1-Piece Neck Wood Ideas

[teej]

I'm looking for inexpensive neck woods for a 1-piece (by that, I mean non-laminated) neck. Right now, I'm considering jatoba, bubinga, and purpleheart -- all are relatively cheap, but would they be too stiff, heavy, etc.???

EDIT: I forgot to mention that this is for a short-scale bass.

[wilser]

Originally Posted by teej

I'm looking for inexpensive neck woods for a 1-piece (by that, I mean non-laminated) neck. Right now, I'm considering jatoba, bubinga, and purpleheart -- all are relatively cheap, but would they be too stiff, heavy, etc.???

EDIT: I forgot to mention that this is for a short-scale bass.

what's wrong with plain old flatsawn rock maple? it's cheap, readily available and works great for 1 piece necks!

[Phil Mastro]

Maple, black or peruvian walnut, northern ash, padauk, pau ferro, cocobolo...

The woods you mentionned work fine, but I find them a bit to hard to be enjoyable to work with. They are also on the heavy side.

[Rodent]

a properly selected piece of rock maple is about as good (and cheap!) as you're going to get for a 1-pc neck. depending on your supplier, this should run you well under $25 for a rough piece of 4/4 x 5" x 36"

all the best,

R

[wilser]

Originally Posted by Rodent

a properly selected piece of rock maple is about as good (and cheap!) as you're going to get for a 1-pc neck. depending on your supplier, this should run you well under $25 for a rough piece of 4/4 x 5" x 36"

all the best,

R

a local supplier can get me 80" x 8" x 8/4 surfaced 2 sides rock maple for about $55, that's pretty darn good. Especially now that I'm gonna re-take on laminated necks.

[Rodent]

I'm paying about $65 for the same board here in the Seattle area. It may be a little cheaper downtown, but I don't mind paying a few $$ more to avoing a 90 minute r/t drive down I-5

on a side note, I've been paying around $35 for a similarly sized/prepared Alder 'Superior' board that is fairly knot-free

all the best,

R

Originally Posted by wilser

a local supplier can get me 80" x 8" x 8/4 surfaced 2 sides rock maple for about $55, that's pretty darn good. Especially now that I'm gonna re-take on laminated necks.

[eleonn]

Why everybody in this forum can buy peruvian walnut and I cannot living in Perú????? I found ridiculous the idea of importing something which was already here once!!!!!!

[FBB Custom]

What's your cutoff for cheap?

Any of the woods mentioned here will work. It's hard to imagine anything being too stiff for a neck if you can machine a flat, square neck blank - if you have to, build a small amount of relief into the neck and the truss rod will never become relevant.

Base your heaviness estimates off hard maple's density. Its specific gravity is ~ .65. Bubinga is ~ .88, jatoba .91, wenge .88.

So, most of the woods you mention are around 30% heavier than maple. Most people would consider them heavy but everyone has a different tolerance for weight in a bass -- some people love wenge necks and put up with the weight. Whether or not you use something other than maple will come down to where you stand on that issue.

[wilser]

Originally Posted by FBB Custom

What's your cutoff for cheap?

Any of the woods mentioned here will work. It's hard to imagine anything being too stiff for a neck if you can machine a flat, square neck blank - if you have to, build a small amount of relief into the neck and the truss rod will never become relevant.

Base your heaviness estimates off hard maple's density. Its specific gravity is ~ .65. Bubinga is ~ .88, jatoba .91, wenge .88.

So, most of the woods you mention are around 30% heavier than maple. Most people would consider them heavy but everyone has a different tolerance for weight in a bass -- some people love wenge necks and put up with the weight. Whether or not you use something other than maple will come down to where you stand on that issue.

I've probably told this story about 1k times, but what the heck, here it goes again.

first bass, 6 string 35" scale, 5 piece neck, ipe with 2 jatoba stringers, 1 stew mac hot rod and 2 x 1/8" graphite bars. I made the neck with a very slight back bow so that the string tension would bring it flat. Strung it up, tuned, didn't move, meaning it still had that VERY SLIGHT back bow. Tried to adjust truss rod ..SNAP! that bass now hangs in my shop as a reminder. Later I learned that you could 'help' the neck into a forward bow with clamps and the such without putting much strain on the truss rod's nut.

This surely was out of ignorance and inexperience. Now I am experienced in that sense. Use my experience to avoid tears and head wounds (due to repeatedly banging your head against the drywall in disbelief).

You know what's funny? the neck now moved, due to climate and temperature changes in my shop, into a FORWARD bow ...DAMN DEVIL-SPAWN THING!

[teej]

I don't have anything against maple (wenge, however is a different story... !%@$ splinters!). It's just that I've got a gift certificate from Woodcraft ($25), which is local and has some 3/4" x 6" x 36" cuts of the aforementioned woods for as low as $9.99 (jatoba). Purpleheart was only $2 more, and Bubinga was $6 more.

The same wood will also be used as laminates in a mostly poplar body, so I'm looking for something that contrasts well with that.

I eyed their padauk, but it was pretty expensive ($16 for 3" width). Their ash is really cheap ($8), and the quality looked good, but it's too close to the poplar in color.

[Suburban]

So you want an "un-whitish" wood?

I was going to propose birch or beech....imagine

[FBB Custom]

Purpleheart will give you splinters too.

Any one of those three woods will be heavy but fine for a neck. They are all very stiff.

[Larry Davis]

Originally Posted by Suburban

So you want an "un-whitish" wood?

I was going to propose birch or beech....imagine

Birch and beech are more common to Europe than here. They are imported wood here and not available in all stores

[teej]

Something cheap, "un-whitish", and neck-suitable from Woodcraft. They've got Honduran mahogany, but I'd kind of like to use something I haven't worked with before.

[Suburban]

Originally Posted by Larry Davis

Birch and beech are more common to Europe than here. They are imported wood here and not available in all stores

Yeah, I guess. On the other hand, they aren't available in stores in Sweden, either. You can call around for days to find somebody that sells hardwood. And if you want anything but birch, beach or oak, you're bound to loose.
I think there are less than five supliers in all Sweden, and they sell mostly imported wood!

[erikbojerik]

For what its worth, the biggest PITA neck I ever built was a 1-piece flatsawn flame maple guitar neck (the 6 on a 6-12 doubleneck), I had to adjust that thing at least once a month for 6 months before it finally settled down.

The 12-neck on that guitar came from the same billet of wood, except it had a separate fretboard glued on (same maple) with the grain orientation flipped. I tweeked the rod once and never again, it is more stable despite almost double the string tension.

But then, my flatsawn 1-piece Strat neck is rock solid...

[pilotjones]

Originally Posted by erikbojerik

For what its worth, the biggest PITA neck I ever built was a 1-piece flatsawn flame maple guitar neck (the 6 on a 6-12 doubleneck), I had to adjust that thing at least once a month for 6 months before it finally settled down.

The 12-neck on that guitar came from the same billet of wood, except it had a separate fretboard glued on (same maple) with the grain orientation flipped. I tweeked the rod once and never again, it is more stable despite almost double the string tension.

Great illustration of the difference between strong and stable. They're both equally strong (roughly at least, being from the same billet), but in the one with with half the grain flipped, the climate reactions nullify each other in the two parts. (Of course, even better would be if it didn't move even w/o grain reversal.)