Every white Sousaphone, back in the day. They might well have gone to carbon since, as anything to get the weight down on those makes a big difference to the players. Some drumshells (again, more marching than rock-band, and for the same reason.)
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Necks without truss rods
- Thread starter ardgedee
- Start date
Judging from the sousaphone listings at Sweetwater, still only metal or fiberglass; no CF to be found.
Yeah, but I was suggesting headless in response to the comment about neck diving. Making the body smaller too would negate that.
I didn’t design the thing; just letting you know that there is a headless lumie. If you want to make (or have made for you) a bigger body for one, you can have what you want.
You've said it several times! But I've yet to see your source for this, or any proof (one way or the other). Not trying to be snarky, just genuinely interested.
Gluelam can be a mix of hardwoods and softwoods (or even be all-hardwood, using shorter pieces which are cheaper than full-length beams). I assume this is what underlies their claim of being stronger than standard construction-grade lumber, which is softwood (spruce, pine, or fir).
Well sure, but I did say under normal circumstances. And under normal circumstances changing to a different string gauge completely mucks up all of that careful planning.
The vast majority of gluelam is softwood, and one of the major benefits is that they can cut out defects, fingerjoint planks end to end, and then laminate the whole stack side to side.
Solid wood of that scale without defects is not really a thing without some old-growth forest to log, and folks haven't been giving the forests 400-500 years to regenerate, so that supply is pretty well gone.
Defects have a large impact on beam characteristics.
Solid wood of that scale without defects is not really a thing without some old-growth forest to log, and folks haven't been giving the forests 400-500 years to regenerate, so that supply is pretty well gone.
Defects have a large impact on beam characteristics.
Take a mechanical engineering course. Or talk to someone who has. This is very common knowledge amongst Mechanical Engineers (I've worked with dozens, even hired a few). Or (my schooling) take some Physics mechanics courses, with a professor who did a lot of work with wood stuff (musical instruments in particular). We actually discussed the stiffness of musical instrument necks and their construction (and dead spots, etc) in class.
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If the defects are in the center piles, there isn't much impact, but on top or bottom (depending on how the beam is stressed) they are certainly much more impactful. If the thing is a cantilever (unsupported on one end), the top laminations are under tension, if it's spanning two supports, the bottom laminations are under tension. The center of the beam is not really under much stress - steel I beams or I joists (similar structures made from wood for house joists) are often wide at the top and bottom, and narrow in the middle - the middle isn't stressed much, so it can be narrow - the top and bottom provide the stiffness.
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Hey Flying B;
I'm a genuine Mechanical Engineer, and worked in the industry for many decades. I'll back up what micguy is saying. A glue joint in a wood beam, by itself, doesn't usually increase the strength or stiffness of the beam. The glue itself will usually have approximately the same shear strength as the wood on either side of it, if the joint is done well. Even if the glue were stronger, it's still a tiny thin sheet in the stackup of the beam.
If you take a maple board, saw it into three strips, joint them carefully and glue them back together in the same orientation, the strength and stiffness of the board won't change much.
If you insert strips of a different wood between the maple strips (ribbon stripes), then the beam may get stronger and stiffer, if the different wood is itself stronger and stiffer than the same thickness maple strip. How much stronger/stiffer depends on the width/thickness of those ribbon strips. If the ribbon wood is weaker and softer than the maple, then the overall glued beam will get weaker and softer. If you glue in thin strips of basswood, they will become the limiting factor. The beam will bend and break at a lower loading as the basswood strips deflect and shear. It's the stackup of the wood strips that determine the strength and stiffness of the beam, not the glue joints. Unless they are weak/bad glue joints!
That's why we often play around with ribbon stripe multi-lam necks; to adjust the strength and stiffness and internal damping properties of the beam. Using different amounts of different woods with different strength properties. And they sure look cool, too.
Stability of the beam is a little different from strength/stiffness. If you saw the maple board apart into three strips, then rotate and flip the strips so that the end rings are in the symmetrical V-pattern, and glue it back together, it will make the beam more stable. Not stronger or stiffer, but more likely to stay straight as the wood dries out or absorbs moisture from the weather. Again, it's not the glue joints, it's the re-orientation of the rings.
100% correct. The Passion IV is killer as well. Cold, heat… Nothing affects these, dead-on. No change whatsoever.No truss rod in the Vigier. It never moves and it’s always dead on no matter the string set. Its a phenom and an absolutely killer axe.
My Kay bass guitar doesn’t have one, has a thick neck, very stable.
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Are you sure?
I've never seen an early Kay that didn't have an embedded steel bar neck reinforcement up until they switched to a truss rod neck. Some of them didn't have the label stating its use, so there's that. Kay's that had no neck bar were generally produced pre-1950's.
I had thought so, but now I'm not sure. Your question got me curious but the internet answers I've found are not clear. I thought the reissues supposedly added a truss rod as a feature not found on the original. (Kay K162 Pro Bass Review). But maybe it is an imbedded truss rod that's just not adjustable.
Paging @Steven Ayres -- he would know I believe.
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I PM’d Steven and this was his reply: “As far as I've seen none of the three 160-group basses (K160, 162, 5965) ever got the adjustable truss rod, or even steel reinforcement. Kay didn't fully embrace the standard truss rod till '62.“
You can build an electric bass neck without a truss rod. But there's some significant engineering and risk involved. You have to build the neck so that it bends under the load of the strings, to a set amount of relief. And then hope that it always stays within a workable range of relief through temperature and humidity changes. And a range of string load, from different tunings or different gauge strings.
It can be done. But the risk is that, if it doesn't come out right, it takes some serious rework to correct it. Do you want to have to level or replace the frets if you change string types, or have some seasonal weather? The purpose of a truss rod is to give you a small range of adjustment to handle those small changes in the bending of the neck.
And it's not as simple as just making the neck much stiffer, adding carbon fiber or other reinforcements. Stiffness and stability are two different things. Making a neck stiffer does not guarantee that it will be more stable. Or that it will bend to a predictable amount of relief.