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This JJ Hucke Antarctica model guitar has neck-thru construction with no discernible heel. This greatly facilitates high fret access. The neck is bird's eye flamed maple and purpleheart, while the "wings" are poplar.

Neck-through-body (commonly neck-thru or neck-through) is a method of electric guitar construction that combines the instrument's neck and core of its body into a single unit. This may be made of a solid piece of wood, or two or more laminated together. The strings, nut, fretboard, pickups and bridge are all mounted on this central core. Additional body side components (if any) that fill-out its shape are glued or mechanically attached to this central core. These are referred to as "wings".

This method of construction may be somewhat more common in electric basses than in guitars, as the longer neck of a bass benefits from the sturdier construction. Also, this construction method theoretically bolsters low frequency transmission across the core which can be muted with other construction methods.

Neck-through-body construction is considerably more expensive than the traditional glued set-in neck and bolt-on neck style construction methods. However, it's less costly than the very rare and difficult "one-piece" fabrication of an entire instrument from a single piece of material.

History

The first electric bass guitar, the solid-body "Audiovox 736" created by Paul Tutmarc circa 1937, had a neck-through construction.

"The Log", a prototype solid-body guitar built by Les Paul in 1941, can be considered as a forerunner of neck-through designed instrument. Les Paul built the model using a recycled 4x4 fence post as the neck and body core, and mounted the disassembled parts of an Epiphone and Gibson archtop guitar onto it.

The 1952-57 Harmony H44 had this construction feature.

In 1956 Rickenbacker was one of the first guitar manufacturers to use the modern variant of this technique, although this was originally restricted exclusively to semi-hollowbody guitars.

Pros and cons

Pros

Two headless Strandberg Boden Plini model guitars with differing construction methods. On the left is neck-through construction with a quartersawn roasted maple neck and swamp ash wings. On the right is chamfered bolt-on quartersawn mahogany neck and mahogany body. Notice the flush mounted screws to reduce heel profile. Both necks have carbon-fiber reinforcement strips.

The most important benefit for the player of a neck-thru guitar is the reduction of heel mass. The heel is the term used to describe the thickened area at the body-neck junction. Body-neck connection area thickening is required for structural integrity. In the violin family of instruments this area's called the "button", "saddle" or "nose".

The area where the neck attaches to the body is naturally a weak zone. There's a lot of pressure exerted on the instrument due to the combined tension of all the strings pulling on the instrument between the tuners and the bridge. The neck-body connection area is weaker if you have to join a separate neck to a body. The screws (bolt-on) or glue (set-neck) used to connect the neck to the body requires significant area to be able to provide sound structural integrity to act against the string's tension and bond body to neck totally stably to ensure tuning stability of the instrument. Heel mass then becomes an obstacle when attempting to reach higher registers of the fretboard.

Neck-through construction allows easier access to higher frets because there is no need for a bulky heel as there is no neck-to-body connection. In such an instrument, the neck morphs into the body of such an instrument. When constructing a neck-through guitar the luthier can chamfer the neck-body transition area (which would be the heel) to a minimum, sometimes almost relieving the heel entirely. This allows easier, sometimes unhindered, access to the upper registers.

For players of rhythm or open chords alone, or players that do not reach up to the highest registers of the fretboard in lead or solo playing, there is significantly less benefit from this construction method.

Front & back of an Ibanez RG model with a central neck-through core laminate constructed of maple/purpleheart/maple running the length of the instrument. The glued-on wings are made from swamp ash. The top has a carefully stained AAA grade flame maple cap leaving a border of unstained wood termed "natural binding". The heel of this instrument has been significantly chamfered to improve high-register access.

With a neck through design there's more vibration transfer of the string across the single material that the stings are mounted upon. This should produce an instrument with more natural sustain and less muting of bass-end frequencies at the neck-to-body join area. As such, a neck-thru guitar may sound warmer than a bolt-on construction instrument with more sustain, better tuning stability and more easily attainable low fret action. Scientific studies on the subject are lacking, and at least one experiment seemed to contradict the logic.

A neck through design, if well executed, should provide a more stable neck angle and theoretically should be able to tolerate and accommodate a lower string action. This lower action, plus the easier high fret access, makes a neck through design particularly suitable for lead and solo playing. In modern high-end bolt-on and set neck instruments the attainment of low action is often just as possible as with neck-thru instruments.

It is of note that in many modern high-end bolt-on guitar designs, the neck heel has been greatly chamfered and features flush mounted screws rather than a protruding neck plate to align the screws. Although there may still be a bulkier heel than found with a refined neck-through design, the practical differences between the two are negated if a bolt-on has a very reduced, sculpted heel mass.

Neck-through construction on an early Ibanez Studio guitar. Despite its neck-thru construction, it has a bulky heel with little or no chamfering. This greatly negates the benefits of this more costly construction method.

The construction of a neck-thru instrument makes it inherently more rigid than a bolt on instrument and therefore somewhat less susceptible to temperature and humidity changes. All guitars require maintenance and benefit from careful monitoring of humidity, but perhaps, electric neck-thru guitars require the least monitoring of all wooden guitars, and perhaps all wooden fretted instruments.

Cons

Neck-through construction is harder and more expensive to mass-produce than bolt-on or set-in neck constructions.

There is added expense in having to have much longer piece(s) of quality material to make the neck-through core.

There's added production time. A Bolt-on neck can be fabricated separately to the body, perhaps in a different facility or country. While separate necks are being crafted, bodies can be painted and finished without necks attached, significantly reducing manufacturing lead times and costs. This is one of the critical manufacturing benefits Leo Fender considered when designing bolt-on instruments.

It's easier to craft and fret a neck that's not yet attached to a body. A through-neck guitar cannot benefit from these production expedients. A through-neck is more time consuming to produce as the instrument has to be crafted around the core, incurring more expense and time to manufacture such an instrument.

If a fault or critical error arises in through-neck construction the entire instrument may be written-off. This, plus the additional construction time discussed above, adds up to a neck-through construction instrument being comparatively more expensive than an instrument of very similar specification but manufactured with a set-neck or bolt-on construction method.

Repairs to this type of neck can be more difficult if not impossible. Repairs to such instruments can be more costly because of this. In some cases, it may be easier to remove the old neck completely by removing the wings and replacing the core with an entirely new component. Alternatively, such a guitar can be converted to a bolt-on or set-neck by creating a heel and affixing the new neck to the core already in place, rather than to try to repair the neck itself. However, due to the stability of this kind of construction, neck-through guitars tend to be more sturdy.

Use

This structure is used by many companies, including Parker Guitars, B.C. Rich, Yamaha (primarily on basses), Cort Guitars, Ibanez (primarily on basses), Jackson, Dean Guitars, Alembic, Schecter, Carvin, ESP Guitars, Strandberg, Halo, Solar guitars, Rickenbacker and many others.

Many configurations of the Gibson Firebird guitar and Thunderbird bass are also built neck-through.

The construction method is also popular with independent guitar builders, who can typically devote more time to such a labour-intensive neck joint than a mass-producing company could.