The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

hell. i got to thinking about this guitar and how inexpensive it was... started inspecting it very carefully in different lightjng, angling it and looking at reflections. Found a scarf joint in it, ranging between the third and fifth frets. I was completely wrong.

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j.k.

What do you call this kind of joint?
This is an '87 westone xa1220 with Matsumoku on the neck plate. I ask because I've seen several of these and they don't look like they'd be very stable.

This is the first time I've ventured on to this board. I thought I'd put in my 2 cents, but if the interest is dead, so be it.

Scarf joints aren't all bad. If proper joinery & adhesives are used, they can strengthen the neck--if it is made with a pitched (i.e., tilt-back) headstock.

The idea behind scarf joints is that on a pitched headstock, the grain of the wood that runs along the neck will run into end-grain in the middle of the headstock, making the headstock more fragile along the line extending from the bottom contour of the neck through the headstock (this depends on the degree of pitch, but usually starts around the 2nd [A] & 3rd [D] tuners & runs from there to the end of the headstock).

A number of manufacturers incorporated scarf joints into mid 80s to at least late 90s (haven't paid much attention to new guitars since then, so I don't know how they're making them now) "hockey-stick" & "pointed-hockey-stick" pitched-headstock guitars. The practice was adopted as a counter-measure when a lot of players experienced headstock breaks on the "hockey-stick-headstock" guitars.

On the higher-end stuff, scarf-joints were more effective (better wood, better joinery, better labor). On cheaper guitars made with inferior joinery, it's kind of like Crusty said--they were trading one problem for another (even top-notch joinery won't help inferior wood--but it may have helped just enough to get you through the warranty period).

The pic of Jorg's headstock is too small for me to tell what kind of joint that is on the neck, but it's most likely a scarf joint. I think that raised carving on the back of the headstock where it meets the back of the neck is called a volute. A substantial volute can help strengthen the weak area of a pitched-headstock--but I don't see much of a point in using both a scarf-joint & a volute.

* red text added Sat 08 Nov 2008

That pic was one I found somewhere or I'd have taken a better one. I've found several guitars with a straight joint like this between the nut and the first tuner. I have an old ('77 ish) Global LP copy that has one. I've posted pics somewhere here or I can take more if anybody is interested. Either way, this type joint looks like it wouldn't be very strong at all. Apparently it's stronger than it looks as my Global has no issue whatsoever*.


*if you don't consider the plywood body

I've 3 Westones with that throw back headstock and by my count it is made of 2 pieces of wood; there is an extra wee bit that the low E machine is mounted on. They must be a reinforced joint because one of my Clippers has had a decent nudge at the headstock and nothing's moved except the nut which had popped out!

Jorg & Corsair:

Are you guys talking about a lamination that runs in the direction of the neck's wood grain?

That's just a lamination that could be there for one of two reasons:

(1) the board stock used to make the neck wasn't wide enough to accommodate the width of the headstock (& it was too expensive to use wider board stock just for that little bit of headstock);

(2) where some of those headstocks really "spread out", the wood grain is inherently weak--it's better to add a lamination than to have an "appendage" with unsupported grain structure.

Laminations that run lengthwise with the grain are usually very stable.

A lot of those "hockey-stick" headstocks have multiple laminations that run with the grain for strength. I have a franken-something with a laminated 3-piece neck & 2 additional laminations on the headstock. I know that on my guitar, those headstock laminations were used to strengthen the headstock end-grain problems that a scarf-joint is designed to eliminate.

I realise that there's nothing inherently wrong with a properly made scarf, or indeed any other, joint; it just looks odd, is all!!
Here's my Genesis II's headstock...

[img]http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u66/forthill/hs1.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u66/forthill/hs2.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u66/forthill/hs3.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u66/forthill/hs4.jpg[/img]

I have always thought they aged wood better overseas. At least that has been my logic for why necks on overseas guitars seem to hold a setup far better than their domestic counterparts.
Samicks in particular seem to have rock solid necks that don't change.
I have had quite a few guitars with scarf joints, and never really paid it much attention.

I just refinished a guitar that I think was a Raven, it is japanese and a bolt on neck version of that series. The neck is mahogany, and I don't remember that it had a scarf joint when I put the finish on, so I suspect it didn't or I would have noticed.
But the body was made out of wood that looks like a cross between maple and agathis. It definitely isn't plywood, I don't remember noticing lines where it was separate blocks glued together either.
I put some Epiphone LP pickups in it and man, the thing sounds and feels great. Whatever the wood is in the body it resonates great. The guitar reminds me a lot of some of the old Hamers.

If you're ever curious, look on E-Bay for "Epiphone broken" or "Epiphone project" and you'll find bunches of bad scarf joints. Actually, most now just pitch the necks and sell only bodies, for a while you could buy them by groups of 6 guitars, all without headstocks.

je

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...doing bad things to good Vantages since 1985...

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