[Vaibanez]

I have so many Ibanez necks.
They are all so close, you're talking 1 or 2mm hear or there.
I just like them flat and wide!

If I had to say, my JEM7DBK.

+1
Amen sister

 

[doriangrey]

I'm starting to like the neck on ESP M-II ctm.

if those ESP M-II guitars play as nice as they look then I think I need one...

 

[Ke^in]

I have a 06 Prestige neck. I sanded it down to 17-19mm thinness, but it's still wider than the original wizard, making it still feel bigger.

I'm thinking about buying one of these.

http://tinyurl.com/qbq47p5

And getting a older wizard neck and sticking it on it.

 

[FuzzUniverze]

I agree, I started on a GRX40 and that neck was so thick that when i was doing barre chords, I got some nasty wrist pain (which led me to buying my RG350). I can probably play it okay now without too much pain, but I was sorta traumatized by wrist pain lol

EDIT: Jeez, I never realized how terrible my spelling and English overall has gotten since I moved to Japan 7 years ago LMAO

I experienced terrible wrist pain with my first guitar (some cort les paul copy from the 80's) The neck was the fattest thickest bulkiest neck i've seen and played so far, and it was my main guitar along with an acoustic. I then moved to affinity strat which still has a big neck then a 12 string acoustic and then an ibanez srx305 bass. When i bought my s570b the wizard neck felt like a dream and all those other guitars just built mass amount of finger and wrist strength to the point like it was weighted guitar training up till my Saber.

 

[mi2tom]

I have a 06 Prestige neck. I sanded it down to 17-19mm thinness, but it's still wider than the original wizard, making it still feel bigger.

I'm thinking about buying one of these.

http://tinyurl.com/qbq47p5

And getting a older wizard neck and sticking it on it.

I agree! Older ibanez neck just have the mojo that the newer ibanez doesn't have... Sadly

 

[nathan80]

A RG neck or a strat neck has been my favorite for the last 6 years. I pesonally dont like les pauls necks much these days.

 

[barbarelaxe]

+1...

+2......

 

[Ke^in]

I agree! Older ibanez neck just have the mojo that the newer ibanez doesn't have... Sadly

My guess? Ibanez made them wider because of the down-tuning trend
Thicker low E string needed more room?

Ibanez hasn't made a decent wizard since early 2k

I'd love to see a 24 3/4 scale wizard too

 

[MatiasTolkki]

I experienced terrible wrist pain with my first guitar (some cort les paul copy from the 80's) The neck was the fattest thickest bulkiest neck i've seen and played so far, and it was my main guitar along with an acoustic. I then moved to affinity strat which still has a big neck then a 12 string acoustic and then an ibanez srx305 bass. When i bought my s570b the wizard neck felt like a dream and all those other guitars just built mass amount of finger and wrist strength to the point like it was weighted guitar training up till my Saber.

Not to mention the fact that Sabers are crazy light as it is, that's pretty funny. That saber must feel like a paperweight. At least I don't feel so alone now with the wrist pain issue.

I LOVE the Fireman and Brian May's red Special but those necks are just so stinkin thick that they are impossible for me to play. I managed to try out a used red special some time ago, sounds AMAZING but Brian has such long fingers it's easy for him to play but someone like me who has normal length fingers, it's a pain in the backside to play. I felt really bad because I wanted to buy 1 one day. Well that dream went up in smoke.

 

[Takin' a Ride]

Not to mention the fact that Sabers are crazy light as it is, that's pretty funny. That saber must feel like a paperweight.

My '87 Saber weighed in at 7 lb, 3 oz, actually heavier than two '90 USA Customs I had, which both weighed in at 6 lb, 15 oz. They're mahogany so that makes up for a lot of what you lose with the thin body.

My lightest guitar is an '89 540P at 6 lb, 10 oz. That guitar has a 3/4 size basswood body.

Back to the neck thing, my favorite neck is probably on my GMC. Jem necks are significantly fatter than Wizard necks and are also oil finished rather than satin cleared. I find that I play faster and more comfortably on a little fatter neck. I like my RBM2 neck as well. I have somewhat large hands, which is probably why I prefer a bit beefier neck.

My beefiest Ibanez neck is easily on my '06 RGT320. I haven't had the strings off to measure thickness, but it's nearly a full mm wider at the nut and 24th fret than most of my classic Ibanez necks. The extra width can help with keeping the E strings on the fretboard. I've noticed that on some of my skinniest necks, it's easy to pop the string off the side if you aren't careful.

My beefiest neck overall is my ESP M-1 Tiger by a mile. George Lynch has massive hands and purposely uses a very wide and very thick neck. The neck is 45.3mm wide at the nut. The only guitar I have which is wider at the nut is my '89 540P, which is 45.5mm. Both of these guitars are listed as 45mm at the nut. The interesting thing about the M-1 is that it still uses a 43mm nut, so the extra width is all outside the E strings.

 

[ibz_SA]

04 vwh neck, it feels like "home"

 

[FuzzUniverze]

Not to mention the fact that Sabers are crazy light as it is, that's pretty funny. That saber must feel like a paperweight. At least I don't feel so alone now with the wrist pain issue.

I LOVE the Fireman and Brian May's red Special but those necks are just so stinkin thick that they are impossible for me to play. I managed to try out a used red special some time ago, sounds AMAZING but Brian has such long fingers it's easy for him to play but someone like me who has normal length fingers, it's a pain in the backside to play. I felt really bad because I wanted to buy 1 one day. Well that dream went up in smoke.

I love the Fireman's neck! yeah it pretty thick but so is the tone.
But i guess i would've preferred it a little thinner i mean theres a decent difference in neck size compared to his previous PGM's necks.

 

[63Blazer]

I love the Fireman's neck! yeah it pretty thick but so is the tone.
But i guess i would've preferred it a little thinner i mean theres a decent difference in neck size compared to his previous PGM's necks.

Tone and necks, where do I start?

I think played unplugged a thicker neck, and also thicker body, does make the tone nice and dark. There's that woman tone from all that mass.

However, when you plug in anything, be it a Les Paul Custom or Yamaha SG1500, both like I have had, or a vintage tele or strat, then the tone you get is largely started by the signal in your chain coming from the pickups. The two basic tones most get, regardless of body, is the thinner and sharper single coil tone, as on the Fireman, or a more rounded tone as on the Les Paul or Yamaha SG1500. But then only slight variances will be due to just what type of humbucker but the hummer tone will come from there being two coils taking in information from a wide cast pickup. The Fireman with single coils, regardless of body or material or neck thickness will be most influenced from the fact that the pickups gain their information to work with from three narrow fields giving it a strat like tone.

That being said the bigger neck coupled with Korina/Mahogany, will darken the tone from the standard alder body and bolt on maple neck as found on many strats. The current incarnation of the Ibanez Fireman will still sing like a strat more than a mahogany bodied Gibson with humbuckers. Now if the Fireman came with a humbucker or two, then the tone would be altogether different and resemble the Les Paul family much more.

From the pickups the next thing is usually at least one effect and depending on effect, a sound can be radically changed and even made unrecognizable. The final part of a chain is usually the amp but if there's a mic to PA then there's the factor of what mic and what PA. Are you using a nice condenser mic for the amp or a spare vocalist's SM58 to mic the amp? I got my favorite sound with a '68 tele or '65 Melody Maker going into a small hybrid practice amp then having a Peavey bass drum mic take it all into a digital DAT machine. The tone was monstrous yet controllable for the engineer.

There are so many factors but the least important for your tone you or the audience will hear is whether the neck is a thin less than 0.8" inches thick or a whopping greater than 1.1" inches thick at first fret. Nothing replaces getting all the equipment rigged up as you plan to record or gig with to determine just how your guitar is going to sound and it's what makes electric solidbody guitars so fun but often so darn frustrating. Shame on Paul Gilbert for attributing a rounder tone with Fireman based on neck thickness! You have to remember it's Paul Gilbert's freaking fingers and he could make the thinnest guitar sing and sustain. The pickups he uses are also a little hotter than your off the shelf strat pickups, too.

Off topic, but while I love the tone of old passive pickups sitting around with a small amp all by myself in a room, the easiest pickup to control over a whole band in a live situation is something as consistent and biting as an active EMG 81. It could be a bear trying to make and old Fender or Gibson single coil pickup behave in a recording studio and it hinders playing for the track when you can't move the guitar too much or change its angle lest you get that old 60Hz hum wrecking the take. It may be hard to stomach with a little practice amp and be over the top in output of a modern EMG 81, but when it comes to dialing in a perfectly matching rhythm tone or a lead cutting through the mix of a take onto DAT of other musicians or of a loud live audience, the EMG 81 (or similar pickup with a battery) is hard to beat.

Finding out how to record and play live and get a pleasing sound for the take or the audience versus a personal preference of what you alone like is what separates the men from the boys when it comes to being a useful guitar player. There's just too much literature out there misinforming people about "tone" based on woods, thickness of bodies and necks, and very slight nuances in pickup design (Duncan '59 vs. real old PAF vs. Gibson Classic '57) when there's no replacement for actually setting stuff up and doing trial and error to make a band sound the best as a unit or making your guitar part fit the song.

Rant over but it can save a few years of utter frustration. The first and best thing one can do is to burn all the pickup manufacturer's brochures or anything that goes on about what woods a solidbody guitar is made out of. Will your AAA flame maple sound better than a plain maple cap/top on a solid Les Paul? Will less expensive white Philippine Mahogany sound different than budget African Sapele or pricey red Honduras mahogany as a backing wood on that Les Paul? Will your Les Paul Custom from 1960 with an all mahogany body under black paint really sound different than a black beauty reissue made with a maple cap?

 

[FuzzUniverze]

WOW that was alot to take in for a moment
just as you said "THERE ARE SO MANY FACTORS" The neck post i made was to be taken more as a joke . Indeed there are many things that affect the way a guitar sound whether it be fingers,wood,amps,pedal mysterious enchantments on magical guitars etc... There are just so many things that determine a guitars sound that it can be an endless chasm of contradictory beliefs and arguments whipped around all over the debate of sound a guitar makes factored by numerous beliefs. There is just so many little idiosyncrasies in tone to really rely on that one factor that provides said tone. Overall every little niche found in the sound of the guitar is a result of numerous components and characteristics all working harmoniously to form that resulted sound.
So yes as you said there are many factors so one should not get into utter frustration about it. My personal preference when it comes to tone is if i like it then it's good regardless of what materials and doo dads its made out of.

 

[MatiasTolkki]

That was alot for me to take in too LOL

I always plug in, for acoustic sounds I just play REAL clean with a touch of gain for a slight crunch. Need it just in case I have to do some sort of harmonics

I know tone can be dictated by the neck thickness etc, but the Fireman's neck is just SO thick that I have a hard time playing it :/ The new iceman is similar in a way (although it only gives me trouble from about 13th fret up do to the neck thru design and massive section where the neck and body meet whereas the fireman just destroys my wrist).

 

[FuzzUniverze]

:

That was alot for me to take in too LOL

I always plug in, for acoustic sounds I just play REAL clean with a touch of gain for a slight crunch. Need it just in case I have to do some sort of harmonics

I know tone can be dictated by the neck thickness etc, but the Fireman's neck is just SO thick that I have a hard time playing it :/ The new iceman is similar in a way (although it only gives me trouble from about 13th fret up do to the neck thru design and massive section where the neck and body meet whereas the fireman just destroys my wrist).

8O
when you say acoustic sounds do you mean an actual acoustic? and when you say play clean do you mean playing with extreme accuracy or your tone
LOL

 

[63Blazer]

WOW that was alot to take in for a moment
just as you said "THERE ARE SO MANY FACTORS" The neck post i made was to be taken more as a joke . Indeed there are many things that affect the way a guitar sound whether it be fingers,wood,amps,pedal mysterious enchantments on magical guitars etc... There are just so many things that determine a guitars sound that it can be an endless chasm of contradictory beliefs and arguments whipped around all over the debate of sound a guitar makes factored by numerous beliefs. There is just so many little idiosyncrasies in tone to really rely on that one factor that provides said tone. Overall every little niche found in the sound of the guitar is a result of numerous components and characteristics all working harmoniously to form that resulted sound.
So yes as you said there are many factors so one should not get into utter frustration about it. My personal preference when it comes to tone is if i like it then it's good regardless of what materials and doo dads its made out of.

Beyond how you play it and what you plug it into, it's really simply are you playing an acoustic or electric? If it's acoustic is it nylon string or steel string as those are the two you will likely come across? And if it's electric, then are you using a humbucker or single coil?

It's almost as simple as that and then for the rest you infuse your style or mix of amps and effects.

Too much focuses on nuances only a few players and engineers will care anything about when we should compose or play around the basics first. Whether my humbucker has 8k ohms resistance or 9.5k ohms is not the key thing as much as you are working with a humbucker and within that framework. You won't sound like a Ramirez nylon string and you won't sound like a D-28 and within a reasonable framework what you play will sound more like a Gibson electric than those other two.

As for overly thick necks, especially at heel/body joint, I can still play up on high but not as often and not as long so either I play on other parts of neck or just pick up a guitar with thinner neck. No guitar that I know of is going to please people with big hands and people with small hands alike. No neck will be perfect for first position chords and for lightning fast arpeggios on the 17th fret. No scale length will be the "best" since there are several that work with commonly found strings. That being said Paul Reed Smith was smart in taking elements of the basic strat shape and balance and mixing it with a few Gibson features, too and then making a neck in between the short Gibson scale and the long Fender scale. The thickness of the neck also falls between some very thin Fenders and the more classic, retro Gibson boat necks. Unfortunately, I just don't like the sharp edges of where the neck approaches the body on the PRS and still prefer the classic bolt-on joint of a strat or straight ahead Gibson body/neck joint with fewer sharp corners than the PRS.

 

[jono]

Rant over but it can save a few years of utter frustration. The first and best thing one can do is to burn all the pickup manufacturer's brochures or anything that goes on about what woods a solidbody guitar is made out of. Will your AAA flame maple sound better than a plain maple cap/top on a solid Les Paul? Will less expensive white Philippine Mahogany sound different than budget African Sapele or pricey red Honduras mahogany as a backing wood on that Les Paul? Will your Les Paul Custom from 1960 with an all mahogany body under black paint really sound different than a black beauty reissue made with a maple cap?

I still maintain, if you can tell the difference between Philippine mahogany and African sapele, then you're not using enough distortion

 

[63Blazer]

I still maintain, if you can tell the difference between Philippine mahogany and African sapele, then you're not using enough distortion

I think what I should do is a/b them and get one of each type of Ibanez Tube Screamer distortion and if wife asks what I am doing, it's official Ibanez research.8O

 

[Ke^in]

IMHO if you have any variation of the wizard neck, sanding say a Wizard II down to Wizard I thickness isn't hard. And it doesn't take long.