# Scalloped neck? pro's/ con's?



## vanhannam (Apr 26, 2009)

Hey guys, I've recently acquired a Fender strat neck from a trade, one with the 70's style fat headstock and that would be perfect only its fully scalloped so ergo it looks exactly like yngwie malmsteen's neck.kkjuw

anyway I'm not really an everyday shredder so I was wondering is a scalloped neck any good just for everyday playing? like your everyday rock/blues/ chorded style playing or will it be a big waste of time to slap it in a guitar?

thanks for your advice! If it doesn't work out I'm just going to trade or sell it .


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I'm interested to hear as well. I've never played a scalloped neck, but always thought they looked pretty neat.


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## vanhannam (Apr 26, 2009)

I wish I had more to tell you than that it does indeed look neat sir! ahah The neck I have doesn't look to be thattt drastically scalloped but then again I don't know what the norm is. I've been told there is some learning curve because you have to press very light on the strings


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## Lemmy Hangslong (May 11, 2006)

I've owned two Malmsteen strats, a 95 all maple and a 06 with rosewood board. The 95 had symetrical half circle scallops and the 06 had a symentrical scallop that was very different in that it had a flat bottom and a different tapered cut away from the frets... in short it felt more like a unscalloped board as my hand slided up and down the neck.

Whether you shred or not has nothing really to do with playing a guitar with a scalloped board... YJM made them popular, Ritchie Blackmoore used them.. Tony Iommi used them on his Custom JD and several other player such as Steve Vai and others have had scalloped fretboards al be it partially scalloped... maybe because it was in vouge or simply because there are some clear advantages.

The main advantage is there is no wood in the way so you get a very clean and almost effortless fretted note when pressing down for chords or single notes. Some players push harder than needed and sometimes thats caused by the finger tips bottoming out on wood early... the wood simply gets in the way. Bending notes... again depending on finger angle wood may impeed this technique.

The main disadvantage is there is no wood stopping the player's grip therefore it may be hard to prevent sharp notes from occuring.

In my opinion a scalloped board is not harder to play however if you have developed a heavy handed approach it will require some honing of technique... sort of like a Floyd Rose... if you lean too heavy it will push notes sharp. Some players dislike Floyds for that reason alone. All it really takes is some adjusting of technique and then another device becomes your expressional tool. 

I personally found my technique got better from playing a scalloped fretboard because it made me re-asses my technique and ultimatly make changes that improoved my playing overal. The main thing I learned was to press only as hard as need be to fret notes cleanly. On single notes this is far more obvious but on chords with multiple voiceings ( especially ) it forced me to pay attention in a more magnified way where I was more aware of the pressure I was placing on individual notes within the chord. This also reduced the stress on my hands and arms during long playing sessions.
I don't know about you guys but I'm getting older and have had Carpal Tunnel Surgery on both my hands in the last year so I place a high value on reducing stress.

It does not matter what style of music you play a scalloped fretboard will inhance your playing only if you accept your technique may need to be adjusted.

I've had several good - great players try my scalloped guitars and for the most part I will say that the results were not so good... player who could shred were reduced to novice playing... thats intimidating and therefore it becomes the scalloped board thats no good... LOL

Sadly I've sold both my YJM strats simply because I dislike the traditional Fender Straocaster design. I'm currently working on getting a scalloped fretboard for my Blade Texas Standard Pro... now there is one "strat" I really dig!

Cheers
Craig


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## Sneaky (Feb 14, 2006)

I played a Malmsteen once and was pleasantly surprised how nice it played. I was expecting it to be going sharp and wangy all the time but it was quite the opposite. It just felt nice and comfortable to play. I suppose bends were a bit easier. I'm not sure I would buy one myself, but that's just me (old guy).

My John Mayer Strat has the edges of the fretboard "scalloped", like a Tyler. It feels and plays really nice too.


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## Lemmy Hangslong (May 11, 2006)

edge scalloping is a great feature takes the bits out of the grip


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

KHINGPYNN said:


> edge scalloping is a great feature takes the bits out of the grip


Yeah, that's exactly what I did to my CV Tele's fretboard, though my job looks much less...umm...professional kqoct


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## WarrenG (Feb 3, 2006)

Would taller frets accomplish the same thing?


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## vanhannam (Apr 26, 2009)

hey guys! thanks for all the advice! however I've decided to let it go....no matter how effing cool it looked on my tele ahah


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Be ready to buy strings in bulk if you uise a scalloped neck. In general, the steeper the angle between the crown of the fret and where your finger presses the string against the fingerboard, the greater the risk of deforming the string and introducing bends/bumps in the string itself. That plays havoc with your intonation.

Years ago, I made the mistake of refretting a neck myself with much heavier gauge frets that stood high. The result was that my strings lost their intonation very shortly (within a month or two of semi-regular playing) after putting them on.

I'm not arguing against the sonic possibilities of scalloped fingerboard. Rather, you rarely get something for nothing, and in the case of scalloped fingerboards, you acquire the obligation to restring on a more frequent basis, and whatever costs and nuisance that entails. On the other hand, if you don't care about intonation, go for broke, baby!!:rockon2:


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## Crunchie (Feb 24, 2009)

If anyone goes through with it may i recommend Gene from Encore Music Exchange. He does the full scallop and the "blackmore" style scallop very well. Charges 15-20 per fret. He's alot faster than other techs.


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## Cort Strummer (Feb 16, 2009)

I asked about this at my local guitar shop and almost got beat up, even by my teacher.

so I will say that scalloping you fretboard is just to be different and is really pointless.


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

My main guitar right now is scallopped, I like it alot. The earlier post summed it all up pretty good, except I'll add that I feel the tone is slightly different with the scallopped neck, a little brasher and cutting IMO.

When I get my 62 RI strat back together I'm not scallopping it. I don't want all my guitars to require a light touch.


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