Video: Deciding Neck Radius for a Guitar

The neck radius describes the curvature of the fingerboard from side to side on a guitar, learn what neck radius to use for building your own guitar in this free guitar-building video.

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Frank Pope of FBI guitars an behalf of Expert Village to talk to you guys about how to build your own guitar. Now, I'm going to talk to you about another thing you need to consider before you start building your guitar. That is what radius on the fret board feels more comfortable to you. Some of you may not be aware exactly what a radius is or how it effects the playing, you just know that there's certain guitars that play better in your hands than others. The radius describes the curvature of the fingerboard from side to side. If you imagine a giant circle with a 12" radius, these frets are curved the same amount that, that circle would be anywhere along it's point. So this neck is referred to as a 12" radius neck. Meaning that the curvature on the top of the fingerboard is the same is the outside of a circle drawn with a radius of 12". Now, this is a standard 12" radius, it's used a lot, it's probably the most common one that's used for, what's called a constant radius fingerboard and that means it's 12" curvature the entire length of this finger board. There are other types of fingerboards that are referred to as compound radius. That means that the fingerboard may be 12" up here and then progress to a generally flatter curvature, eventually being maybe 18" or 20" down here at the end. Most shredders, really fast players, prefer a compound radius neck. But you should try out different necks, find out what the radius of each of them is, and then make a descision on what you want the radius on your fingerboard to be.

Deciding Neck Radius for a Guitar

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