Starting last year, Custom shop models from master builders Momose, Yasui, and Furihata, all began being equipped with a new configuration that allows for unrivaled durability without having an impact on the instrument's sound, on the contrary, it helps overall improve the high-tones.
This is achieved thanks to the carbon rods located to each side of the truss rod, that have a width and height of about 6.5 mm x 3 mm. This provides a level of structural integrity never before seen.
Normally, the neck of an acoustic guitar slightly bends in the opposite direction when the strings are removed. And there is a balance with the tension of normal tuned strings which apply several tens of kilograms of force that maintains the neck straight.
When the string vibrates as you play it, the neck moves accordingly, and the softer the neck is, the more it resonates with the vibration of the strings, and the damping of the string vibration becomes faster and the sustain drops.
If you were to have a neck made of an overly hard neck, such as iron, the vibration of the strings would hardly cause the neck to vibrate, and the resonance of the neck would not impair the string vibration. Perhaps sustain would even grow considerably. (Of course, such a neck would be extremely heavy, and the sound will not be exactly guitar-like.)
It is not realistic to make the whole neck from iron for a traditional acoustic guitar, but by embedding hard, lightweight reinforcements, the neck is strengthened, improving sustain and sound quality without hampering the guitar’s integral qualities.
By adding a carbon rod to each side of the truss rod the quality of the neck is greatly improved without changing the total mass of the neck from a conventional one. This makes for a much stronger neck that is way harder to get warped and twisted.
In addition to Yasuo Momose’s Custom Shop models, some of the custom models from Masato Yasui and Arata Furihata are now using this configuration. So please, keep this in mind if you are looking to buy a new Custom Shop model and if you can, give this new configuration a try!
↑ Carbon bars being placed. *The actual product will use bars that match the size of the neck.
