Question About Necks - Flamed or Birdseye

[djphaneuf]

Before I bought my hollow T I looked at a lot of custom shop strats and noted that some of them had interesting necks with a lot of birdseyes or flames and this was generally a selling point. Have not seen that on any Anderson guitars. Is there a technical reason for this or is it simply preference?

[enr1co]

...Circa 2004 thread but pretty sure this is still Tom's position with birdseye:

http://andersonforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=638&highlight=birdseye


it does look cool though! :cool:

[djphaneuf]

Thanks for pulling up the old thread (will try a search next time). They do look pretty neat but I figured there was a technical reason for not seeing them on an Anderson.

[dannopelli]

While figured necks are not an option, especially BE, I can tell you that two of mine, as they age, are showing visible signs of flame. It is kind of cool. If I get a chance I'll post a pic.

Note, the flame is not something you can order. I imagine it is just a luck of the draw thing for me.

[Pietro]

I have one guitar with a birdseye neck from US Masters. Incredibly stable, but they put a couple big hunks of graphite in the neck to make it that way. I've heard nightmare stories about how conventional necks made of BE warp and twist.

[tom]

our maple comes from veneer grade logs, so the grain is very straight. there can be some flame in there but it's usually soft and not the compression stuff.

[marzzz]

A while back I had a first run EB/MM EVH with a gorgeous birdseye maple neck. I noticed that with later editions the necks became more plain, but I did not own the guitar long enough to notice any problems. I ended up selling it for stupid money after EVH pulled his endorsement (and the guy I sold it to sold it for even stupider money to a collector in Japan).