[ljguitar]

Hi bobc...
Being friends with a luthier who builds guitars for a living full-time, I'm often privileged to go and play in guitars for a few hours at a time.

He has built them in 1 12/16'', 1 13/16'', and 1 14/16'' since I've known him, and I can tell the difference in all three widths while playing them. He never tells me anything about the guitars - just hands them to me and lets me play and observe.

I haven't missed one yet that is a different width. Perhaps it is because some mult-fret stretches are at the limits of what I can reach, so it is normal plus a bit when necks are wider.

I feel it when I bend (more space before hitting the next string with the finger doing the bending). I also notice it when doing parallel 6ths and 3rds in runs. The other noticeable place is when grabbing tight chord groupings anywhere in the 10th - 15th fret areas - because there is more room for finger tips in the narrowly spaced frets.

I can wrap my thumb under the neck of a 1 11/16'' neck to the 10th or 11th fret to play bass notes, and only about 5th fret on a 1 12/16'' and barely at all on 1 13/16'' or larger.

Being an instructor, there are several students who play 1 11/16'' necks and I play every students guitar at the beginning of every lesson - to remind myself of what they play and to see how difficult what I'm asking them to do is going to be.

After playing three 1 12/16'' necks all week, those necks feel pretty cramped. I've even traded students during lessons for an entire lesson to see if I can adapt to their necks. I can survive, but my dexerity is limited. The guitars they play are Martin, Taylor, Washburn, and Samick. All are full scale.

I have concluded that the extra width is more than just neck profile, neck radius, spacing at the saddle, or hype.