Neck Through Body

A neck joint that is used exclusively in solid body and semi-solid body guitars. The “neck” is actually an integral part of the guitar’s body and extends the entire length of the instrument, from the headstock to the strap button. The earliest electric guitars by Rickenbacker in the 1930s incorporated neck-through designs. Les Paul’s early experimental guitars also began with a 4″ wood post that ran from tail to headstock, with the sawed-off halves of a guitar body glued onto its sides. More advanced neck-through designs use dovetail joints or dados – a “groove” in one piece that fits a “tab” in the other – to connect the full-length neck to the body wings. A neck through body guitar is often lighter in weight than either a set neck or a bolt-on neck and helps produce a brighter sound than these joints.