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I've been playing since a kid in the 70s - occasionally in bands but mainly for my own enjoyment and I've owned a fair few guitars in that time. But it wasn't until I started regularly visiting this forum (about 12 months ago or so) that I knew such a thing as a fretboard radius existed. I know, stupid huh?
So it's surprising to me that it's something that appears to be big deal for a lot of
people - some much preferring X radius or others saying they can’t get on
with Y radius.
For 40+ years I've just bought/played guitars without giving
a second thought to the fact that fretboards actually might have different
curvatures.
Is this just a relatively recent thing to get hung up on or
have people always been quite choosy about it.
I can’t help feeling I was better off in blissful ignorance.
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Comments
Forums is the single biggest driver of GAS. I mean it is also great for other things but it's no doubt has caused me directly and indirectly spending far more than i otherwise would have.
Although it can also be argued that it has also saved me money and heartache in buying the wrong thing to begin with.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Nothing wrong with that.
I've got a number of guitars at the moment that I've been setting up. They have slightly different frets, radii etc. and I've been doing a 'standard' setup on each to compare. Same action, relief etc. I've found the one that I 'like' best. I think I play better with that setup.
I believe I only play better with the 'best' one because of the psychological effect of thinking it's better. If I had nothing to compare then it wouldn't matter...
It's highly entertaining bollocks, but bollocks none the less.
I think with radius of the fingerboard, it might be that without knowing about it you'd just think "I somehow preferred this guitar's neck for some reason" but no know what it was for. There are definitely things that we read about on forums and become concerned about that would never have been an issue though.
Even with actual music playing, I think that for everything we learn regarding technique or theory, there is benefits as well as downsides.
I think someone who has never learned to play another song could come up with a tune in their head that's different to they would after learning.
- Oh, many of the guitars I have played and liked have a feature in common, and
- I must like this guitar because it has a feature I have liked on other guitars.
If "bliss" means having an excuse to overthink why you're not playing guitar as much or not progressing as a player because you've put all your time into research and procuring preferred neck radii, then no.
But i’m glad I found out about valve amps and attenuators through forums 20 years ago, otherwise I don’t think electric guitar playing would of been as enjoyable/addictive
I have a telecaster HH with Fender standard which is fine util you are trying to shred a but and notes start to choke because of the small radius and I preferer something with a 12" radius
To be fair, this format was fine when all the business came through the front door - Now all the business is via the back door, UPS and WWW and as a result we are all trying to gather as much info before we buy, based on the assumption we know, or we think we know what we want