Neck Mount Strength on Yamaha RBX* A.I.R.?

OK, so I supposedly have one of these RBX4 A2s on its way.

I was looking at this page and was noting the little flash demo of how these things are built.

I couldn't help but notice what looked like it would be a real problem with neck support in these skinned softwood bodies if there wasn't more to the mounting process than the animation indicated.

Anyone have one of these long enough to comment on the long-term structural integrity of the neck/body joint?

After having a v1.0 Italia Mondial (possibly the worst bass ever made) try to fold up and self-destruct at this point, I no longer take competent build engineering for granted.

Thanks for any good data on this!

 

I tend to agree. Yamaha may have no mojo appeal, but they do seem to have engineering down.

It's just the Flash demo seemed to indicate that the only real neck support was from the veneer, as the softwood core was not really structural -- presumably like balsa or styrofoam. It was also probably oversimplified for purposes of illustration. Anyone but Yamaha, I'd be really nervous with this, though.

 

The v1.0 Mondials simply self-destructed. Total garbage, incredibly stupid, unsound, crackhead structural misdesign.

They apparently redesigned them and hopefully recontracted build.

 

I've also read these had balsa cores. True? I dunno. Balsa varies a lot in density and strength.

It seems to me that the hardware on these looks pretty heavy, so that might be from where some of the weight's coming. I'll know when mine arrives, I suppose. [shrug]

 

A hair under EIGHT POUNDS, by accurate measurement.

My original concern about structural integrity is unnecessary; the core wood is about as dense, heavy and hard as pine, and about the same color. I've seen entire bodies made of softer and probably lighter wood.

 

An office shipping scale that's properly calibrated in this weight range.

Not that I needed much confirmation -- when I first picked it up I immediately knew it wasn't anywhere like the figures people have been mentioning. It simply wasn't particularly light.

There's bound to be some weight variance from one bass to another, but I think some people are using the compensated bathroom scale method or something to come up with some of these lower figures.

 

I'm still sort of surprised that they didn't do tighter weight-grading on this material (whatever it is), though, considering the whole point of this bass was "revolutionary light weight."

Considering the thinness of the body, any number of wood options would have accomplished the same thing with less rigmarole.

I once had a discussion with a guy at FMIC who was trying to get the weight down on Fender's MIA "Nashville B-Bender," which is a prodigiously heavy Telecaster with the Parsons-Green device (here's my personal piece). They found that by using a premium lightweight poplar, they could consistently shave a pound off the body. Using something like this with the RBX series might have been a simpler solution.