You’re shopping for a guitar and you have an idea in your head of what you want to buy. You’ve thought about what brand and models you like, what colors are your favorite, what pickups and hardware suit you.
You’ve probably even been watching reviews and demos to hear how it sounds, but have you considered the shape of the neck of your guitar?
The neck of your guitar is big deal when it comes down to overall playability and being comfortable with your instrument in the long run. While it may sound complicated, it is a straightforward concept to understand. There are four standard neck shapes C-shape, U-Shape, V-Shape, and the more modern D-shape, and while they all look and feel different.
Fender Telecaster Neck Shape
You will notice quickly that not all will not feel comfortable in your hand. You will learn in your time playing the guitar that not all guitars are made the same and that each guitar has a different feel to the neck from the fretboard to the back of the neck.
While you could blindly order a guitar without doing the research, you could luck out and love it; on the other end, you could hate it and find it unplayable, and that’s we will go over so that you will have the tools available to you and you can find the right instrument to learn and grow with.
Before going into too much detail, it must be said that the neck shape will not affect the sound of your guitar; however, change how you play it. There is no neck shape out there that will be better for soloing, jazz licks, or jamming out to your favorite rock riff. The neck you decide to choose all comes down to comfort and playability.
Neck Angle Wedge Kits
You may be asking yourself now, “what do these letters even mean, and how does it affect me in the grand scheme of things?”.
To begin with, all guitar brands today use the standard C, U, and V shape to designate neck profiles. Some companies use the less common D shape, these all refer to the back of the neck and the section, and each one has varying depths. Let’s dive into more detail and see what each of these necks brings to the table.
The most common neck shape you will see on the market today would be the C-Shape neck standard on most, if not all, fender made models. The C-shape is rounded into an oval profile, making it very comfortable for anyone but those with larger hands while not being cut as deep as the U or V-shaped neck. This neck shape hit its prime in the 1980s when Fender decided to make this their neck shape of choice and bring it into the modern era with the contemporary C neck, also known as the “flat oval” C neck.
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Most Modern Guitars use this neck shape due to the all-around comfort and playability it gives. You might notice when you try a Fender, they may have a flatter c-shape than others, but the basic shape is still there;
For context, the huge c-shape neck offers little to no taper from the first fret to the 12th fret (Crazy stuff, right?). Due to the C-Shaped neck being relatively thin and rounded, it is great for most players, especially if you enjoy the feeling of your thumb free, instead of touching the neck itself.
This neck is massive in size and is chunkier and more rounded than the C-shape neck and is a very comfortable neck for those with larger hands. This neck shape is lovingly referred to as the “baseball bat” due to the almost rectangular shape it has. It is a very comfortable design for those with longer fingers to help give a more comfortable reach around the fretboard.
The Difference Between Popular Neck Shapes C, V And U
Many older Fender models stuck to this u-shape, such as the 1953 telecaster, and most reissue telecaster guitars today still use this shape neck. In the 50s, Gibson Les Paul’s were known far and wide for the “Baseball Bat” style necks, and they even use these on their reissue models to give them that classic feel and have felt as close to the original as possible, and as the years went on Gibson started to move from these fatter necks.
While the U-Shape is broad, that doesn’t necessarily mean thick Schecter makes a beautiful line of ultra-thin necks, so it doesn’t feel like such a handful like you would typically see in older U-shape necks.
The V-shape neck is a much older design and runs in two separate variations, the soft V-shape and the hard V-shape. While they are both a similar shape, they both have a very different feel. The soft V-shape was created by a complete accident in the Fender factories back in the 1950s. As the name implies, the V-shape does come to a hard point. It has a more rounded shape and feels, these are great for players who feel comfortable with their thumb hanging over the fretboard while they play. That brings us to the hard V-shape. This shape has hard curves straight to the V-shape.
Common Neck Shape Profiles
The V-shape is very uncommon today and usually only found on reissue models but is regarded as the more comfortable V-shape of the two. This shape neck is still used and loved by Eric Clapton, and Fender even made a replica model based on his Stratocaster that uses this neck shape.
The D-shaped neck, also known as the modern flat oval, is a modern neck for electric guitars. This neck shape got its start on classical string guitars due to the almost flat feel on the back of the neck, making it feel very comfortable in your hands as the neck itself is flatter than the rest of the neck shapes. The shoulders of these guitars often protrude vertically and then go over the radius of the neck. The shape of this neck is often mistaken for a C-shape. As previously mentioned, it has flatter edges than the C.
This neck is excellent if you love playing fast-moving passages and using techniques that involve rapid movement between strings. The D-Shaped Neck is the latest neck to be used by guitar companies to this day, and it is prevalent on more modern guitars with brands like Ibanez and Epiphone. The D-shape is definitely one of of the most common guitar neck shapes.
Guitar Neck Shapes Explained: The 8 Most Common Types (2023)
The A-symmetrical neck is a bit of a weird style neck which gets bulkier on one end of the neck and thinner going to the bottom of the neck. Imagine, if you will, if you start at the low E side of the neck, it gets thinner as it moves to the high e side, positioning the bulk of the neck in the hollow of your hand, reducing the thickness under your fingers. Having less wood under your fingers gives you a fuller shaped neck with easy playability; in a way, it gives you the best of multiple worlds from the previously mentioned neck profiles.
This style of necks is used mostly on signature models of guitars such as the Brad Paisley signature Telecaster. The models made by Eddie Van Halen’s Brand EVH models use a slim tapered A-symmetrical design as well as the 2018 Gibson Paul Standard, which also uses a slim tapered A-Symmetrical neck. Early A-symmetrical necks were usually the result of a mistake when the luthiers were building these guitars; little did they know those mistakes would make for a very comfortable guitar.
When choosing a neck shape, you might want to look into the fretboard radius of your guitar, and just like the neck shape, there are several different sizes you should know about when doing your research. The fretboard radius is the measure of the arc of its width. If you take a closer look at a guitar neck, you will notice that very few of these necks are ever genuinely flat and are slightly convex across the width. That is what the fingerboard radius measures.
Best Guitar Neck Shapes For Small Hands
Other stringed instruments, such as the classical guitar, banjo, and some steel-string guitars, have flat fingerboards, which means you will not see that same curvature on their fretboards. While Fender originally started with a 7.25” radius in the early years, they eventually moved to the 9.50” radius in the 1980s and kept it today on their modern Stratocasters and Telecasters. On the other hand, while Gibson varies slightly, their J-45 acoustic model has a 16” fretboard radius while most if not all of their electric guitar models sit in and a 10” to 12” radius.
The general idea behind this is that the radius of the fretboard, much like the shape of the neck, fits the natural curvature of the human hand, making it comfortable for the player. A good rule of thumb to follow is that a more curved neck tends to be better when it comes to chording due to the natural curve of the human hand mentioned above, but with the pros, unfortunately, there are some cons to these curved necks, the strings become much more difficult to
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