Electrics with wide necks

[musictag]

Switching back and forth between my electric and my classical a lot lately got me looking at the neck width, and more specifically the nut width for most electric guitars. Looking at a variety of manufacturers, I can't seem to find any electrics out there that don't come with an 1-11/16 nut width. Is there some holy grail out there that I missed that says all electric guitars must have a neck no wider than 1-11/16 at the nut?

Just curious....

[David Eastwood]

Oh, they're out there. My Rickenbacker 650D is 1-3/4" at the nut. You're right, though - they are far from common.

[Bob Womack]

Most G&L American builts come with 1-5/8ths necks. Carvin has wider necks as well.

Bob

[David Eastwood]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

Most G&L American builts come with 1-5/8ths necks. Carvin has wider necks as well.

Bob

Good point, Bob. I assumed the OP meant 'wider', not 'different'.

[JimInCairns]

http://www.youtube.com/user/jimincai.../0/cTU7nC0vwXI

That's Abraham Ramirez Osorio entertaing the passers-by in Cozumel.

[fitness1]

Agile makes several instruments with 1 3/4 nuts, and they are pretty well received, and quite affordable.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Agile-AL-3100-Ro...item5adbb3c75f

I started a thread on this very subject a short time ago and was suprised to find out about these.....there's an Agile Guitar Forum too....(no suprise)

[Rick Jones]

Eastman semi hollows have a 1-3/4 nut.

[celtic_dude]

Not sure of the size but my new Ibanez Artcore hollow body 105 has a pretty wide neck. I found it very comfortable to play since I am very used to my acoustic guitars.

[Rick Jones]

Hmmm, I have an old Ibanez RG550 "shred" guitar in bright yellow!
That has a very wide flat neck!

[jerossi]

nice job rick jones .no murdering here!!

[leehop71]

Originally Posted by eatswodo

Oh, they're out there. My Rickenbacker 650D is 1-3/4" at the nut. You're right, though - they are far from common.

Awesome looking axe! I love the Rick basses, got 2 myself! How does the guitar play? The 600 series is the only guitar model I like. I think because they look similar to the bass guitars.

[donh]

My two teles and the strat are all 1-23/32" at the nut. It was a no-charge custom order option when I ordered the necks from USACG.

[gnobuddy]

Originally Posted by fitness1

Agile makes several instruments with 1 3/4 nuts, and they are pretty well received, and quite affordable.

+1 to that. I have two Agiles, both with the 1 3/4" nut width "wide neck" option. One closely resembles a Les Paul (Agile AL 3100M), the other a semi-hollow ES-335 (Agile AS-820). Both are really wonderful guitars, with great tone, looks, and playability. The AS-820 is lighter thanks to the hollow body and has much better top-fret access because of the smaller heel and double cutaways. An absolutely wonderful guitar, and I've often wondered why the 335 isn't the most beloved Gibson electric, rather than the Les Paul.

I'm 6' 3" and about 215 lbs, and have hands sized to match. My fingers are big enough that they stick between the two black keys on a keyboard. My little finger is about the size of my wife's thumb, and she's an average sized woman of European ancestry, not a tiny person. Not surprisingly, I find guitars with 1 5/8" nuts extremely cramped. At the bridge end, most electrics have small enough string spacing to make it awkward for me to play fingerstyle - I can barely get the very tips of my fingers in between the strings.

Classical guitars, with their 2" wide nuts and constant-width necks, suit my hands much better. So I've done a fair bit of online research, trying to find electric guitars with wide necks. Warmoth will make you a custom neck up to 1 7/8" wide for a Strat - but it will cost you more than an entire $230 Squier Standard Strat. Recently an internet search turned up the "Big Lou Wide Neck Electric Guitar", a Stratocaster lookalike advertised as selling for $300 and having a 1 7/8" wide nut. It's a new company and there is very little information out there, so I have no idea how good (or bad) these might be.

Oh yeah, I've read that it is possible to install a 1 3/4" nut on Strats with a stock 1 11/16" nut width. I haven't tried it, but I plan to; since the increase in neck width is 1/16", each outboard string will only move 1/32" towards the nearest neck edge. That's such a small amount that I don't think it will affect playability, bends, etc.

One last thing: a few centuries ago guitars were instruments held in low esteem, designed more for visual appearance than sound, and were played mostly by aristocratic women in their boudoirs as an amusement, rather than by serious musicians of the day. I'm told the narrow necks were designed to suit dainty feminine hands. Classical and flamenco guitars in Spain evolved to a much bigger neck width because they were played by men, and to a much bigger body size for better and louder tone.

It seems the design of contemporary electric guitars and steel-string acoustics are still confined by the narrow necks of their ancestors, originally designed for dainty aristocratic ladies with small hands and fingers. This stuck-in-the-past design is particularly odd since the average size of a human being has increased considerably during the last century, thanks to better health and nutrition. Today, both men and women are likely to have much bigger hands than they did a couple of centuries ago.

Interestingly enough, I've met more than one tiny woman who comfortably plays a standard-size classical nylon-string guitar with a 2" wide neck. So why the heck are we all stuck with 1 11/16 or even 1 5/8" nut widths on electrics? I think many people would find a 1 7/8" or even 2" neck more comfortable, perhaps after a short acclimatization period.

-Gnobuddy

[oldane]

If you have a guitar with a 4-screw Strat type neck, you can replace the neck with a custom made from say Warmoth. I have assembled a somewhat ideosyncratic guitar from Warmoth parts and a Biltoft CC pickup. The mahogany neck has 25½" scale, 1 3/4" nut width, 12" fretboard radius and smaller frets than usually seen these days. The result is a neck reminisent of many older archtop jazz guitar necks. It's wider and flatter than a standard Fender neck.

[Mirrorshades]

Mike Robinson at Eastwood Guitars was kind enough to take my suggestion to crowdfund a wide-neck guitar. It's a 1-7/8" wide at the nut version of their amazing Tuxedo guitar, a real sweet-playing beauty! https://eastwoodcustoms.com/projects...neck-1-78-nut/