Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Review about the guitar neck and frets

The guitar neck and frets can be a critical thing for certain guitarist as it will impact the playing capability. If you see for certain guitarist like Yngwie J Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Michael angelo, John Petrucci, Kirk Hammet, eric Johnson or many others, they have their favourite choice.

Maybe for some reason the guitar beginners will think that the guitar neck and frets just a common thing and typical from one to another guitar. They might be right. But actually some neck and frets has their own criteria.

Let see about the neck first. Sometimes you will out that the size of the neck is different, some might big and some might quite small, even the radius as well, you will find that the thickness of the neck is different from one to another. This will impact on how you grip the chords and also on h ow you press the note during solo. Of course, you can do some experiment, try get a Fender Stratocaster '60s and compare it to an Ibanez RG, its different.

Then, the wood, the most identical differences is the color. Some are maple which is bright or Rosewood, the dark color. Some manufaturer and the guitarist agree that different wood gives different tone.

Standard frets count is 21, 22 and 24 frets. Even i have seen some new brand extended the count more than that. So you can exploite and manipulate the notes that you want to play, It doesnt mean the more the better. But how the way you do thing, some people good just with 21 frets.

The size of the frets also, we have jumbo frets, which is consider big. guitarist choose this for heavy metal and rock. Then the vintage fret that normally quite small for blues or country.

So, by understanding this, I believe guitarist will understand what kind of neck and frets they really need. Good tips for you when do shopping, you can straight away ask the salesman, "I want maple neck with, medium radius, with 22 frets on it!"

No comments: