Guitar neck advantages/disadvantages

[characterzero]

Well I was just wondering what the main playability/sound differences are between guitars with a bolt on neck vs. set or trough-body neck. Do you find you get more substantial sustain? I use a set neck right now that I love but I've never played a really nice guitar with a bolt on. So what are your preferences for guitar necks?

[Brian Krashpad]

I have a batch of setnecks and a batch of bolt-on's (and one neck-through). The difference in sustain is relatively minimal. Bolt-ons can take way more abuse though, with setnecks you can't just sling 'em around or down onto a hard surface like you can with a bolt-on, or the headstock will pop right off. I've seen it happen to a really nice setneck bass during a live performance, as well as seen broken headstocks on Les Pauls after the fact, and it ain't pretty.

As far as preferences, go I don't really prefer one over the other, other than I am a bit more careful with my setnecks. For LP-style guitars, however, I'd just as soon have a setneck, and conversely with Fender-style guitars (Teles, Strats) I'd just as soon have a bolt-neck. Never really seen the point in a bolt-neck LP copy, and frankly a lot of times bolt-neck LP copies are"bottom of the barrel" in quality because (at least until very recently) setnecks took a lot more work to produce.

[characterzero]

Interesting. I (sort of out of ignorance) have always thought that set necks took longer to put on, thus more work, thus nicer and better quality. I realize nowadays set necks can probably be assembled just as easily in production lines. Good point about bolt-ons being able to take more abuse. I always thought of that negatively, like bolt-ons had a higher chance of getting thrown out of alignment. But I guess its really a positive because it can always be readjusted back, whereas if you screw up a set neck the guitar is pretty much done.