Single piece vs multi-piece body/neck

[GuitarBilly]

I was watching Tone Talk today and Dave Friedman said that when Grover Jackson was making Friedman guitars, he would only do multi-piece bodies and necks, which he thinks are superior and less likely to warp over time.

I certainly understand the strength argument since I've experienced that with repaired Gibson headstock being stronger than the originals because the glue is stronger than the wood.

But for decades I've heard that single piece bodies sound better?

I only have one single piece body here, the Tele body EJ built for me, which is 1 piece Ash with a mahogany top. And indeed, it sounds great and its incredibly loud and resonant, even
unplugged, but I don't have anything to compare it against that would be even remotely similar.


So what's your take on the 1-piece vs multiple pieces? Does it even matter?

[fretless]

I’ve come to believe the single most important piece on an electric guitar is the pickup. Nothing else matters. You can string up just about anything and make it work. Sure they all have their characteristics and we as players prefer one or another but it’s just preference +/- to me aesthetics are important, but usually it’s just aesthetics and not structural. Fret shape and crown is more important to tone and playability then how many pieces it’s made of.

[fretless]

Also neck through vs Bolt on do sound different but is one better than the other? No it’s just different.

[_ej_]

Yeah, I have to agree with Scott. The most important thing to tone is pickup/wiring, after that is scale length, then bridge. Everything else is super minor in comparison.

Resonance and how it feels to play is up to the wood. In mine experience it has way more to do with the weight of the wood than the type. A nice light piece will feel lively and resonate loudly unplugged, a heavier piece less so.

A laminate will warp less. More important for necks than bodies.

And finally, your Tele is so resonant because it's chambered

I would also consider it a multi piece since it has a top.

[BroSlinger]

I think i have one one piece body. Warmoth swamp ash strat. I don’t like the way it sounds. I never play it.

I like glue and multiple pieces of wood more. Worked for jerry garcia and les claypool.

[Marc G]

I think if the wood is properly chosen having multiple pieces isn't an issue.... in the end everything has a fundamental resonance to it, if you tap a block of wood you'll hear a note.... so to me the trick is getting two or more pieces of wood that resonate either very close to each other or in a complementary manner... my luthier buddy likes to use multi piece necks for strength and glues the pieces together with the grains opposing each other so each piece does it's part to keep the other from warping out of shape, so from what he tells me it's more than just the glue being strong, its using the different pieces of wood to counteract its natural desire to flex to the grain.


as for pickups and bridges being the end all and most important.... I can't say I agree 100% since you take the same pickup and drop it in another guitar and it will sound different, whats great about pickups and living in 2023 is we have more options that what we know what to do with and finding a pickup that works with your guitar isn't difficult

[EndTime]

Nothing is written in stone. But bodies single piece or wide pieces absolutely can warp. What’s funny is when I was gonna do an explorer build for you when I was just gonna build a few for no cost to get em out there, I used 2 piece. And the “upper piece” which extended to that upper portion of the guitar was 9 inches. So I had 2 9 inch pieces of mahogany. 1 &3/4 inch thick mahogany. That upper piece warped. I was able to plane it flat and added a pice to the back to make up the difference and it warped again!

Now, of course that piece was just more unstable. I have pro moisture meters and check all my wood for moisture before using them and it still warped.

And I looked back and found Gibson ALSO had Explorer bodies warping early on. And they went to multi piece bodies. Especially for “exotic” shapes like the explorer.

As for necks, I’ve made all different kinds. Personally my necks haven’t warped in a way that ever became unusable. Whether it was 3 piece, one piece, scarf joint etc etc. but I did have one that before I even finished it, it started warping and that was a one piece. And I’ve replaced necks like a few original Wizards, and some old 70s Strat necks that twisted badly. So it does happen.

I think the reason one would ONlY use multi piece is because they figure any tone difference isn’t worth as much as a bit more stability. Cause as I said, I use only proper moisture content wood and in my somewhat limited (being a small time builder) but still extensive by everyday standards,(as I would guess I’ve built around 70-80 necks from scratch in 25 years of building) wood can meter perfect and simply act crazy once it’s turned into an instrument. Just the nature of the beast..

As for tone…? I don’t think it makes THAT big of a difference multi piece vs one piece. In theory if you have a perfectly resonant one piece wood body, then it’ll resonate more uniformly. But that’s saying there really is a tried and true method in choosing that perfect piece. And believe me, I’m one when I shop for wood I check th tone of the resonance of each piece! You can definitely hear how it resonates by tapping it on the ground or with your knuckles, etc. but also the length and width of each piece will determine some of that. So it’s not totally accurate to the actual tone, but some pieces resonate more than others and those are usually the ones I pick.

And I disagree about pickups and electronics being the most important. I think the woods , specifically the neck woods and construction and type of bridge influence the tone of an electric more than the electronics. Besides swapping different pickups like single coil, or humbucker. But humbucker to humbucker, generally the tone of the guitar will come thru many pickups. It’s inherent in the wood

[EndTime]

And I also disagree lightweight is more resonant than heavy… Maybe.. Sometimes. But I’ve had light bodies have almost NO sustain because of how it resonates. And heavy bodies can also sometimes be a dud, and others you’ll have the best sustain of any guitar because of the Resonance. I honestly find weight to not be a good indicator at all. But I’d I had to pick one from the other blindly? I’d take a heavier weight over light weight because I feel a heavier guitar, is denser and will at least usually have better sustain. As far as solid body electrics go, a super resonant lightweight body could hinder sustain as it depends on where that resonant frequency would be. A body resonating wrong will shorten the sustain of the strings if it’s fighting against each other. I’m an acoustic that resonance is used to project sound. But it’s also a balance. Too much one way or another and the guitar can be bad in different ways.

So going that far, a multi piece solid body is also more preferable because it’s not going to have as strong a resonance of a specific frequency. So if it’s not a “good” piece/resonant frequency , then it’ll be muted a bit by the other pieces.

[GuitarBilly]

Yeah I don't agree that pickups are the only thing that matter. I have 2 partscasters here that have the same pickups, hardware and scale length. The only difference between the two is wood: one has a mahogany body, maple neck with rosewood board. And the other has a poplar body, maple neck and ebony board. And they sound different, with the mahogany guitar being warmer.

[_ej_]

Yeah I don't agree that pickups are the only thing that matter. I have 2 partscasters here that have the same pickups, hardware and scale length. The only difference between the two is wood: one has a mahogany body, maple neck with rosewood board. And the other has a poplar body, maple neck and ebony board. And they sound different, with the mahogany guitar being warmer.

Don't get me wrong, not saying wood doesn't matter, I just think pickups/bridge/scale are more important. I bet if you put those two guitars in a mix they would be hard to tell apart.

Also, I've played some boat anchors that resonated nicely but on average in my experience a lighter guitar will be louder unplugged. I wasn't actually talking about sustain. I think a good neck joint and proper break angles are big drivers of sustain.

I guess at the end of the day I think construction is more important than materials. Not saying materials don't make a difference but on the whole I think the way a guitar is build is more important.

[GuitarBilly]

Yeah I'd think in a mix they'd be hard to tell them apart, but that's only part of the picture.
I see guitar tone as a multidimensional experience. It's about how it sounds from your amp, in the room, through the PA and even how it resonates in your hands, all these things work together.

Sometimes I listen to live recordings where I was playing different guitars or even completely different rigs and in retrospect they sound more or less the same. But at the moment, using these different rigs were vastly different playing experiences.

So when you take something like a mix or blind tests etc, they tend to be more homogeneous because you are looking at just one angle of an immersing experience.
As an analogy, if I take a picture of me in the outskirts of Vegas and one in the outskirts of Baghdad, they would look nearly identical (desert) but that doesn't mean that being in these 2 places are the similar experiences.

So with guitars, it's kind of the same. If you take a snapshot of their sound, it's very similar, they're all electric guitars at the end of the day. But listening while playing them? Vastly different. Even my playing changes with different guitars.

[_ej_]

Thats a very fair point Billy. I usually come at these discussion from an end results perspective. That's the hardest part about these tone discussions, the objective result of recorded tone versus the subjective feeling of playing in the room. You put a squire strat against a vintage '62 on wax you probably wouldn't be able to tell a huge difference but the playing experience would be vastly different.

Honestly that's one of the reason I like to chamber my builds. I love the feeling of playing a guitar that is acoustically loud. Some of my favorite gigging memories are feeling my 335 vibrating with the drums.

[EndTime]

Yeah I don't agree that pickups are the only thing that matter. I have 2 partscasters here that have the same pickups, hardware and scale length. The only difference between the two is wood: one has a mahogany body, maple neck with rosewood board. And the other has a poplar body, maple neck and ebony board. And they sound different, with the mahogany guitar being warmer.

Don't get me wrong, not saying wood doesn't matter, I just think pickups/bridge/scale are more important. I bet if you put those two guitars in a mix they would be hard to tell apart..

Ok, Glen Fricker!

Lol . Kidding but also not In regards to him being very vocal person of that statement specifically

His “experiments” are so flawed it’s not worth getting into, but even if one would have a hard time picking it out in a mix, Altho some of us have ears that do better than others even playing that game, i believe that shows the limitations of the mic and placement, rather than guitar differences. Or pickup differences. . I can always hear differences in my guitars even recorded. A once I know em that well. But sure they are minute if the scale I’m judging on is basing it on some profound difference. When if it’s 2 good guitars that play well, the differences will be subtle on a close mic’d guitar cab. But anyone who plays their different guitars in the room can almost immediately hear the differences of each guitar. Small as they may be, it’s not some sort of placebo, it’s simply having enough space between the amp and our ears to hear the differences more clearly. If I put my head right on the cab I’m sure I couldn’t tell differences between guitars either! And that’s where the mic sits. So if that’s the metric one wants to use, ok, the differences are pretty small, but still audible. But even for myself who records a lot, 99.8% of my playing is done in the room, or band practice and not listening back to recorded tracks. I’m sure all of us who play often in bands can even tell how one guitar sits better in the room or the full band. I’ve even had Drummers say they heat shit different and it’s simply because of the different guitar.

So yeah. I kinda scoff at that reasoning cause it’s been perpetuated by a fucking dope moron and I see so many people saying it now, it really needs some proper push back. Not directly at you. Just in general. Cause a bunch of the people I find saying it elsewhere are people I’ve never heard a single clip from anyway. Plus I have my theories Fricker is using EQ matching software to get the results he’s claiming. So my side point, I think that dude is a total Fraud simply doing it for clicks…


But yeah construction methods play a big role. Simply the type of truss rod used absolutely changes the tone. My FAVORITE is the U channel single action rod. It’s an aluminum channel that gets epoxied into the neck and the rod is attached to either end. It adds a ton of sturdiness and everytime I use that the neck just feels more lively. Other rods sits kinda loosely besides the pressure they exhibit. Totally different construction yields different tone. Not saying I don’t like a dual adjusting, obviously offfer a ton of flexibility in getting a neck juuust right. Especially if it has warped a bit to where it doesn’t have any relief when the rod is at neutral.

Always a little +\- to every thing

[_ej_]

I don't know who Glenn Fricker is.

And I mean in a mix in a room not just on record.

[Dave]

My Pittman is a 3 piece body and it's the best guitar I've ever owned. Second favorite being my LPC and it's also a 3 piece body with a 2 piece top.

I used to fall for the 1 piece body stuff, but somewhere along the line I realized I didn't know what I was talking about. I actually prefer a 2 piece flamed maple top because those LPs/PRSi etc with the 1 piece top look weird to me.

[screamingdaisy]

With necks, I have a mix from 1 piece bolt on to 3 piece neck through.

When it comes to stability, best I can figure out thickness is more important than how many pieces it's made out of.

However, if your goal is thin, flat and low action I think multi-piece is probably better than single piece, and if your action is already that low you're probably not going to hear how many pieces of wood were used to build your guitar.

I think there's also some other considerations for multi-piece, like reducing dead spots.

With bodies, I'm not sure how much the number of pieces matter. I think the wood matters, but some pretty famous guitars (like the Les Paul) are multi-piece by default.

[Dave]

With necks, I have a mix from 1 piece bolt on to 3 piece neck through.

When it comes to stability, best I can figure out thickness is more important than how many pieces it's made out of.

However, if your goal is thin, flat and low action I think multi-piece is probably better than single piece, and if your action is already that low you're probably not going to hear how many pieces of wood were used to build your guitar.

I think there's also some other considerations for multi-piece, like reducing dead spots.

With bodies, I'm not sure how much the number of pieces matter. I think the wood matters, but some pretty famous guitars (like the Les Paul) are multi-piece by default.

I feel like necks are a bit different from bodies since they have a truss rod.

[Devin]

As far as necks go, Hamer USA always made a big deal about their "3 piece stressed maple necks"

Anecdotally I can say the one on my Cali has been crazy stable for like 25 years

[Marc G]

my Firebird is a 9 piece laminate neck... and then 2 wings of mahogany for the body....... still a pretty resonant guitar......