2) a laminate neck, if the lamination is either a) different grain orientation (i.e., quarter sawn stringer in a slab sawn neck), or b ) a different species of stringer wood (the classic shedua stripe of a Rickenbacker, or the "skunk stripe" of a Fender neck come to mind), helps with damping unwanted inherent resonances and preventing "dead notes."

My preference is for a slab-sawn maple neck where you can see the end-grain "freckles" at both edges of the fingerboard to indicate no run-out, and a quarter-sawn fingerboard, preferably Macassar ebony, which is unfortunately now on the restricted list.

Edited October 12, 2013 by iiipopes

[gsgbass]

QS is the way to go. It's just a superior cut. The direction of the grain carries better than FC.

[4000]

[quote name='SparkBird' timestamp='1381583898' post='2240967']
Hi ,
I've been building , not every day, basses and guitars for 34 years , doesn't mean i know everything or i think i know everything. As i've, erm , progressed in years i see more variables and complexion in eveything .... but ....

My experiences lead me to believe that its rigidity that counts , not whether its QS or FS , but yes Qs would normally be more rigid but , not necessarily ... What i mean by that is wood grows on trees and even within one plank there can be more or less rigid sections .

What am i blabbing about ?

2 jazz basses, both mine so i know them, one 64 with a great rigid and straight neck and one 69/70 with a badly refretted neck which made it too flexible and left it a little bowed .
The 69 bass lacked definition in the all important low and low mid frequencies .
The 64 particularly well defined low and low mids tone .
Swapped the necks over , the poorly defined tone followed the neck .
Reshot the 69 fretboard and refretted it , now its nicely rigid with a vastly improved tone .

So i'm not comparing two same spce QS and FS necks. Well ok but thats not that easy, the vast majority of bolt ons are FS , really i've hardly seen any QS boltons .
Qs or part Qs necks are usually multi laminate .

So if you took a thick enough plank of decent quality eg maple you could cut two necks from it, one QS and one FS .
The QS might very well be more rigid than the FS , might not , nature is fickle like that.
And then using one body and pickup to A/B them ; i think some of us might hear a tonal difference , most likely in the definition department, it might even be glaring , but i doubt one neck wouldn necessarily sound 'better' that the other just different . That would just bring me back to my point about rigidty and definition in the lower register .
Finally something i'm sure about , even when you get a set of the woods ideal, perfect in every way to build the instrument with the tone your looking for . Nature can has the last word , it might not turn out as good as you expected.
Luthiers use experience to choose , but in the end its just [u]more or less educated guess work[/u] . Most won't tell you that , you'll get all the blah blah about how he does this or that and the wood is this and that, but there are good and bad surpises all the time . All he's really doing is greatly lessening the possibilty of a bad instrument , great ones are a bonus. That goes even more so for electric instruments because , there is no soundboard and bracing to tweek as there is with an acoustic .
So unless i'm missing the point , to answer to your question " However I'm interested to know if anyone has achieved a firm and proven opinion? "
I doubt it very much doubt it .
Everything you'll evey read or be told can be turned on its head by a bass that has all the wrong woods and sounds great , just listen and trust your ears , in my experience thats all that counts .
Good luck .
sorry does that read a little condescending ? not meant to be just trying to be helpful , i'm not much of a writer .
[/quote]

Now that's an interesting post. Good stuff!

[Dingus]

[quote name='SparkBird' timestamp='1381583898' post='2240967']

My experiences lead me to believe that its rigidity that counts , not whether its QS or FS , but yes Qs would normally be more rigid but , not necessarily ... What i mean by that is wood grows on trees and even within one plank there can be more or less rigid sections .

2 jazz basses, both mine so i know them, one 64 with a great rigid and straight neck and one 69/70 with a badly refretted neck which made it too flexible and left it a little bowed .
The 69 bass lacked definition in the all important low and low mid frequencies .
The 64 particularly well defined low and low mids tone .
Swapped the necks over , the poorly defined tone followed the neck .
Reshot the 69 fretboard and refretted it , now its nicely rigid with a vastly improved tone .

So i'm not comparing two same spce QS and FS necks. Well ok but thats not that easy, the vast majority of bolt ons are FS , really i've hardly seen any QS boltons .
Qs or part Qs necks are usually multi laminate .

So if you took a thick enough plank of decent quality eg maple you could cut two necks from it, one QS and one FS .
The QS might very well be more rigid than the FS , might not , nature is fickle like that.

[/quote]

May I ask, how does refretting a neck affect its' rigidity? Surely the rigidity of the actual wood is unchanged ? Am I missing something here ( quite possible) ?

[Billy Apple]

I've got a quarter sawn Warmoth neck which has graphite stiffeners in it. I got it QS simply because I was copying the Fender Custom Shop build on the copy I was building. Not ever having a QS neck before, it's difficult to compare, but it is awesome. Never budges come wind or rain or shine, no flat or dead spots, no buzzing. I've found other P necks with flat spots around the 5th and I'm guessing they were FS. Whether the Warmoth neck is better because it's QS, or whether it's because it's a big mass of maple and wouldn't budge if FS is anybodies guess. But I'm glad I paid the up-charge for the added snake oil.

[Chiliwailer]

[quote name='SparkBird' timestamp='1381583898' post='2240967']

sorry does that read a little condescending ? not meant to be just trying to be helpful , i'm not much of a writer .
[/quote]

Not at all mate. I agree with you as it goes. I once had a session of swapping around my Music Man necks and bodies in the same way you did you Jazz Basses. I had a maple board, rosewood board, ash body and alder body. I heard some great differences there, but can't exactly do the same with my Jazz unless as you pointed out, unless they come from the same tree!

I'm just being nosy really, wondering that the good folks on basschat reckon about this topic as it's not quite a simple one!

[Dingus]

The bass I've been playing most lately is a Fender-style PJ with a quartersawn and graphite-reinforced Jazz Bass neck and it feels noticably more rigid in my hand than a slabsawn neck. I'm sure that stiffness must have some influence on the final sound of the bass because played acoustically the notes seem to vibrate differently to a regular Fender bass, although, going by what some other people have said, I whether that is preferable ultimately depends on what kind of a sound you like.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Dingus

[SparkBird]

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1381595380' post='2241216']
May I ask, how does refretting a neck affect its' rigidity? Surely the rigidity of the actual wood is unchanged ? Am I missing something here ( quite possible) ?
[/quote]

You're right of course that the rigidity of the wood that doesn't have frets in it is unchanged .
I don't know how to explain simply , so I'll put it this way ; A bass is built by someone somewhere , the fret tang was well matched to the fret slots ie not to tight and not too loose , the woods are being helpful by nto twisting or whatever , the neck is straight and bows a little/perfectly (assuming you want bow ) under string tension to form the curve and action you want , hardly any fret levelling to do and of it goes .
Then one day it needs a refret and the new fret tangs are not well matched to the slots and theres a miniscule amount of room in there in every slot .
String it up, the strings pull the neck forward to where it was before the refret and find a little more room for manouvre so they keep pulling the neck forward until the room is gone . Now you've got a neck with more bow than before the refret , so its got to be less rigid .
In an extreme case it can't be straightened out enough to get a good action without curves and buzzes and in my opinion this loss of rigidity will change the response of the instrument .
For me when refretting a neck i know if i get this rigidity issue right i will maintain or very often improve the definition of notes . Might sound like a load a blah blah BS , but i've done it so many times now that i'm happy to call it a fact for me personally . The many things that make an instrument exceptional are in the last i dunno 2%? of its variables hard to measure or prove thats what makes it seem so 'mojo' ... how i hate mojo .

BTW Theres a technique called compression fretting with which you gently force a slightly too wide tang into a slot to render it more rigid . This is useful for necks that are for whatever reason have curves 'hills and valleys' along their length or a badly bowed and you don't want to or can't take any wood off the board to straighten it , ie a 60's veneer board fender .
Conversely a neck with a bad back bow might be refretted 'loosely' to alow to come forward a little at certain points along its length .
I'm not saying things have to be done this way or not , you'd be amazed by how many different ways luthiers approach this ... all that matters is , it works and is maintainable the next time it has surgery .

[SparkBird]

[quote name='Billy Apple' timestamp='1381596035' post='2241224']
I've got a quarter sawn Warmoth neck which has graphite stiffeners in it. But I'm glad I paid the up-charge for the added snake oil.
[/quote]
Yeh you're right why not ? i wouldn't say its snake oil its an insurance which helps .
I prefer graphite in all my necks btw for all the reasons you give
.

Edited October 13, 2013 by SparkBird

[Billy Apple]

[quote name='SparkBird' timestamp='1381605772' post='2241404']
Yeh your right why not ? i wouldn't say its snake oil its an insurance which helps .
I prefer graphite in all my necks btw for all the reasons you give
.
[/quote]

I'm being a bit tongue in cheek with the snake oil comment, for every espousment I'd make on the QS graphite combo being fantastic, there's others who would argue it's all in the mind.

[Chiliwailer]

[quote name='SparkBird' timestamp='1381605509' post='2241400']

I don't know how to explain simply , so I'll put it this way ;
[/quote]

Yet another fantastic post, thank you. I liked the compression fretting part, I had a chat about this with a mate recently when I was stoning out a duck tail in my old Precision. With your comments, his views make a lot more sense now.

[gsgbass]

This may help.

http://www.fender.com/news/quartersawn-necks/