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Hi all, my brother is having a custom electric guitar built, and he sent me this picture of the neck. To me it really looks like some kind of shim between the neck and body but the builder says it's just decoration. Have you guys seen this before, a set neck guitar with some type of decorative wood between the neck and body? Cheers!

Must be a record for big image!lol

It's called a heel cap. It's not a shim. It's only purpose on an electric is to look nice.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Lol, I know what a heelcap is, I'm talking about the piece between the body and neck.

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Yeah, that's what you call "Faan-See". Just like shell inlay, it improves bass response. That's why it costs more.

Joking aside, I've seen something similar before where they tried to tie fingerboard binding together with the heal cap to "frame" the heel. On an L-5'ish archtop, it looked pretty good. To be honest, I'm not as convinced by this luthiers version.

This piece of wood.

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My initial thought was he had a lot of necks made to a smaller scale length, and then used this shim to use the same necks on a longer scale length. I've never seen this on an electric, assuming it's not a decorative veneer.

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Yes, that is what I'm talking about. I've seen that where a pice of binding is inlayed along the heel to "frame" it and link the headstock binding and heel cap. On the guitar I saw it also connected visually body binding. This isn't as well executed, and may be an attempt to hide a flaw. No way to know from those pictures.


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Isn't that a solid piece of wood, the entire body? Looking at the back and the sides it looks like a one piece body to me on my little laptop. I could be wrong but I don't see any shim. What I do see is a body shape/design that has a "platform" of sorts for the neck joint and we can even see where the maker has chiseled it a bit for neck angle fit. Nothing untoward about this.

This is the flat spot to fit the neck and a protrusion of sorts but it looks all like one deliberate part of this maker's design.

John what caught my eye is the body by the heel cap. (the lighter almost filler looking piece) It doesn't look right and causes me to think that something went south making the neck pocket...like the heel cap is used to cover up whatever that small section is that I'm seeing. With that it leads me to think that's why the piece you're questioning on the side is there. Possibly attempts to cover shims on sides and bottom of a shimmed up neck pocket.

If I'm wrong....I don't like the appearance either way.

I am assuming your brother is spending a couple of thousand, at least, on a custom build. If that detail wasn't discussed, and he doesn't like it, i think it is fair to insist a different neck be used.


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Has he received the guitar? Does he like how it plays/sounds?