Having somewhat grown up with the vintage 7.25 radius of Fender Strats and owning a Les Paul since the mid 70's,I don't even know what that radius is,...the radius of a neck is not much of an issue to me,I can bend notes on any one of them...to me the big issue is the frets,I have a Strat with Dunlop 6105 frets and can't get to where I really feel good with them,I can play it fine I just don't like the height of them that much.

Reason 1



Reason 2.
Why I avoid these discussions.

The nonsense spouted about radius is nothing more than a marketing fairy tale that someone with a far greater imagination than Walt Disney wrote.



If Mr Russian Racehorse were to redraw those curves across a 56mm width (widest point of the fingerboard), with all lines starting and ending at the same 2 points. You wouldn't see the difference. I've tried, I couldn't get a pencil line fine enough to see paper between the curves. I resorted to using a pin and trying to score the lines into paper and couldn't get it accurate enough on the 2nd line. The paper kept tearing up between the lines. Though I do laud Mr Racehorses efforts. His drawing is the only way I could find to accurately convey the curves in relation to each other.

[/quote]

Please don't ever do that, it's a public forum and there are views based on far more experience than mine.

thank you niki.
its "reason #2" that i wait for your replies.
reason 2 was kinda what i was thinking to be honest.
you might be right niki, there just may very well be folks on here with more experience
than you. thing is, they arent guaranteed to speak up where its likely that you will.
in knowing this, i kinda just seek you out or expect that you will show up shortly on
topics of this nature. thats why i tease about the bat signal, i can almost bet the farm that you will eventually show up and add input of either fact, or opinion, or even another way at looking at things. either way, you opinions are well respected by the members of this forum.

_________________
63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

Really the whole radius, pickup, neckshape and tuner debates can be whittled down to one question.
Does the guitar suit you?
Thats all you need to ask yourself 99.5% of the time. A lot of the time we're being blinded by science. Then you have special blend mumbojumbo added in too. When all it's really about is do you like the sound and feel of the thing. Some aspects of guitars are of very little importance, others more so. No other aspect is more important than 'does it sound like you want?'

The way I look at these things is, the more options you have, the less critical it is. Reason being important things are either right or wrong with a few options to suit different customers. Theres few grey areas with some aspects of a instrument that's been undergoing perfection for 60 years.
Bodyshapes? 5 main ones.
Neck shapes? 5 main ones.
Pickups, too many to count. Not perfected still a very grey area.
Radius, ditto.
Tuners, ditto.
Bridges, ditto
Nut's? Shapes, only a few. Material, loads and loads.

What's the most comfortable thing about a strat? It's gotta be the contours hasn't it? You have what 3 options on contours. Deep belly cut, normal and CBS shallow (people were thinner in the 70's).
Telecaster, what gives it that old warhorse feeling? Neck and thick body. Ok you could argue the case for the simple layout too. Note you only get 2 choices on the body thickness.

my case in point on your replies niki.
well thought out, educational, and always something extra to think about.

_________________
63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."