Epi Les Paul with long neck tennon?

robgilmo

I'm selling my Epi guys and have found out it has a long neck tennon, is that why it plays so well? Why are long neck tennons considered better? And should it effect the asking price?

SimpleSimon

Has no effect on how well it plays though many reckon it adds to sustain. I doubt it has any real effect on value either.

WezV

The only real benefit is that it allows you to see whether the neck is badly fitted or not.

maximum glue surface is always good for stability, but short tenons should give plenty.  The problem is Gibson designed the short tenon to hide bad fitting joins, they almost gave up on the bottom glue  face altogether.


it adds no value to the epi

robgilmo

Thanks guys, Ive priced it to sell and was worried Id underpriced too much.

thermionic

What model is it? The Tribute Plus has one (although they call it something else). I don’t think it has much effect on the sound, but I suspect the full maple cap on these might.

robgilmo

It just says Les Paul Model, and Gibson on the truss cover, its black, so I am assuming its a Standard, its Korean from 2002.

normula1

I've one of those with a bird's eye veneer top. Great guitar.

robgilmo

This is mine, or soon to be someone elses.

https://i.imgur.com/kJ2k8zr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/l8wdz51.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/vUUo9WR.jpg

ICBM

WezV said:

The only real benefit is that it allows you to see whether the neck is badly fitted or not.

maximum glue surface is always good for stability, but short tenons should give plenty.  The problem is Gibson designed the short tenon to hide bad fitting joins, they almost gave up on the bottom glue  face altogether.

Exactly - it's the tightness of the joint and the glue bond between the neck and the body which determines vibration transfer, not the length of the tenon. And that's even if you think that 'vibration transfer' matters that much.

A well-fitted, fully-glued short tenon joint will actually be stronger and arguably 'transfer vibration' better than a poorly-fitted long one. It's just another piece of guitar myth, wrongly attributing a characteristic to something you can easily see, rather than correctly to something you can't.

In any case, if you want maximum contact and 'vibration transfer' you want a Junior - they have a much simpler full-width tenon which guarantees a tight glue joint on all three faces.

thermionic

What I never understood is that so much is made of Fender neck pocket tightness and wood-to-wood contact, yet Les Pauls have that massive gap under the neck pickup.

ICBM

thermionic said:

What I never understood is that so much is made of Fender neck pocket tightness and wood-to-wood contact, yet Les Pauls have that massive gap under the neck pickup.

That's just at the end, it's irrelevant - there's no transferred force there. It's the joint between the sides of the neck and the pocket that really matters, and to an extent between the bottom of it and the floor of the pocket, and also between the end face of the body and the end of the neck.

In any case, wood-to-wood contact with a Fender isn't necessarily important either. Many sound better with a shim in than with full contact between the pocket and the neck. Some of the gaps in Gibsons make the poor fit of even 1970s Fenders seem like precision engineering, anyway.

And if you really want to confuse the 'vibration transfer' believers, how about this...

http://www.nkforsterguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Rio-Howe-Orme-neck-joint.jpg

That's a Forster acoustic guitar with a neck joint that comprises only three points of contact between the neck and the body - a hook at the bottom and two adjustable wheels at the top.

They sound fantastic, and not very different from a conventional neck joint guitar. Bear in mind this is an *acoustic* guitar too, where transfer of vibration almost certainly matters more than it does on an electric.