Quote:
Originally Posted by stringman5
It seems to me that failure of the neck joint isn't really the issue. My understanding is that, over time, the soundboard and sides can become deformed due to stress from string tension, making a neck re-set necessary to properly re-adjust the neck angle.
The Taylor bolt-on neck technology accomplishes this quickly and inexpensively. My understanding is that resetting a dovetail neck joint requires a very skillful luthier and is therefore rather expensive.
I once read that luthier Linda Manzer said that it is inevitable that an instrument will need a re-set at some point in it's lifetime. If a re-set is inevitable, isn't better to utilize a design which enables this to be done more quickly/inexpensively?
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This is one of the reasons I do what I do,and I think why the designers of violins did what they did A standard guitar heel is floating and or not attached to the back. With this design the static forces that are applied to the neck heel where it is attached, are transferred to the block/sides then, in the case of standard guitars the block is attached to a thin sheet back.
The overall force path animation that would happen if a guitar could be made suddenly completely elastic is that from the saddle break to the nut, the guitar would want to fold in half like a sandwhich where the headstock would be kissing the belly. These are the static forces that slowly deform the corpus{back/top/sides} The floating heel transfers force dramatically into the neck block,twisting at the sides, inducing force on the sheet back that would fold it in half length wise....
whereas a heel that is attached to a button protrusion will relieve some of that force and or the button back being glued to the heel now shares some of the load. When we factor in a carved arch with a recurved perimeter, we basically have the tip of a bow that is counter resisting the force applied to it, thus counter acting the static forces, more so than a non arched back/top with a floating heel.
I think the Taylor idea is great for traveling musicians who are going form Florida to Arizona the next day, guitar techs can probably fix them quick if they get out of whack