Making a neck thicker

chris_john

I have a telecaster neck that’s just too thin for my aging hands. Has anyone ever made a neck thicker by removing the fretboard, and sandwiching a thin wood sheet in there? 

Would it be better to apply a sheet of rosewood under the fretboard, or a sheet of maple on top of the neck?

WezV

Possible, but a lot of work when the neck could be replaced instead. 

Rosewood would hide better

ICBM

chris_john said:

I have a telecaster neck that’s just too thin for my aging hands. Has anyone ever made a neck thicker by removing the fretboard, and sandwiching a thin wood sheet in there?

Yes, when making fake conversion 50s Les Pauls...

chris_john said:

Would it be better to apply a sheet of rosewood under the fretboard, or a sheet of maple on top of the neck?

Neither - better to replace the neck. Adding thickness to the front rather than the back will mean you either have to raise the bridge a lot, deepen the neck pocket, or reverse-shim it.

WezV

in detail answer, all assumes a slab board rosewood neck

Veneer standard thickness is 0.6mm   This will not be that noticeable if the profile is exactly the same, which it will be.  A small difference in thickness can make a big difference to feel, but when the profile is the same it will not be as noticeable.  

You can get maple in constructional guitar thicknesses which will work better but thicker peices will be more noticeable and less likely to grain match when cut like a veneer is.  If rosewood or grain matched maple is wanted you would have to thin down a piece yourself.

As @ICBM says, it will affect neck angle geometry, but you might get away with this.  It will be affected by the thickness of the veneer as you are raising the whole fretboard plane by the same amount.  If you are adding 1mm to the front of the neck and have 1mm extra height available at the saddles you should be fine, if not you would need to deepen the neck pocket instead.   If you thinned the piece of wood yourself and it wasn't perfectly flat you could easily change the neck angle, which is much more likely to throw things off

plan to include a re-fret in the work.  The board will likely need a tidy up after removal and being re glued. It's best not to assume the frets will be in a usable after this

A lot of work!!

axisus

Sounds a bit mad. I'd just buy another neck.

chris_john

Yeah maybe it is a bit too big of a task after all. It's a shame because the neck feels nice, but it's just a tad too slim.

Funkfingers

You could refret with huge wire. This would make the neck play a bit like a deeper one that has been scalloped.

As @ICBM already pointed out, a thicker neck would oblige you to either raise the bridge, shim the neck to increase the pitch angle or shave out a little of the neck pocket floor.

The work of altering an existing neck is probably more difficult than making a new one from scratch. 

PrecisionGuided

Thinking about this another way... can you get your fingers shortened?

SteveRobinson

PrecisionGuided said:

Thinking about this another way... can you get your fingers shortened?

Tony Iommi style?

roberty

PrecisionGuided said:

Thinking about this another way... can you get your fingers shortened?

lol I have similar feelings about fat necks as @chris_john, it's to do with thumb compression. On a thin neck your thumb is squeezed right into your palm which is less relaxed and introduces tension. On the other hand (no pun intended) fatter necks are not conducive to thumb-over playing

The Baja telecaster neck or more recently Vintera 50's Modified neck is fairly hefty, especially for Fender. I would look for one of these (or even the whole guitar) as a replacement

chris_john

roberty said:

PrecisionGuided said:

Thinking about this another way... can you get your fingers shortened?

lol I have similar feelings about fat necks as @chris_john, it's to do with thumb compression. On a thin neck your thumb is squeezed right into your palm which is less relaxed and introduces tension. On the other hand (no pun intended) fatter necks are not conducive to thumb-over playing

The Baja telecaster neck or more recently Vintera 50's Modified neck is fairly hefty, especially for Fender. I would look for one of these (or even the whole guitar) as a replacement

There is a minor problem in finding a replacment. It doesn't have the same specs as Fender, and most of the replacements I have seen follow their measurements. It is made by the Japanese company Edwards, and has the following specs:

Width at nut: 43mm (1.69 inch)
Width at 12th fret: 52.0mm (20.4 inch)
Depth at first fret: 20.6mm (0.81 inch)
Depth at 12th fret: 22.0mm (0.87 inch)
Width at heel; 57mm (2.24 inch)

It is just at the edge of my comfort zone. If it wasn't so wide, it would be unplayabe for me.  As it is,  I can play but it tires my hand and wrist out after a little while.