Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

While it's no news that Ricks are designed to have the neck adjusted "dead straight," i.e. no relief/bow, I'm curious as to what specific design elements make this so, other than the dual rods. Do any other elements come into play, here?

It's a product of the Rickenbacker's very basic, but elegant, geometry, and has zero to do with the number of truss rods.

On Rickenbacker electric guitars and basses, the top surface of the fretboard runs exactly parallel to the top surface of the body. In other words, no neck angle. The average string clearance, therefore, is determined by the height of the top surface of the bridge saddles from the top surface of the guitar body. The ideal reference dimension would place the bridge at or near the center of the travel of the bridge height adjusting screws, allowing for the string height to be adjusted easily to suit individual preferences. In the vast majority of cases, no neck relief is necessary.

Rick acoustics have a -1/2 degree neck angle (typical of flat-top acoustics); the Jazz-Bo has a -5 degree one (typical of arch-topped acoustics).

Ah...now that sheds some light on it. So, the concept of neck relief is more about minimizing the bridge height, than preventing strings from fretting out? I assume that a bit of relief would be necessary on the aforementioned acoustics...?

Thanks, Paul!

Theoretically, no relief is even necessary, if we're just talking about the geometry of the matter. This would apply to any guitar. Relief exists to allow the strings some clearance to vibrate. This is more important on acoustic instruments than electrically amplified instruments. Electrically-amplified instruments require less string action for a given sound volume. Furthermore, if relief is insufficient for your playing style, you can always increase it or bridge height.

Acoustics play best with relief on the neck. Lots of string vibration is generally evident, and we like to give those strings space to sing out. Neck angle and bridge height are both critical to acoustic performance, sound and tone. Mechanically speaking, there are both horizontal (co-planar with the instrument's top) and vertical components to the motion of an acoustic guitar's bridge, with the bridge additionally wanting to rock along the line directly under the bridge saddle.

You'll notice that on most flat-top acoustic guitars, there is a lot more bridge real estate behind the saddle than in front of it. That gluing area is critical to solid mechanics and sound transfer. Too little height on the saddle, and tone and volume will suffer. Too much height, and the torque on the bridge will eventually warp the top or pull the bridge plate loose. On archtops and some flat-tops, the horizontal force is borne by a trapeze tailpiece, leaving a skinny bridge free to intone by sliding and free to only bear the vertical force vector.

Then we could get into sound differences between different bracing patterns under tops, size of air chambers, etc. There are as many surprises as obvious truths in a discussion such as this, so sometime we'll tackle parts of that topic, too.

But, yeah, acoustics generally need some neck relief.

Go Paul, Go. Mark