Ken Parker Archtoppery - The Neck Journey 5) Neck Creep

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  • Опубліковано 24 гру 2024

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  • @gunzrloaded
    @gunzrloaded 10 місяців тому +1

    That was quite the revelation on the maple neck stress area.
    Cheers

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому

      Maple is such a great material, and can always be counted on to behave like maple. It's our job to understand its attributes and anticipate its behavior.

  • @michaelsuh5871
    @michaelsuh5871 10 місяців тому +1

    You are a national treasure. I look forward to these videos with bated breath, and I'm not even a builder. Thank you!

  • @waynepayne864
    @waynepayne864 10 місяців тому +1

    been really lovin the content lately ken. its good to see the level of details luthiers like you think think through. you think like an engineer and botanist, we dont give luthiers enough credit for knowledge of those domains sometimes

  • @chrispile3878
    @chrispile3878 10 місяців тому +1

    Thanks for your insight, Ken!

  • @xdoctorblindx
    @xdoctorblindx 10 місяців тому +1

    I find that in my instruments (and in my builds), creep is an especially big issue for basses (and worse yet with five or six strings). Im fascinated by the various way different master builders address this issue. Thanks for another great episode, Ken!

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +2

      The 5&6 string basses apply huge loads! The cored neck with a little carbon/epoxy is perfectly applied to here. Also, you won't believe how great the low notes on the low strings can sound when they're not arguing about the fundamental pitch!!

  • @normativesymbiosis3242
    @normativesymbiosis3242 7 місяців тому

    Ken, thank you for the neck creep explanation! Just did a fret height adjustment to compensate for this on my project guitar (also used your fantastic levelling file tool!). The buzz I was getting there was subtle, but once gone the difference in clarity of sound through my neck pickup is quite dramatic. I've been binge watching your videos lately, it's better than Netflix ;-) I love your considered and empirical approach to guitar building, thank you for this. If you ever decide to enable the 'thanks/support' feature on your channel, it would be my pleasure to get you a bottle of wine!

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  7 місяців тому +1

      Love your handle. For thanks/support, that's easy, plant a tree or three! Many thanks for your enthusiastic praise!

  • @JCYoo
    @JCYoo 10 місяців тому +1

    Insightful as always. Thanks for sharing.

  • @MiraiJikanImage
    @MiraiJikanImage 10 місяців тому

    Mr.Parker really loves guitars.

  • @jcsk8
    @jcsk8 10 місяців тому

    Great explanation. Acording to the Beauty o the burst book this happened with many vintage Les Pauls, specially because they used to have bigger gauge strings in the 60´s.

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +3

      I never saw this book, but it looks like big fun. Yes, the sinister creep even works its evil on these deified guitars, and now folks won't want to fix it because it because then (HORRORS) it won't be original, and it will be worth less to somebody. I thank my lucky stars I am allergic to such nonsense, and when I worked on these instruments way back when they were only 20 years old, I just fixed them the best way I knew how, got paid, and went back to work on something else. These were the good old days, in my opinion, when guitrs were valued for their sound and usefulness to a musician. These old guitars that have become collectable aren't holy grails, they were products made by hourly workers fudging their time cards, working in a dusty factory where people making crap money got hurt and management didn't care.
      Of course the big strings make it worse, but it'll happen anyway when the fibers on the back of the neck stretch.

  • @claudevieaul1465
    @claudevieaul1465 10 місяців тому

    Thanks for explaining this, maestro - I've had a bolt-on guitar with mahogany body and neck, and it has exactly that kink at the heel...
    I look forward to hearing your approach to fixing this!
    Thanks so much for sharing your wealth of experience 🙏🙏🙏
    Kindest regards from the Netherlands

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +1

      I wish I had a fix for existing instruments that didn't involve pulling frets, but I don't. My solution is to design around the problem by using materials that don't creep.

  • @BeauHannamGuitars
    @BeauHannamGuitars 9 місяців тому

    Very interesting, Thanks.
    Is rebending this upper area of a, say, Tele neck a good solution? (Without knowing the answer, I would think it difficult to bend a 1" thick piece of maple to be somewhere inline with the rest of teh neck and not damage vintage finish.... but maybe a loss of finish is better then pulling the frets and sanding the fretboard surface?).
    And I would presume the heel shape on that Gibson L1 is better at resisting creep? Thanks Ken.

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  7 місяців тому +1

      I don't think "rebending" as you say would be achievable. Every species has its' attributes, and maple likes to bend.
      I know there is a lot of resistance to repairing vintage stuff that was built quickly as can be by anonymous, disposable hourly workers using unselect material in the fewest minutes possible, and while I understand this resistance, I would encourage folks to just choose whether it's a museum piece or a musical instrument. I had this conversation with hundreds of clients. Can't have it both ways all the time.
      Heel shape is irrelevant to the materials' ability to stretch and deform by creep in nearly every case, as far as I know.
      Sorry, creep is just what wood does, some species more than others. There are ways to lessen the problems of creep, but guitar manufacturers couldn't and can't be bothered with it, I think it's shameful. Any clever engineer tasked with improving this issue would be able to succeed. I know I have. Not that hard to anticipate reliable forces.
      If you find a better way to correct or beat this without pulling frets and correcting the playing surface by removing a precise amount of fingerboard, please share it with the rest of us!

  • @GreatPlanet-c7o
    @GreatPlanet-c7o 10 місяців тому +2

    It would great to be able to buy brand new Fly style guitars.

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +2

      That was my dream, of course, and it might still be working if the sales numbers were large enough. Sadly, nobody can build an exceptionally high quality guitar with expensive ingredients for short $, and they cost too much to be an easy sell. We didn't think we were going to be building Ferraris, but that's kind of how it worked out.

  • @GregorHoul
    @GregorHoul 6 місяців тому

    Very illuminating, as always---thank you! I am, however, left wondering how one fixes neck creep. I favorite guitar has it, and it's a bit of a PIA.

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  6 місяців тому +1

      I just posted this answer a few days ago, and it mostly covers one way to get it right,
      This is a tough decision sometimes. I's a challenge not to be in the room with your instrument, of course, as there are a lot of elements to consider.
      Unless there is some reason against it (rare, but real, eg, historic instrument in original condition), I always favor doing the woodworking and using the same style wire for the whole job. Often, the first octave is OK, or can be quickly addressed with some light abrading and re-crowning. Way back when, '78 - '82, running the big repair shop I created at Steve Friedman's "Stuyvesant Music" on 48th street near Manhattan's 7th Avenue, a job so commonly performed that I came to call it...
      "The Usual Repair" , or "the usual"
      First, lube the truss rod and check its ability to perform, adjusting it for the correct relief on the bass side
      Precisely measure the neck's distortion at the centerline, and at both edges with a straightedge and feeler gauges, noting these distances between the 12th fret and the straightedge.
      1) Carefully pull the frets above 12, without damaging them, having marked them for orientation with ink, and kept in order in a row of little holes in a block
      2) Remove the correct "triangular slice" of wood to perfect the fingerboard surface , that is, "0" at fret 13, and whatever the offending number of thousandths was at the very end, checking with calipers. We normally would remove .005" - .010' or .125 - .250 mm more material than the plan called for, just for insurance, although there are sometimes reasons not to do this, especially on solid-bodies that are heavily used in the second octave.
      The tools used were a super sharp little plane with a tiny throat opening, usually skewed or even across the grain, then scrapers and sandpaper glued to a block..
      3) Check and adjust the curvature of the frets, and reinstall.
      Unless the removal of wood changed the color of the fingerboard surface, as it usually would do if the board was maple or Brazilian Rosewood, the repair was nearly impossible to detect, and the effect on the customer was to induce joy!
      Not only did the guitar play like a dream, but also this repair was priced at half the cost of a complete fret job, and produced, if performed correctly, perfect results!

    • @GregorHoul
      @GregorHoul 6 місяців тому

      @@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Marvellous! My guitar needs new frets anyway. Thank you, Ken!

  • @alanoffer
    @alanoffer 10 місяців тому

    I have a USA jazz bass that has that problem of neck creep , I could never understand why half dozen frets were higher than the rest of the neck at the body

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому

      This ugly problem is an inherent result of a poorly thought out manufacturing process. Of course, some lucky instruments escape this problem just by being at the end of the bell-curve, but they're few in number, as you would suspect.

  • @reversewound
    @reversewound 4 місяці тому

    Would carbon fibre strengthening around that area help prevent neck creep?

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  4 місяці тому

      That's my tune, RW, that's my tune!! Just watch the whole "Neck Journey" for the full ride.

  • @robertgunning9667
    @robertgunning9667 10 місяців тому

    thank you Ken

  • @zounds13
    @zounds13 7 місяців тому

    This is all fascinating and most of it is completely new to me. Thank you for explaining it all so well.
    Question: would roasted maple be less resistant to creep than regular maple?

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  7 місяців тому

      Thanks for your interest, these things have obsessed me for decades.
      I'd be willing to be struck dead by lightning if roasted maple was less creepy than regular kiln-dried maple, but I'd bet my life that it's more costly!
      Did you mean more or less? I haven't tested it, but maybe you could ask the roasters what their claims are. Honestly, heat has been a conditioning treatment for wood as long as humans have had open fires.
      I have a spear I brought back from Uganda in 1970 which is richly colored from being heat treated. Done properly, the stiffness and hardness of the material is thought to be improved.
      Modern, controlled roasting has not been shown to make major transformational changes in wood properties. The changes are slight, and sometimes beneficial, but not necessarily, depending on everything you can think of, as usual.
      Maple just Loves to bend and stretching is part of bending! We applaud and love this property in Maple, it's just part of its' identity, and I would be astonished if the oven w/o O2 would be able to change this in an important way.
      One man's considered opinion.
      OK, probably don't check, just in case of lightning, but really, no.

    • @zounds13
      @zounds13 7 місяців тому

      @@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Ha! Thanks for the reply, and yeah, I did mean to say more instead of less. Bad editing.
      Anyway, I'm a big fan of your work, and now of these videos as well.

  • @BryanClark-gk6ie
    @BryanClark-gk6ie 7 місяців тому

    Fall away and if to severe' refret with taller frets' relevel and add fall away or just level the fretboard to get rid of it. Which one would you recommend?

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  7 місяців тому

      This is a tough decision sometimes. I's a challenge not to be in the room with your instrument, of course, as there are a lot of elements to consider.
      Unless there is some reason against it (rare, but real, eg, historic instrument in original condition), I always favor doing the woodworking and using the same style wire for the whole job. Often, the first octave is OK, or can be quickly addressed with some light abrading and re-crowning. Way back when, '78 - '82, running the big repair shop I created at Steve Friedman's "Stuyvesant Music" on 48th street near Manhattan's 7th Avenue, a job so commonly performed that I came to call it...
      "The Usual Repair" , or "the usual"
      First, lube the truss rod and check its ability to perform, adjusting it for the correct relief on the bass side
      Precisely measure the neck's distortion at the centerline, and at both edges with a straightedge and feeler gauges, noting these distances between the 12th fret and the straightedge.
      1) Carefully pull the frets above 12, without damaging them, having marked them for orientation with ink, and kept in order in a row of little holes in a block
      2) Remove the correct "triangular slice" of wood to perfect the fingerboard surface , that is, "0" at fret 13, and whatever the offending number of thousandths was at the very end, checking with calipers. We normally would remove .005" - .010' or .125 - .250 mm more material than the plan called for, just for insurance, although there are sometimes reasons not to do this, especially on solid-bodies that are heavily used in the second octave.
      The tools used were a super sharp little plane with a tiny throat opening, usually skewed or even across the grain, then scrapers and sandpaper glued to a block..
      3) Check and adjust the curvature of the frets, and reinstall.
      Unless the removal of wood changed the color of the fingerboard surface, as it usually would do if the board was maple or Brazilian Rosewood, the repair was nearly impossible to detect, and the effect on the customer was to induce joy!
      Not only did the guitar play like a dream, but also this repair was priced at half the cost of a complete fret job, and produced, if performed correctly, perfect results!

  • @NBGuitarRepair
    @NBGuitarRepair 10 місяців тому

    I call it Fenderitis. Relief from the first fret to the last fret. I often wonder why they don't just add some drop off to the fingerboard before fretting to anticipate what it inevitable... Because that's how I end up fixing it.

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому

      My buddy Sherwood Phifer calls this Gibsonitis, too! We're all wondering the same thing. It may surprise you to learn that the only company to do what you suggest while I was working as a repairman was Ovation, who designed a small "fall off" after the 12th fret, and were generally not burdened with this common defect. This might sound odd, but remember, the parent company, Sikorsky, unlike Fender of Gibson, was able to reliably keep helicopters in the air, and had a work force of engineers.

  • @plexibreath
    @plexibreath 10 місяців тому

    As always, very informative video, thanks! What hardwoods tend to resist creep more? I've heard good things about Pernambuco, what about Limba?

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +1

      Really good question. I don't know how to answer this, but it would be good to know. Wanna take on the research and inform us?

  • @thijs199
    @thijs199 10 місяців тому

    So I'm thinking of an easy way to fix things right. So constant string tension is a problem. The hard solution is to get really pro on neck construction. An easy solution would be to be able to release some string tension with each playing session, which has to be conveniënt and regain tuning somewhat when re engaged. So I'm thinking a lever system at the tailpiece, what do you think?

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +1

      Yikes! I'd rather just try to solve the problem, this sounds like it might create a few new ones!

    • @thijs199
      @thijs199 10 місяців тому

      You're right, it seems that on this topic literally everyone agrees on forums that string tension has to be maintained on guitars haha. it's incredible, looked it up, the agreement was unreal ;)@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440

  • @stickman55100
    @stickman55100 10 місяців тому

    Absolutely fascinating! Isn’t this why truss rods were invented, or do they not really eliminate Neck Creep?

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +1

      Good question. First, the lutes are very lightly loaded compared to modern steel strung guitars, so the problem is much less. I think that while It's possible for a robust nail to combat creep in a lute, with its short neck, the modern adjustable truss rod now used is powerless against creep in a long guitar neck with steel strings, which is why we're talking about it. The modern rod can only adjust relief in the low octave of the guitar, and can't really address the stresses further up the neck that makes the neck material yield to creep.

    • @stickman55100
      @stickman55100 10 місяців тому

      @@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Thank you so much for replying to my message. I’m really learning so much by watching your UA-cam posts. Back to the topic, I’m assuming that the truss rod and creep issues are the reason you designed the Parker Fly. Such a beautiful and wonderful playing instrument. The necks are those are fantastic and having a monocoque shell added overall strength and integrity to the design. Thank you again.

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  6 місяців тому +1

      Yeah, dependable good neck behavior was mos' def' a prominent Must Do goal for the Fly guitar. I thought the best American manufacturers just didn't care what happened to their necks after they left the QC inspection, if any.
      Shame.

  • @chf4486
    @chf4486 10 місяців тому

    Nice cliffhanger!

  • @JuanjoNarive
    @JuanjoNarive 10 місяців тому

    Thanks Mr. Parker for another very informative video. What do you think about Hoxey guitar necks? being made of aluminum would eliminate creep in certain degree?

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +1

      Aluminum necks are strong enough to hang in there just fine if they are OK in the first place. The other problems that come with using aluminum for a neck are deal breakers for most of us. WAY too heavy is the first one we notice, then there's heat and cold issues, and finally, most of us hate how they sound, there Has to be another way!

  • @thijs199
    @thijs199 10 місяців тому

    I've refretted my strat couple years back, and I did this with bronze frets, which I like btw, but because it's a US strat I'm leaving the blue rust stains the frets leave becaue they remind me of statue of liberty not because I'm making excuses ='D ='D

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому

      The “EVO” bronze frets we have been able to buy (since 2005, IIRC) from Jescar are no longer being made, unfortunately. I hope we’ll have access to a similar product, as I think our world has gotten hooked on bronze fretwire for good reasons. Bronze is a handsome material for frets, and more durable than the 18% nickel frets that have been the standard of the industryfor so long. Let’s hope a good supplier thinks so too and makes them available in the variety of dimensions required by our field.

    • @thijs199
      @thijs199 10 місяців тому

      Sintoms Fretwire 2,3 x 1,4mm - bronce
      I got these, were cheaper ;) @@kenparkerarchtoppery9440

  • @wrstew1272
    @wrstew1272 10 місяців тому

    Ken- that is like giving a child a ten dollar bill at the doorstep of the candy store and then telling him that he can’t buy anything for a week…..🤔. Eagerly awaiting the next installment as usual.

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому

      Keep the Faith, baby.

    • @wrstew1272
      @wrstew1272 9 місяців тому

      @@kenparkerarchtoppery9440. I have faith in your ability and experience! A joy to exchange ideas with you. Thanks!

  • @SUPERBURLBOYROY
    @SUPERBURLBOYROY 10 місяців тому +1

    Hi 👋

  • @barrychristian4050
    @barrychristian4050 10 місяців тому

    A video about creep and not one radio head mention 😅

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому

      I'm too dumb, sorry, please explain.

    • @joda4063
      @joda4063 10 місяців тому

      @@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 English altrock band Radiohead had their first hit in 1992 with the song «Creep». The band went on to much more interesting things later in my opinion

  • @vreevroow
    @vreevroow 8 місяців тому

    dude casually whips out a 60s epi

  • @spoke4915
    @spoke4915 10 місяців тому

    creep like the sounds of the live show at we buy..

  • @BlaisPianoGuitars
    @BlaisPianoGuitars 10 місяців тому

    Good show again!
    Curiously.
    Those bendy ones, are they rock maple or sugar maple or what?
    Well,,, soft maple, non sugar or southern so called "hard" maple---is not so hard!
    But that is what will be told/sold to you nowadays.
    Cold climate clear straight tight grain Rock maple is not so easy to get. and $$
    It was always expensive. $$
    My 0.02 $
    Plenty of non sugar maple was always available for mega making = millions of necks.

    • @kenparkerarchtoppery9440
      @kenparkerarchtoppery9440  10 місяців тому +1

      The maple genus is Acer, and there are many, many species!
      As far as I can tell, hard maple, rock maple and sugar maple are all the same tree. There are also soft maples that are available as lumber, and it can get a little confusing.
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple
      Most maple necks, including Fender necks and copies thereof are nearly always hard maple.
      Hard maple has excellent stiffness and impact resistance, pretty good stability, and is easy to bend.
      You must take the good with the bad, and of course it depends on what you're doing with it. When we're bending sides it's one thing, and using it for a one-piece neck it's another.
      I'm not disparaging maple, we all love this material, it's just that we need to fully understand it and not expect it to do things it can't do.
      Big leaf maple on the west coast, and red maple on the east coast are soft maples also of interest to we who build....
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_macrophyllum
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_rubrum

    • @BlaisPianoGuitars
      @BlaisPianoGuitars 10 місяців тому

      Hello.
      They forgot to mention maybe, the sugar maples are cash producers, every year.
      A big reason why they weren't cut down so fast. Or they would be almost extinct like most other trees. all the "big old ones"
      They were planted for future use.
      I have heard of other maple trees producing syrup but 40 gal to one is not so good.
      And it doesn't have the flavor .
      These special maples are only in North America. I think?
      Hah--I have a quart of it right in front of me.@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440

  • @badscrew4023
    @badscrew4023 9 місяців тому

    It's a creep
    It's a weirdo
    What the hell it's doin' here
    It doesn't belong here