Neck pocket gap: does it matter on a bolt-on?

[GeorgeBerlin]

Originally Posted by Bongolation

[...]Having lateral clearance not only prevents this, but permits better alignment adjustment and a more precise fit at the face -- where tightness does matter.

Full Ack. And a possible physical reason for this : When you have a gap at the face, vibrational force is coupled into the center grain of the body slab only, while when there is a press-fit at the face, some force is coupled into the top wood / surface area also. This does increase high frequency output and sustain, notably with slap&pop playing styles. At least that's what I found on my new G&L L2000 (with almost too tight a pocket laterally but having a gap on front face that I filled up with a piece of sheet metal -- yeah, blasphemy some may say but it works perfectly for me).

[metron]

Originally Posted by kurosawa

I still say if ya gotta loosen up the neck to adjust the truss rod, it pays to know that when you tighten it back up, it's gonna go back to the same spot so as not to throw off your intonation. One tiny bit of going sideways at the neck joint translates into a whole lot of travel at the nut. OK, if ya don't care about precise intonation, no biggie, but still, if you play double stops up-neck, the errors can really make ya wince, trust me, that's why I took time to side-shim Evil Edna's neck pocket. No theory there. It SOUNDED bad. See, when the neck goes sideways, not only is the string at one edge of the fretboard getting longer, but the one on the opposite edge is getting shorter.

What you say is true however neck gaps do not guarantee your neck will shift. My Fender has a very typical 2-3mm gap and has never budged a micron.

Originally Posted by bootsox

when I build my guitars, if the neck can't be held in place simply by the pressure of the neck pocket, it gets glued in. the less gap there is, the more vibrations can be transferred between the neck and the body

Genuinely curious - why would one want more vibrations to transfer from the neck to the body? Theoretically that translates to loss at the transducer.

[kurosawa]

Originally Posted by FretlessMainly

As for neck pockets and dead spots, I don't believe that there is any established relationship.

Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it does nothing. But if a bass has dead spots, it's a free and easy experiment to fool with the tightness of the neck bolts. If the bass profits from the bolts being very tight, I'd consider threaded inserts. I just bought 3 sets to have around.

[GeorgeBerlin]

Originally Posted by metron

Genuinely curious - why would one want more vibrations to transfer from the neck to the body? Theoretically that translates to loss at the transducer.

I thinks this depends on how much intrinsic damping we have in the woods. When it is NOT lossy it will redistribute vibrational energy in a good way, giving the instrument a more distinct timbre (think vocal formants). If there is loss at the joint, sustain and brightness/harmonics will suffer a bit, typically, since all energy must travel through the joint, multiple times, back and forth.

Then again I always found that even minor truss rod adjustments can have quite big and unexpected impact on tone (dead spots notably), much more than pocket adjustments, but YMMV.