most important aspect of electric guitars...

[slowburn]

is it the neck (profile, fretsize, radius, nut width)
or the body (wood combination)

for me it's the neck.

cause who cares if you have an awesomely resonant body if you can't play on the neck comfortably.

vice versa, if you have a good comfortable neck, you can still enjoy playing a compressed wood guitar...

[killerburst]

Originally posted by slowburn
is it the neck (profile, fretsize, radius, nut width)
or the body (wood combination)

for me it's the neck.

cause who cares if you have an awesomely resonant body if you can't play on the neck comfortably.

vice versa, if you have a good comfortable neck, you can still enjoy playing a compressed wood guitar...

I agree that the neck is the litmus test. Without some level of comfort there, the guitar ain't a keeper. But even if the neck is fantabulous, if the guitar's tone and vibe aren't right, she's a goner. I had a guitar once that played amazing- totally effortless action with no buzzing. Neck through body, all koa, hard tail, ebony board, 2 hums, 6100 frets, etc. I could burn all day long on that thing, or bend major thirds with ease. Total mush ball in the tone department. No punch or character. Just a blob of sound. Granted I was playing through a rack of MIDI crap at the time so it took me a while to realize that the guitar wasn't happening. But if the neck wasn't awesome, it never would have made it to gig #1.

[joe1962]

In the end I think you have to have all the right parts to make a guitar a keeper. I do agree the neck is the biggest part of it for me though. I've kept a couple of guitars in the past that played good and tried to fix the sound with different pickups. I've had a couple of guitars that sounded great that I let go pretty quick because I couldn't get used to the necks.

[Stan Malinowski]

Neck for the feel, body for the tone. If you have one without the other all you have are pieces of wood with strings.

[pluto]

Agreed-the neck is the most important aspect for me. Perfect neck in my hands is: 1.65 nut, 10-14 radius, .800-.880. As for wood combo-it doesn't matter too much to me. I definitely have my preferences (mahogany!), the neck makes the guitar for me. Pickups are also important, but I guess you can easily swap them if you want.

[funalij]

I think the best are sound, vibe, character.... and this is a mix of neck, body, pickups...., not a piece of a guitar.

I remember when I change string gauge 0.9 to 0.10, at the begining it was hard to do 2 tone bendings, but in a few hours dissapeared the problem.

Or when I bought Gibson LesPaul Standard (before I had a JEM 7BK - complety difference feeling), the neck was so strange, and slower than Ibanez, but time gave me the feeling to play with.
Don't you play a Les Paul for this reason?

I think the sound is the best important thing in a guitar.

Javier