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Hi Ecca

it's probably truer to say that they bend forward relative to the bridge which means each fret height is fractionaly lower than it's preceeding partner as you go up the neck, again relative to the bridge / saddles / trem etc

If the neck looks concave it has probably been packed too high at the front end of the neck pocket.

With a minimal forward bend on the neck you can generaly achieve a lower action before the strings start to rattle on the frets further along, of course this depends on how hard you hit your strings as well, those of us who dig in really hard or strum hard probably need a higher action to avoid string buzz

Depending on fretboard radius and whether that is consistant all the way up forward relief may vary to allow string bending.

If you prefer a higher action, and plenty of people do, then forward relief is not so important

If the neck appears concave rather than bending forward on a set neck guitar then it would suggest the geometry of the guitar is all wrong and is probably best off on Ebay as one careful owner!!!

I'm more than happy to buy a bolt on neck guitar on Ebay but I'd think twice about a set neck, you can normally fix a bolt on without too much difficulty, but a set neck is a whole different ball game.

And now can somebody tell me what the difference betwen a regular humbucker and a Filtertron is? I suspect that whilst on a regular humbucker the coils are wired in series, they are in parrallel on the Filtertron hence the twangier sound.

Geoff M

Hi I cannot answer your question directly ,but i know a man who can .If you visit the "TV Jones " pickup website and go into the technical section i bet your answer will be within .

Also if you have a liking for Filtron Pickups the Fender Custom Shop has released a Telecaster with one or two Filtron Pickups John Mayer is now using /playing one I have also tried it and I am now hiding the Credit Card

Cheers Nigel

Ecca: A slight concavity along the fretboard is needed simply because of the shape of the vibration envelope of the string.

As perverse as it may sound, you can't get the action as low (without rattles) on a completely straight fretboard as you can on an optimally-adjusted concave one.

JN

An interesting question and answers!

Geoff M,

I think the Filtertron was a Gretsch production version of a design by Ray Butts which he created for Chet Atkins.

I have a video of Chet playing on an old US TV show from about the mid '50's, and he uses various Gretsch models, 6120, Chet Atkins Solid Body etc (this is well before the Country Gent appeared) some of which are prototypes with either one or two Ray Butts pickups, and Chet is also using a Ray Butts amp, which had a built-in tape echo unit- Scotty Moore and a couple of other guys also used these custom built amps back then. Scotty was then able to get his Sun studio slapback echo recorded sound live on stage with Elvis

Ray Butts invented his own humbucking pickup design (based on the principle of opposed wound magnetic coils as found in transformers)for Chet - to try and get a noiseless pickup- I think this was about the same time that Seth Lover came up with his humbucker for Gibson- who knows, Ray may have been first?

As far as the sound of humbuckers goes, I always preferred the Gretsch to the Gibson...more twangy, as you say...closer to a Fender or DeArmond tone I suppose.

Regarding neck setups, Tommy Emmanuel plays bloody hard, but his acoustic Matons are set up with very low action and a neck adjusted virtually dead flat with little or no relief. Mind you, the strings used are not these flappy skinny ultra light gauges...

Eccas wearing his feeler gauges out!

On a Fender guitarthe neck above the 12th fret is largley un-affected by truss rod adjustments, (quite a lot of it is clamped flat in the neck pocket anyway). A good guitar tech will compensate for this when fret leveling by creating a very slight fall off in fret heights in this area when setting up a neck to achieve a very low action, for the standard factory set up this very skilled work is not usually needed.

Filtertron pickups usually sound a lot brighter than Gibson Humbuckers, (I love Filtertrons). When Ray Butts designed the Filtertron pickup he was looking for a replacement for the single coil Dynasonic pickups that Gretsch were using at the time and Chet Atkins, one of their major endorsers, was less than happy with. I think that a large part of the reason for their un-humbuckerish tone is that they have a lot less windings. The Typical DC resistance of a Filtertron pickup is around 4.5k ohms, Standard Gibson Humbuckers are around 8k ohms. In my experiance the more windings you have the higher the output of the pickup but the trade off is you loose top end. High output Stratocaster pickups have a higher DC resistance than Custom Shop 54s' or 57/62s' and thus are not quite so bright sounding. Gretsch, Fender and Gibson have used ceramic magnets in some pickups, these tend to brighten up the sound but can sound "brittle" in my opinion.