I’ve heard that some people round part of the neck heel on Strats to provide better access to high frets, especially on bass strings. Fender’s custom shop calls this the “contoured neck heel” option.
Anyone have one? Thoughts? And is the neck-body connection just as stable (the bolt configuration changes with this mod)?
I’ve never owned a Fender with this option, but I’ve owned many guitars over the years with variations on the concept. Never had neck joint stability issues with any of them.
Looking at photos of the Fender version, it appears to be a very minor modification to their traditional neck heel design. I much prefer more aggressively contoured designs that use countersunk grommets to hold the screws (the canonical example being the Ibanez “all-access neck joint”).
The coolest design is the “Stephens Extended Cutaway” made famous on Nuno Bettencourt’s signature Washburn, where the heel end of the guitar neck itself has an unusual shape that is secured with an “arc” of screws.
Fender:
https://www.google.com/search?q="contoured+neck+heel"+fender&tbm=isch
Ibanez:
https://www.google.com/search?q=aanj&tbm=isch
Washburn:
https://www.google.com/search?q="stephens+extended+cutaway"&tbm=isch
Yamaha briefly made some guitars with a highly unusual neck joint: An aluminum bracket provided a strong, thin extension of the neck, allowing some of the body’s anchoring screws to be located behind the neck pickup:
wow - you are mr. neck heel! i’ll have fun checking these out; thanks.
i would have guessed the joint is stable, but good to hear.
(of course, it would be nice if my playing actually warranted seeking greater access to the ‘dusty end,’ but i can dream;)
I am a fan of parts guitars (and only familiar with Warmoth), but they have a “contoured heel” as well, here.
Many custom builders seem to offer very nice neck/body joints, but nothing (IMHO) beats the neck-thru-body design, as one might see in some Jacksons, etc.
Fender’s contoured version basically just shaves off a corner, as I recall. I don’t own anything with it, and I’ve only played a couple briefly and probably never standing with a strap. I recall it helping but not night and day.
Warmoth’s contoured neck joint basically just angles the whole thing, and uses shorter screws on the front treble side than the other thing. I owned a partscaster with this joint for a while - again, not night and day, but perceptibly nicer than standard.
I played Ibanez guitars heavily for a LONG time and still own a couple, though oddly two of them are older square joint guitars, and those two get more playtime than the AANJ ones. I do like the AANJ design, though - it offers really good access, looks great, and feels comfortable under your hand. My two Suhrs use a variation of this same approach, and if I were to have to choose a neck joint on a ‘anything is on the table’ custom build, this would be the strategy I’d go with. I prefer bolt-ons to neck thru/set-neck guitars for whatever reason, and I think this is the most comfortable way of building a neck joint I’ve tried.
