This feels like a really puritanical take on things. Fanned frets and multiscale absolutely help with the playability of an instrument. It’s physics, there’s nothing mystical or gimmicky about it.

Maybe YOU don’t want it, but it prevents strings from going flabby without needing much heavier gauges. Which does help with a wide range of playing styles and genres.

Unless you also believe that all guitars should have a single scale length or something, and a single neck profile and fingerboard radius. Otherwise if you concede that it comes down to feel+preference then there’s no argument to make against multiscale instruments.

Building multiscale means more work to build which means higher prices and more complex repairs. A reasonable jump in work/cost for marginally better playability. Also more things for the builder to fuck up and get wrong. That's kinda normal though, there's a lot of terribly-built instruments on the market and a lot of customers who can't even tell (e.g., people still buying Gibson despite decades of everyone saying their instruments don't QC).

I have all kinds of wild/bizarre/insane instruments for different purposes -- there's nothing puritanical here (I spend most of my time at NAMM in Hall E). I'm just saying that for 99.9% of players though these features aren't doing a damn bit of difference and most people are buying them out of gear-worship.

I think it's wild that we're talking about the "physics" of neck construction/playability and tension when at least 80% of guitar players can't even properly set up their own instrument and their tone sucks. It's in the fingers, man.

If any of you think that cargo-culting among software developers is bad, guitar players are that 10x over. If not 100x.

So you’ve gone from saying it’s a gimmick to saying it’s not worth the cost. Do you even have a cogent argument here other than anything you don’t like doesn’t make sense to you?.

There are tons of poorly made strat or les Paul like guitars too so are they also not worth making? Hell let’s just take off all bells and whistles from guitars by your logic, what’s the point of more than one pickup or floating bridges. Let’s go back to fret less guitars because that’s also one less thing for luthiers to mess up, and then you get rid of fret buzz for all those guitarists you say can’t set up their guitars.

You might as well just say that you personally don’t like them and leave it at that. The rest is just an unfounded world salad or projection.

No I'm assuming that most people on this board don't play exotic varieties of guitar and I'm trying to help people avoid any strange delusions like they might need these things to sound better on their instrument.

That's already enough of a problem on online guitar boards... Also I can speak from experience. I was one of the first maybe half-dozen people to buy a TT neck outside of Sweden. I knew Anders and spoke to him occasionally. I'm saying that if you have a need for it, you already know it and know why. And if you don't, you almost certainly do not need it.

And that goes for _most_ things that aren't really basic common features on your guitar. That's why things like the Babicz bridge or Kubicki Factor headstock drop-tuner aren't uniquitous. Or even the way Strandberg or Parker used to build guitars. There's hundreds of these kind of things and the marketing for all of them tells you they're the greatest thing since sliced bread and will sound as good as _insert guitar god name here_. At least a Parker Fly has resale value...most of these things don't.

And lots of dumb/pointless trends happen! Stupidly pointless neck lamination is still a big one. I remember laughing my first time seeing 11 or 13-piece laminated necks on plain vanilla 6 string Jacksons (particularly coming out of Indonesia) a decade or so ago. It's still stupid and unnecessary. Buyers should be looking for the fewest pieces of wood that still sound good and remain stable in their guitar...but hyper-laminated necks was the trend...

This is just pointless gatekeeping. You have an arbitrary subjective taste and have decided that anything outside of it is stupid without actually understanding what you dislike and why others might want it.

Laminated necks again provide quite a bit of rigidity and stability against warpage. This is again just physics, there’s nothing mystical to it. There’s limits to how much a truss rod can do by itself. Wood moves, any wood worker will tell as much and will tell you how to counter act warping by joining opposing wood grains or having stiffener pieces.

I’m very suspect of whether you actually understand the physicality of instruments, anyone who has built an instrument (as I have) will know what you’re saying is ill informed.

And just because a basic guitar is enough for most people, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a significant number of people here who can’t appreciate higher levels of craftsmanship. For you to think otherwise is basically just elitism.

Anyway it’s apparent that you are at in your ways and can’t articulate an argument as to why you think something isn’t worth it. You still haven’t provided a single shred of principled argument beyond just proclaiming your opinion as truth.

Enjoy playing your slabs and looking down on everyone else. I’m sure you have great taste in instruments but I hope you can understand that your tastes are subjective and there are tons of incredibly talented luthiers out there who would disagree with your portrayal of instruments.

> Laminated necks again provide quite a bit of rigidity and stability against warpage. This is again just physics, there’s nothing mystical to it. There’s limits to how much a truss rod can do by itself. Wood moves, any wood worker will tell as much and will tell you how to counter act warping by joining opposing wood grains or having stiffener pieces.

Omg you daft prick. I didn't say laminated necks are bad. I said 11 or 13 piece laminated necks are excessive and unnecessary. Especially in a basic 6 string Jackson. That _could_ have been one piece of wood at that price point. Three at most. That's just physics.

11 or 13 pieces of glued wood aren't doing anything more than 3 pieces would have in a guitar like that. "It's just physics".