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Chapter 14: Shop Till You Drop: Buying the Right Guitar for You
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Neck construction
Electric guitar necks are defined by how they connect to the body (acoustic
guitars are all the same with regard to the way their necks attach). Below are
the three types of necks:
Bolt-on: The neck attaches to the back of the guitar at the heel (the part
of the neck that sticks out where the neck joins the body) with four or
five bolts (a heel plate sometimes covers the bolt holes). Fender
Stratocasters and Telecasters have bolt-on necks.
Set in (or glued in): In this type of construction, the neck joins the body
in a connected way with an unbroken finish covering the connection.
The connection can’t be unbolted, because it’s glued in, and then finished
over. The Gibson Les Paul and Paul Reed Smith models have
set-in necks.
Neck through body: This high-end construction has the neck in one
long unit (although usually consisting of several pieces of wood glued
together) that doesn’t stop at the body but continues all the way through
to the tail of the guitar. This isn’t typically used for blues guitars but is a
favorite for high-end rockers.
Guitars with bolt-on necks are easier to produce than models with set-in
necks and are therefore less expensive. But most people don’t base their
guitar-purchasing decisions on how the neck attaches to the body. Just
because one construction process is more advanced or expensive than
another doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily better than other techniques.
Materials
One way to tell why a guitar is expensive or inexpensive is to simply look at
the materials used. If the wood is rare or beautiful, or the fret inlays are
abalone instead of plastic, chances are it’s an expensive, well-made guitar. It’s
not that badly built guitars don’t use quality materials; it’s just that in reality
you won’t see them.
So while you shouldn’t judge a guitar only by its materials, it’s a good bet that
the better materials (abalone inlays as opposed to plastic ones) wind up on
better guitars — ones with construction methods and workmanship to
match.
Woods
Guitar makers break woods down into categories, and the categories determine
the wood’s quality and expense:
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