Graphiteneckchat - calling all graphite neck enthusiasts!

[Kiwi]

Regular BCers will already know how enthusiastic I am about graphite necked basses, having owned examples by all the major manufacturers since the late seventies.  Since Status and Moses stopped making graphite necks, noone seems to be stepping in for the after market, so for the last three months I've been working on potential ways to keep offering aftermarket graphite necks to guitar and bass playing enthusiasts.

I'm at the point now where the the technical side of feasibility has been worked out as you'll see in the ad I have for five prototype headless necks here.  So the next question to answer is about commercial feasibility and I was hoping BC'ers might be able to help me decide where to focus next.

 

I did have lined up SR5 and SR4 necks, specifically for preEB and EB Classic instruments.  (I'm still planning to install a prototype neck on my SR5 Classic and finally get the 5 string Cutlass bass I've always lusted after.)   But what if there was demand from other owners...?  Yamaha BB owners for example?  Or Modulus owners?  Or Sire?  Or maybe something else?

From a purely commercial perspective, I know there is a limit to how much people will pay for an aftermarket neck and there are bottom line overheads that can't be ignored either.  And you'll already be aware that making molds can be a labour intensive task.  So pricing has to somehow fit between those two constraints and generate sufficient volume to sustain operations.

So if I was to look at offering another kind of after market neck - where should I focus?  Have a look at the poll and hit the option that you would buy for yourself.

 

[itu]

Of all 4 string carbon necks I've played I like Status MM4 a lot because of its profile. Vigier Passion II has another good profile. This is naturally subjective, because I've heard someone to love Steinberger (feels awkward to me).

 

Five string is a more complicated topic. Most of the necks are with 17 mm string spacing and it is too tight for me. Modulus has thin and very playable neck but I never felt the spacing comfortable. I have found that spacing varies between 14 and 21.5 mm from bass to bass, and (18-)19 mm feels the most natural (to me, that is). 

 

I think that a 18-19 mm spacing allows tighter spacing, too, if the bridge allows it. But 17 mm spacing will never make 19 mm possible when the neck dimensions hinder it. 

 

Scale lengths, I like to be on the longer side, 34-36". But the spacing and neck profile are much more important to me. 

 

Why have I chosen graphite over wood? Environmental stability. No need to adjust. Black looks good. Matt lacquer feels good under the thumb. Tinting or the top twill gives a nice touch. And I don't care about suitability to some body or neck pocket dimensions. Neck is the thing and everything else follows that. 

(Brass or steel screw inserts, please.) 

[Beedster]

Biggest market has to be Fender Jazz in both fretted and fretless, followed by Precision and one or more Stingrays (depending on whether they are pre-drilled) 👍

[itu]

4 minutes ago, Beedster said:

Biggest market has to be Fender Jazz...

Which I think is so cheap: I would like to see shapes from other decades than 50's. I do not play surf. But commercially it most likely is the road to happiness. 

[itu]

4 hours ago, Kiwi said:

And you'll already be aware that making molds can be a labour intensive task.  So pricing has to somehow fit between those two constraints and generate sufficient volume to sustain operations.

A mold costs around £3000-15000. It needs some fixing, and its lifetime depends on the material (cheap and soft aluminium, or hard and pricey steel). Therefore the real price will certainly be higher than the given cost. And as the 4 string bass is the most common (90 % of all basses?), I would start with it. 

[Beedster]

18 minutes ago, itu said:

Which I think is so cheap: I would like to see shapes from other decades than 50's. I do not play surf. But commercially it most likely is the road to happiness. 

 

List a Status Graphite 4-string Jazz neck for sale on this forum and it will be gone within minutes at a price higher than its original RRP, simply because of both rarity and the vast number of instruments already owned that it will work with (Fender MIA, MIJ, MIM Jazzes and Precisions, plus many other brands). Cheap? It's simply good business sense. A lot of businesses go under because they fail to recognise the nature of the market they're selling into.   

[Bagman]

Best of luck Steve. Hope it goes well 

[Kiwi]

1 hour ago, itu said:

A mold costs around £3000-15000. It needs some fixing, and its lifetime depends on the material (cheap and soft aluminium, or hard and pricey steel). Therefore the real price will certainly be higher than the given cost. And as the 4 string bass is the most common (90 % of all basses?), I would start with it. 

For high volune mass manufacturing metal moulds are durable, but fibreglass moulds ca be used as well for shorter runs.  And there are other options for very limited batches. 

[Beedster]

2 hours ago, itu said:

I would like to see shapes from other decades than 50's. I do not play surf

 

Always struck me that with graphite necks, given the cost or manufacture the relatively limited marketplace per instrument - Fender Jazz excluded  - that a modular headstock design is a route worth exploring, essentially a headless neck with either some prongs or inserts that will take a range headstocks of the major designs (Fender/EBMM as well as more niche options such as Wal, Warwick, Sandberg). If it were wood the join would be way too vulnerable to stress/impact, much less so with graphite? 

[Doctor J]

Another Vigier convert here. No truss rod, a neck that just stays as it should regardless of season is a wonderful thing, so this would interest me greatly.
 

Starting with a Fender compatible neck makes sound business sense, not just for the amount of big F basses out there but the aftermarket parts realm mostly lives here too. Beyond that it gets into the realm of personal preference. My own preference is for 38mm nut width and Jazzish shape overall, banjo sized frets, no fretboard dots or inlays, just high-contrast side dots. The headstock would have to be somewhat sympathetic to the design of the bodies it goes into so, keeping that Fender pocket in mind, something spiky or oddly misshapen (hi Klos) might not work. I'd go for a tilt-back design too, regardless of overall shape, to alleviate the need for a string tree. Why progress one way but keep a workaround for bad design in another?

[HeadlessBassist]

I'd like to try a neck for one of my American Jazzes if you're going to put them into production, Kiwi? I assume the 'PEEK' material is similar to the Status 'Phelonic' fingerboard material?

[Delberthot]

I was pretty late getting into graphite necks.

 

I didn't know it at the time but when I bought my Status jazz neck a couple of years ago that it would be one of the last made.

 

After many gigs with it, I've come to the conclusion that just dont like wooden necks anymore. This is part of the reason I've been selling my basses.

 

Jazz, Stingray and Precision are probably going to be the most requested simply going by the sheer numbers produced.

 

Having said that, if I could get a neck for my EBMM Sterling 4 then I would be keeping it.

[Kiwi]

17 minutes ago, HeadlessBassist said:

I'd like to try a neck for one of my American Jazzes if you're going to put them into production, Kiwi? I assume the 'PEEK' material is similar to the Status 'Phelonic' fingerboard material?

PEEK is a very modern, durable, high performance composite matrix unlike phenolic resin, aka Bakerlite by those who were around in the fifties.  The other thing some of us discovered over the years of bass buying is that phenolic can be fairly tricky to mix.  I've had a number of basses, with necks all made by the same company, where the phenolic resin fingerboards didn't cure stiff enough.  PEEK and wood avoid this issue entirely.

 

If you vote in the poll, it'll help show me where preferences lie.