Love how this is exactly what we were talking about the other day 😀 The difference between a £200 and £2000 guitar these days is the fine details and finishes, and if you are willing to do those yourself... thanks for another interesting idea mate.
I recently bought a Chinese strat neck for the same price, it was matt black and the paint was really good just a little rough around the top edge along the fret board. Im sanding it back and repainting it now. Also needed leveling and crowning but the neck came dead straight out the box though. Very impressed!
I live in the Philippines, there is a hard wood supply store not to far from me, they have the largest supply of hardwood i have ever seen, they buy trees from all over the world, saw them in to lumber kiln dry it, and supply furniture manufacturers
I sure am glad that your channel got recommended to me when it did. I was already looking at these sorts of necks for my first parts build, and your video has convinced me to try it. I have a 60s Kawai body that I want to put a 24" scale neck on, and I think getting one of these types of necks would be good for learning purposes.
I just bought one of these for $69.00 and it is beautifully done, the frets are rounded better than Fender custom shop and I had no problems showing off the guitar to friends who asked me if it was a real Fender Player Stratocaster CS in NEON YELLOW!??!?! No, but I slept in a Holiday Inn last night.
You have a beautiful, soothing voice and make excellent points. I own 2 Chinese, chunky U shaped necks and they're shockingly good for the money. I don't have any complaints
Really just a question of if the wood is cured properly. Here's something random though. Any chance you'd be willing to sand down or otherwise murder one of those roasted necks? I'm curious if they're actually roasted or if they're stained lol.
I bought this telecaster neck off of eBay and it lowkey was better even then a fender made in Mexico neck in my opinion it was smoother along the tangs and it was so light and thin
Yeh, that's true. But the Japanese weren't operating under the system Chinese are... The Chinese system is set out to deliberately undercut the world market by producing counterfeits and effectively bankrolled by their government. It's more like a economic attack, the Japanese were essentially responding to a market that needed huge volumes of cheap guitars the west couldn't provide. The Chinese are effectively doing the same thing, but their intentions are dubious.
I have 2 of these necks on 2 x partcaster.......one of them has become my fav taking precedence over an actual 1980s strat, ultimately, guitars and especially strats are ingeniously simplistic, fender are a victim of Leo's brilliance as they are easy to copy well. Like you I spend a lot of time on set up regardless of brand so that aspect is academic really. If I really want to get picky I would like a one peice and not a glued on board but really..........!
I got cheap eBay Chinese necks with maple fretboards for both of my Affinity Strats, got a mahogany one for my Jazzmaster DIY build and a couple Tele necks for two other projects I'm working on. They're actually great quality necks, I haven't had any issues with the necks themselves. The only issues I've had is eBay sellers sending the wrong necks, so they just tell me to keep the wrong one and send me the right one, which means I have to start another body for the spare neck (I've built guitars before just because I had a spare pickguard laying around and wanted to use it on something.) All of the necks I've bought on eBay were around $40.
Did you encounter any issues with the Affinity body thickness and the neck heel thickness? For example did you have to route the neck pocket deeper to fit the eBay necks?
my first build. like five years ago, the chinese neck was fine. it's still on there, and i need to do a proper fret job on it. it has two problems. the truss rod slot is sloppy making it harder to adjust. and the fret ends are pokey. the latest chinese neck i bought. is way better. fret ends a butter smooth and it looks super professional. its weak point will again be the craftsman, (me) installing it.
$50-60 chinese necks dominate the results every time I search for necks to use with my next partscaster build. I always wrote them off as either a scam or too good to be true, even if the product and the seller had great reviews. I usually pay twice as much for necks and I always considered that a fair price but I feel like I got gouged after seeing this. Good on ya for not reflexively parroting "China bad."
I bought a Chinese black painted "maple" neck from ebay. I sanded the paint and it was poplar. Also the "ebony" fretboard was just painted to look ebony.
A couple things that weren't mentioned; if you buy a rosewood fretboard on any of these necks, it's probably just stained to look like rosewood. And it's hit or miss as to wether the tuner holes are all the same distance from each other.
I bought 4 Chinese necks and bodies this week after buying Allparts stuff for decades. Better than most Fender parts once finished out. It impressed me. 1/4th the price! I think they have discovered that even low prices have to come with quality for musical instruments to sell.
i don’t know how many more strat or tele builds ive got left in me, im 69 and a hobbiest, but i wish i had these resources when i was heavy into it 30 years ago
The best locking tuners that I've used so far is the 30ish dollar wcs or it might be wsc tuners that came on my Harley Benton Tele. So smooth with no play or backlash in either direction
Hi Mark, LOVE, your channel. Do you think these Chinese necks are real flamed maple or are they just wrapping wire around them and charring them with a blow torch to create a faux flame appearance?
You said that you do a fret level no matter what but sometimes an import or even one from the states will surprise you and have no high frets or just have one or two that need level. In the case of one or two frets I prefer to try tapping them in first and then if necessary go ahead and just file those frets that need it.
Nice to see a lot of people have had good experiences with their Chinese necks, but with the one I bought for $63, I haven't. The neck came too straight (and still is even after 2 years of standard tuning tension on 12 gauge strings) and pretty much all of the first 5 or 6 frets buzzed like crazy until remedied it with a neck shim. But now my action is higher than Snoop Dogg, and i usually like my action a little higher. Also the neck itself is twisted. You can see it clear as day when you look straight down the neck. This means the intonation is always off no matter how I ajust the saddles. So, for $63, i got high action, and an impossible to fix intonation issue, but hey, its flame maple!
Rolled the dice on a simple maple & dark wood fretboard. Was $ 40, no haggling down on listed price. The frets were even pretty good end to end of the fretboard, edge to edge. All I did was roll the fret ends & fretboard. Would I want to do a feet level & crown eventually ? Sure, but out of the box it was extremely playable. The fret sprout was ,more about a trimmed fret wire that needed the sharp clip spot from the fret nippers smoothed. Who knows how long the frets actually hold up, they aren't stainless steel and who knows what mixture of Cupronickel they are ?
Just got mine for $60 needed fret end treatment and some finer 2500 grit sanding and waxing but easy enough than paying four times the price. Hoping the truss rod is solid.
the difference is that with intense seasonal weather changes in eastern North America maple/acer saccharum grows much more slowly. The wood is much denser. From China, like everything else on the counterfeit market, it's always hit or miss --zero consistency
I posted this elsewhere within a thread, but thought I'd share it 'out' here. I know many of us have an issue with China, but it bears saying that we're not talking about the people of China, we (at least most people I talk to) just have a problem with their government. That's it. No racism, just a recognition of a potential enemy with whom we could be at war. More cheerfully - Indonesia is making great guitars! I have two D'Angelicos, a Mini DC Premier (around $800) that competes directly with the Gibson or Epi es-339. I had an Epi 339. Neck was terrible. Very small vintage frets, and the neck was a big D with very wide shoulders. I'm short and do not have large hands and I like deep necks, even Gibson 50s necks, but that Epi 339 was a bad fit for me. OTOH, the $799 D'Angelico (an upgraded Sweetwater exclusive) has beautifully flamed top, neck, and sides, a SUPERB neck in all respects, Graphtech nut, locking tuners, and best of all, legitimate USA Seymour Duncans. They even use real mother-of-pearl inlays on the headstock. The exclusive comes with the ever-popular Jazz/JB set. That guitar is perfect and it rocks! Don't even get me started on my Brighton Deluxe. Man, what a guitar! It's like an ornate SG. Upper fret access is perfection. Perfectly dressed Jescar frets, abalone & mother-of-pearl fret markers, flamed maple top on a belly carved swamp ash body that's got beautiful grain. Neck is sanded specifically from the first fret to the top of the neck where it has an amazing set-neck joint that flows into the body like a neck-through. Okay, enough gushing (I love talking about gear!). Suffice to say, I have zero qualms about import guitars - especially the non-Chinese ones.
Love your channel…your style is not overhyped, yet not lazy or unprofessional. I ventured into Chinese necks last month. Got a Jazz roasted flamed maple neck stainless steel frets… $69 + $25 shipping + $6 sales tax. I offered 60, but they just knocked off 99 cents. Blurred pictures of the headstock, but you could tell from the stacks of necks in the background there were Fender labels and custom shop logos. Mine didn’t have the CS label. 2 weeks later the neck arrived in great packaging, completely wrapped in yellow plastic tape. Smelled of weird chemicals, like Harbor Freight on a shipping day. Visually gorgeous… satin finish, noice flame.Severe from some angles, disappears from other angles. 3 Three flaws that I can see… 2 minor and one to be determined.. small tear out around the front one of the tuner holes. I think will be covered by the tuner grommet. Then there is the skunk stripe… the far end towards the headstock is slightly depressed. I’ll probably fill that with some CA glue or satin clear and sand it down. The more potentially serious is the bottom 2 inches of the neck toward the headstock dips down slightly as measured by my straight edge. We”ll see if that straightens out when mounted and strung. This could potentially produced buzzing when playing the first 2 frets. The frets are pretty low, which means there isn’t a lot of room when sanding them down. I haven’t built a body for this yet, so I may mount it on my Squier 54 Paranormal Jazz bass to test. Who knows, it might just live there! I’ll keep you posted, , because the more reports on this stuff , the better. Not sure if I’ll sand down the logo yet. Not planning on selling it.
Those necks, especially the roasted one looks really nice. IMO, that eliminates one of my concerns and recurring issues with inexpensive import guitars. They use maple that still has lots of drying to do and you end up with the inevitable fret sprout. So I'm definitely interested in the roasted necks.
I just built a telecaster and put a blonde hard rock maple neck on it... and I have a bunch of guitars and several Tele’s... but this guitar sounds so good and is the best playing next to my Joe Glaser...! ( The Jeff Galey Channel
You sure can, I've ordered a few items from AliExpress in the last few months and it's been completely painless. Paid the VAT upfront automatically, paid with Paypal and items were here within a couple of weeks. Not guitar necks (or anything guitar related) but no more trouble than buying from amazon or anywhere else really.
I built a replica of your pink Relic strat all out of Chinese parts bought on ebay. A few are higher end usa/Japan parts but the bones of it are 100 percent Chinese.
Great and spot on video. I also love the price and quality on these China made necks. The frets are not an issue in my case, as I replace them with jumbo JD 6000's anyway. The thing to beware of is some "flame maple" necks. They obviously dyed strings are pulled across them, yuck.
I'm curious Mark, what makes a good neck, the way It looks or the way It plays? Being an absolute guitar aficionado such as yourself I was very surprised you never checked the fretboard radius or even the scale length. All I heard you mention Is fret height and fret jobs. I guaranty all of these necks have problems, there's a ton of videos showing this. The sellers In china love buyers like you that buy these necks cause they look pretty. I do feel bad for the people that watched your video and ran out and bought these necks because you said they said they were so great. Keep up the good work
This is true. The longer the Asian companies make guitars they better they are getting at it. With the aid of computer run CNC machines that cut and shape bodies and necks the more consistent the quality is going to get. Companies in the USA are doing the same thing.
@dixonj8006 If I buy a bunch of heat and eat food, heat it up and put it on a plate, did I cook it or just put it up? I'm not trying to be a dick but "building a guitar" means crafting every piece from raw materials, sometimes including hardware (but rarely). Say you built a body, sure, but a pre-made neck cuts out 60% of the work. It's not cheating, but it's not building.
The counterfeiting sucks, but I bought an unbranded "paddle" headstock roasted maple neck that allowed my to shape the headstock however I wanted. It was very nice after some fretwork, swapping to a Graptec nut, and adding staggered locking tuners. However that was just for a beater. My own builds use woods (always laminated), profiles, radii, and frets I can't get off the shelf. And when it gets down to all those fine details, I doubt I'll ever get exactly what I want off Ebay. That's fine though, I enjoy the building process.
I have .60/.40 action, .004 relief. No dead notes. No buzz. Chinese necks
11 месяцев назад+5
Maple necks are alright. But cheap Chinese mahogany necks (e.g. for Gibson style guitars) are usually made from rather weak sap wood mahogany. But in general: yes, there is absolutely some nice stuff being made in China
11 месяцев назад
@@notexpatjoe the Chinese guitar kit that I built once, it had the light brown mahogany and the neck would bend quite a bit. But maple necks were good so far, wenge as well :)
Such a great video and approach! Love the tone and finish of the first one and the idea of using the stock neck as starting point. You have a new subscriber! I'm building a natural roasted ash sss hardtail ST as my second project. Do you have or can recommend any videos on strat pickups? There are so many options available and the type of clean tone on this video sounds great to me. (Amazing playing btw) Total noob here, hence the ask. Keep up the awesome videos coming!
I bought the cheapest alnico 5 pickups from guitar madness on eBay. I like alnico 5, low resistance pickups. can't go wrong with the guitar madness pickups. super cheap.
I’ve had to send back 3 fender vintera strats all with badly backbowed necks ..no amount of working on them would get them to straighten out and play right ..so it ain’t just Chinese necks that are bad .I’ve had quite a few Chinese squiers and they’ve been a lot better Finish wise than those fenders and played better ..
I bought a chinese neck and it plays like concrete. I don't know what wood it is, but it's definitely not your typical guitar neck wood. There's something about its vibrations that makes me feel like it's just completely dead, I hated playing it and I ended up taking it off and throwing it away.
I saw a decent looking one on eBay for $57 + $10 shipping. I offered $48, seller countered with $53. I countered back with $50. He accepted the offer and the deal went through.
Yeah. Unfortunately tho I've seen Fender USA guitars w equally crappy necks, 5 layers of grain. I bought a Jimmy Vaughn Strat neck off ebay w over 20. That took me all of 1 second to hit buy it now.
@@MarkGutierrez I've made necks w the grain plane perpendicular to the strings, best for not bending. And necks w the grain plane parallel to the strings, not as strong but better sounding. So quarter is half way in between ? Do you know why that is cut that way ? I've never seen it in the real world on necks , but it seems like that would be prone to twisting warps. BTW Indonesian necks seem fine, but like China the wood might be suspect. I don't know for sure , but my Firefly seems like it could have been made in Fenders Squier factory there. Its the same as a Squire model.
I won't buy these necks for commercial use because of the copy right infringement with the ender sticker on them - this is illegal. The other issue is " how will these necks age " if the wood is not quite Canadian Maple as advertised ?
Search on eBay for "Strat Neck" then use the filters on the left hand side to filter by Country of manufacture. Check the box for China. Then set the maximum price threshold to 80 dollars. Then you can set the filter for Item Location to Worldwide.
People forget back in the day US made stuff was considered trash to the world. Japanese made was considered trash. Times change. I’d argue that with the decline in American work ethic, over regulation, and over taxation American made products aren’t nearly as good as they used to be, much of it being overpriced and inferior.
Chinese stuff wasn't considered trash when they started... I have a nice Chinese Yamaha. However they are not going about it in the right way if they want to be respectful of brands, then they may have a chance. Pushing out tonnes of counterfeit goods is not the way to build a brand.
American workers have the highest productivity of any country in the world. American guitars are considered the best everywhere in the world, including China. American manufactured goods have always been considered high quality since the beginning of the industrial revolution. You literally know nothing.
I bought a neck from the same vendor on ebay that you did and it was junk. It looked nice but had a severe back bow that couldn't be corrected. It was $40 shipped . I took a chance and lost. You get what you pay for.
Neck radius matters to me. I dislike flat fingerboards. I've noticed that most Chinese eBay sellers do not list a radius for their necks, and when it is listed it is usually 14" or flatter. Anyone have any luck finding a seller with 10" or less radius necks?
The big problem with Chinese stuff is that it’s super inconsistent depending on how the factory is run. You have to talk to other folks and know which ones can be trusted.
You should test it for lead. I did. It made the test kit react very positive on the bridge and the frets. I wonder what chemicals they used to finish it. Good luck. I tested some Gibsons and fenders at guitar center, and they didn’t react positive for lead…. Just saying. It’s repeatable…. Buy a test kit and find out for your self.
I wonder if what you get is conistently good? I mean, 80 or 90 percent of the time you get a good neck, as opposed to having a 50/50 shot. I'm also curious how well they stand up over time. Seems like a reasonable risk
It probably depends on who you're getting it from, but there are so many neck counterfeiters out there that you can't really be certain either way. This guy is talking about grabbing them off of eBay, but pretty much every account associated with fake necks have a decent amount of negative reviews because the necks are not good or aren't spec'd how they were in the listing. I'd rather just pay for a legit Fender neck or something from an established company than rolling the dice. There's no guarantee you're going to get the actual radius they state in the listing, or the neck shape, nor that your tuner holes are going to be correct, that it's the wood they claim, etc. He says "a lot of those myths are grounded in the past" about Chinese necks, but again, I've looked at plenty of neck counterfeiters and they've got plenty of negative, recent reviews. I'm probably going to trust the reviews buyers on eBay post more than some random guy making a video on RUclips to make some easy money off of ad revenue.
@@ectoplasmI haven’t seen many reviews on the necks on eBay complaining. I do find it funny that they’re virtually all Jazz necks (for bass) … a few Tele style, but no precisions.
i got a flame maple neck with rose wood felt board from taobao for hk$320 ,around $40 US dollars , not including shipping cost, i dont even have a body to bolt on or any parts to build a guitar, there basically all strat,tele neck around under $40 us dollars ,if not a very fancy one, just normal roasted maple around $30 us dollars , 70s big headstock maple neck with block inlay and binding tin finish $25 dollars. and i want to buy a les paul body for that fender flame maple neck , im not a guitar builder, i dont know how to make it work , bolt on gibson les paul with fender headstock looks funny .
Mark, I agree with you 100%. I’ve been saying the same thing for years. A guitar is made of wood and metal. The final outcome doesn’t matter what color, nationality, religion, gender, etc. the builder possesses. Instead, the guitar reflects the ability to sand, paint, install and attach. A false sense of “American pride” causes people to not even look at what’s before them. I live in Southern California and I have been to the fender Ensenada factory in the 90’s, right after the fire. My brother and I saw first hand, USA cut bodies and necks sent to Mexico in order to complete production for their Mexican made models. These were USA fenders with a made in Mexico decal. Great guitars! Look at the modern day guitars coming out of Indonesia, especially G&L and D’Angelico. Unbelievable guitars! But I ask you, please remove the word “counterfeit” from your title. These aren’t counterfeit necks, they’re “aftermarket necks”. They can replace any fender neck with the same quality and construction. There’s nothing counterfeit about them. They are in fact actually solid maple necks.
It's funny cause i would have easily seconded every single word you pronoucend one week ago, but unfortunaltely for me, one of these "roasted" mpale neck broke suddenly as i tried 11-52 gauge strings, once broken, i could see the fibers of the wood and i'm pretty certain this was never maple, it was a very light wood, the whole neck was hardly 500 grams (without tuners), this said of course, the seller never replied to my messages, so money lost absolutely but yey, i'm ready to try the experience again cause pricewise, it's unbeatalbe and i'll stick to 10-46 max
The Chinese and American governments have a deal where their people pay nothing or almost nothing to ship stuff to the US. Do you think it works the same for products going the other direction?
I remember seeing jokes on TV shows and generally in culture in the 90s or so about stuff being made in the US being crappy. I think if people have a problem with low quality stuff being produced for cheap, what they really have whether they realize it or not is a problem with crapitalism.
Its no surprise that quality control and lutherie culture has trickled down to even the cheapest necks from china. After all, all the major players have moved a large portion of their manufacturing overseas anyways in the last 3 decades or so, and with that: knowledge and skill. Over the holidays I helped my dad purchase and eastman taylor style acoustic used for $800. That thing is pound for pound as good or better than a taylor at 4-5X the price. Only reason to buy name brand is resale value. Either go cheap and pay or do the setup or go big and work with a local luthier whom you like their style of work.
@@MarkGutierrezNot at these prices. So you put $200 into your Chinese Partscaster. It’s probably never going to sell for less than $125 later. Depreciation? You’re not going to spend a grand building a Chinese Partscaster. Now if we’re talking Warmoth assembled parts… you’re talking depreciation.
Roasted is just a marketing ploy and the smoothness comes from lack of finish not from wood process. Baked is essentially dry wood and that was never sought after.
If time and money is a concern with how you build guitars then just pick a complete guitar off the shelf, or assemble kits.... Im not too worried about a Chinese factory slapping out multi laminate all Australian hardwoods with top tier truss rods and quality frets any time soon. I get what youre trying to say, but for most builders, theyre going to stick with what they can hand on heart back as they made it start to finish...
So how did they install the truss ? Skunk stripes are there because its one piece w a back truss route. Was it a separate fingerboard ? The level of stupidity in not replicating properly by counterfeiters is amazing.
I have bought these necks for my squires. The quality is astounding, they are also doing scalloped as well.
Love how this is exactly what we were talking about the other day 😀
The difference between a £200 and £2000 guitar these days is the fine details and finishes, and if you are willing to do those yourself... thanks for another interesting idea mate.
This video was a crazy ASMR experience for me
I recently bought a Chinese strat neck for the same price, it was matt black and the paint was really good just a little rough around the top edge along the fret board. Im sanding it back and repainting it now. Also needed leveling and crowning but the neck came dead straight out the box though. Very impressed!
I live in the Philippines, there is a hard wood supply store not to far from me, they have the largest supply of hardwood i have ever seen, they buy trees from all over the world, saw them in to lumber kiln dry it, and supply furniture manufacturers
wow ! $60 !
You wouldn't even get a smile
from Fender for $60
I sure am glad that your channel got recommended to me when it did. I was already looking at these sorts of necks for my first parts build, and your video has convinced me to try it. I have a 60s Kawai body that I want to put a 24" scale neck on, and I think getting one of these types of necks would be good for learning purposes.
I just bought one of these for $69.00 and it is beautifully done, the frets are rounded better than Fender custom shop and I had no problems showing off the guitar to friends who asked me if it was a real Fender Player Stratocaster CS in NEON YELLOW!??!?!
No, but I slept in a Holiday Inn last night.
You have a beautiful, soothing voice and make excellent points. I own 2 Chinese, chunky U shaped necks and they're shockingly good for the money. I don't have any complaints
I bought a Tele and a strat necks. OUTSTANDING!
Really just a question of if the wood is cured properly.
Here's something random though. Any chance you'd be willing to sand down or otherwise murder one of those roasted necks? I'm curious if they're actually roasted or if they're stained lol.
The one neck looked stained. If you look in the tuner holes you can see the wood is lighter in the holes.
I sanded it down to the wood. It's 100 percent roasted. The wood color is caramel colored and the smell of the sanded wood is unmistakable.
if you have to destroy it just to check then its obviously ok looking
I bought a couple of non roasted Chinese necks from AliExpress and Amazon. Both are the Yinfente brand. They looks cheap but they feel really good.
I bought this telecaster neck off of eBay and it lowkey was better even then a fender made in Mexico neck in my opinion it was smoother along the tangs and it was so light and thin
I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was the most cutting way to insult the quality of most products.
Adapt or be rendered obsolete.
💯💯💯
Amen
Agreed but I bought one dont care where it came from its a gem 60$
Yeh, that's true. But the Japanese weren't operating under the system Chinese are... The Chinese system is set out to deliberately undercut the world market by producing counterfeits and effectively bankrolled by their government. It's more like a economic attack, the Japanese were essentially responding to a market that needed huge volumes of cheap guitars the west couldn't provide. The Chinese are effectively doing the same thing, but their intentions are dubious.
Yup. My best guitar is now a Korean made Combinata. It’s absolutely beautiful and sounds incredible. And it cost me less than a US-made Fender.
Been thinking of getting a scalloped neck for a squire I'm building up. This video convinced me to pull the trigger on it
I have 2 of these necks on 2 x partcaster.......one of them has become my fav taking precedence over an actual 1980s strat, ultimately, guitars and especially strats are ingeniously simplistic, fender are a victim of Leo's brilliance as they are easy to copy well. Like you I spend a lot of time on set up regardless of brand so that aspect is academic really. If I really want to get picky I would like a one peice and not a glued on board but really..........!
I got cheap eBay Chinese necks with maple fretboards for both of my Affinity Strats, got a mahogany one for my Jazzmaster DIY build and a couple Tele necks for two other projects I'm working on. They're actually great quality necks, I haven't had any issues with the necks themselves. The only issues I've had is eBay sellers sending the wrong necks, so they just tell me to keep the wrong one and send me the right one, which means I have to start another body for the spare neck (I've built guitars before just because I had a spare pickguard laying around and wanted to use it on something.) All of the necks I've bought on eBay were around $40.
Did you encounter any issues with the Affinity body thickness and the neck heel thickness? For example did you have to route the neck pocket deeper to fit the eBay necks?
@@bilarion No, the Affinity neck pocket is the same as any other Strat. The body thickness doesn't effect it in any way.
i bought the roasted maple strat neck, it is excellent
my first build. like five years ago, the chinese neck was fine. it's still on there, and i need to do a proper fret job on it. it has two problems. the truss rod slot is sloppy making it harder to adjust. and the fret ends are pokey.
the latest chinese neck i bought. is way better. fret ends a butter smooth and it looks super professional. its weak point will again be the craftsman, (me) installing it.
$50-60 chinese necks dominate the results every time I search for necks to use with my next partscaster build. I always wrote them off as either a scam or too good to be true, even if the product and the seller had great reviews. I usually pay twice as much for necks and I always considered that a fair price but I feel like I got gouged after seeing this. Good on ya for not reflexively parroting "China bad."
I bought a Chinese black painted "maple" neck from ebay. I sanded the paint and it was poplar. Also the "ebony" fretboard was just painted to look ebony.
A couple things that weren't mentioned; if you buy a rosewood fretboard on any of these necks, it's probably just stained to look like rosewood. And it's hit or miss as to wether the tuner holes are all the same distance from each other.
then you change builder...
I bought 4 Chinese necks and bodies this week after buying Allparts stuff for decades. Better than most Fender parts once finished out. It impressed me. 1/4th the price! I think they have discovered that even low prices have to come with quality for musical instruments to sell.
my last build was a 70´s mustang, body and neck bought from china, amazing guitar for WAAAAY less than a vintage fender
i don’t know how many more strat or tele builds ive got left in me, im 69 and a hobbiest, but i wish i had these resources when i was heavy into it 30 years ago
Thanks for the video. Just ordered a flaming maple tele neck.
I would love to have some recommended sellers? Because some sellers have really good reputations, while the others do not at all
Great video, my man...thanks !
The best locking tuners that I've used so far is the 30ish dollar wcs or it might be wsc tuners that came on my Harley Benton Tele. So smooth with no play or backlash in either direction
Hi Mark, LOVE, your channel. Do you think these Chinese necks are real flamed maple or are they just wrapping wire around them and charring them with a blow torch to create a faux flame appearance?
Can't go wrong with the Chinese necks but fret levelling still needed...
I'll still give it to my Luthier to have a look at.
You said that you do a fret level no matter what but sometimes an import or even one from the states will surprise you and have no high frets or just have one or two that need level. In the case of one or two frets I prefer to try tapping them in first and then if necessary go ahead and just file those frets that need it.
Nice to see a lot of people have had good experiences with their Chinese necks, but with the one I bought for $63, I haven't. The neck came too straight (and still is even after 2 years of standard tuning tension on 12 gauge strings) and pretty much all of the first 5 or 6 frets buzzed like crazy until remedied it with a neck shim. But now my action is higher than Snoop Dogg, and i usually like my action a little higher. Also the neck itself is twisted. You can see it clear as day when you look straight down the neck. This means the intonation is always off no matter how I ajust the saddles. So, for $63, i got high action, and an impossible to fix intonation issue, but hey, its flame maple!
well thats an eye opener - thanks for sharing Mark
Rolled the dice on a simple maple & dark wood fretboard. Was $ 40, no haggling down on listed price. The frets were even pretty good end to end of the fretboard, edge to edge. All I did was roll the fret ends & fretboard. Would I want to do a feet level & crown eventually ? Sure, but out of the box it was extremely playable. The fret sprout was ,more about a trimmed fret wire that needed the sharp clip spot from the fret nippers smoothed. Who knows how long the frets actually hold up, they aren't stainless steel and who knows what mixture of Cupronickel they are ?
There's nothing quite like the sweet sound of a Strat!
Just got mine for $60 needed fret end treatment and some finer 2500 grit sanding and waxing but easy enough than paying four times the price. Hoping the truss rod is solid.
The premium Warmoth absolutely smokes the premium Fender for like 300 less and the decals are 15 bucks. It a no brainer.
the difference is that with intense seasonal weather changes in eastern North America maple/acer saccharum grows much more slowly. The wood is much denser. From China, like everything else on the counterfeit market, it's always hit or miss --zero consistency
And your playing is great, too
I posted this elsewhere within a thread, but thought I'd share it 'out' here. I know many of us have an issue with China, but it bears saying that we're not talking about the people of China, we (at least most people I talk to) just have a problem with their government. That's it. No racism, just a recognition of a potential enemy with whom we could be at war.
More cheerfully - Indonesia is making great guitars! I have two D'Angelicos, a Mini DC Premier (around $800) that competes directly with the Gibson or Epi es-339. I had an Epi 339. Neck was terrible. Very small vintage frets, and the neck was a big D with very wide shoulders. I'm short and do not have large hands and I like deep necks, even Gibson 50s necks, but that Epi 339 was a bad fit for me. OTOH, the $799 D'Angelico (an upgraded Sweetwater exclusive) has beautifully flamed top, neck, and sides, a SUPERB neck in all respects, Graphtech nut, locking tuners, and best of all, legitimate USA Seymour Duncans. They even use real mother-of-pearl inlays on the headstock. The exclusive comes with the ever-popular Jazz/JB set. That guitar is perfect and it rocks!
Don't even get me started on my Brighton Deluxe. Man, what a guitar! It's like an ornate SG. Upper fret access is perfection. Perfectly dressed Jescar frets, abalone & mother-of-pearl fret markers, flamed maple top on a belly carved swamp ash body that's got beautiful grain. Neck is sanded specifically from the first fret to the top of the neck where it has an amazing set-neck joint that flows into the body like a neck-through.
Okay, enough gushing (I love talking about gear!). Suffice to say, I have zero qualms about import guitars - especially the non-Chinese ones.
Love your channel…your style is not overhyped, yet not lazy or unprofessional.
I ventured into Chinese necks last month. Got a Jazz roasted flamed maple neck stainless steel frets… $69 + $25 shipping + $6 sales tax. I offered 60, but they just knocked off 99 cents. Blurred pictures of the headstock, but you could tell from the stacks of necks in the background there were Fender labels and custom shop logos. Mine didn’t have the CS label.
2 weeks later the neck arrived in great packaging, completely wrapped in yellow plastic tape. Smelled of weird chemicals, like Harbor Freight on a shipping day. Visually gorgeous… satin finish, noice flame.Severe from some angles, disappears from other angles.
3
Three flaws that I can see… 2 minor and one to be determined.. small tear out around the front one of the tuner holes. I think will be covered by the tuner grommet. Then there is the skunk stripe… the far end towards the headstock is slightly depressed. I’ll probably fill that with some CA glue or satin clear and sand it down. The more potentially serious is the bottom 2 inches of the neck toward the headstock dips down slightly as measured by my straight edge. We”ll see if that straightens out when mounted and strung. This could potentially produced buzzing when playing the first 2 frets.
The frets are pretty low, which means there isn’t a lot of room when sanding them down.
I haven’t built a body for this yet, so I may mount it on my Squier 54 Paranormal Jazz bass to test. Who knows, it might just live there! I’ll keep you posted, , because the more reports on this stuff , the better.
Not sure if I’ll sand down the logo yet. Not planning on selling it.
Would you be able to test the moisture content and verify it is actually low enough?
Nice idea. Definitely a future vid.
@@MarkGutierrez That's a rather critical question if you're advocating for these products.
Those necks, especially the roasted one looks really nice. IMO, that eliminates one of my concerns and recurring issues with inexpensive import guitars. They use maple that still has lots of drying to do and you end up with the inevitable fret sprout. So I'm definitely interested in the roasted necks.
Neck sounds great on your strat.
I just built a telecaster and put a blonde hard rock maple neck on it... and I have a bunch of guitars and several Tele’s... but this guitar sounds so good and is the best playing next to my Joe Glaser...!
( The Jeff Galey Channel
Great video. Both of those look really nice, 22 frets too. I'm wondering if UK-dwellers like me can order these from China too?
You sure can, I've ordered a few items from AliExpress in the last few months and it's been completely painless. Paid the VAT upfront automatically, paid with Paypal and items were here within a couple of weeks. Not guitar necks (or anything guitar related) but no more trouble than buying from amazon or anywhere else really.
I built a replica of your pink Relic strat all out of Chinese parts bought on ebay. A few are higher end usa/Japan parts but the bones of it are 100 percent Chinese.
Wow! Your playing style is perfection. I’m jaded from thirty years of being around the instrument but this blew me away. Very very good my friend.
Great and spot on video. I also love the price and quality on these China made necks. The frets are not an issue in my case, as I replace them with jumbo JD 6000's anyway. The thing to beware of is some "flame maple" necks. They obviously dyed strings are pulled across them, yuck.
I'm curious Mark, what makes a good neck, the way It looks or the way It plays? Being an absolute guitar aficionado such as yourself I was very surprised you never checked the fretboard radius or even the scale length. All I heard you mention Is fret height and fret jobs. I guaranty all of these necks have problems, there's a ton of videos showing this. The sellers In china love buyers like you that buy these necks cause they look pretty. I do feel bad for the people that watched your video and ran out and bought these necks because you said they said they were so great. Keep up the good work
Thanks Mark ! Awesome info !
This is true. The longer the Asian companies make guitars they better they are getting at it. With the aid of computer run CNC machines that cut and shape bodies and necks the more consistent the quality is going to get. Companies in the USA are doing the same thing.
I'm taking a shot at a 50USD roasted maple one!
I used Chinese necks on my first dozen or so builds. If you want a 25.5" C (And now a 30" baritone) you can't really do better then what's on ebay.
Don't you mean assemblies, and not builds?
@@peachmelba1000 I don't.
@dixonj8006 If I buy a bunch of heat and eat food, heat it up and put it on a plate, did I cook it or just put it up?
I'm not trying to be a dick but "building a guitar" means crafting every piece from raw materials, sometimes including hardware (but rarely).
Say you built a body, sure, but a pre-made neck cuts out 60% of the work. It's not cheating, but it's not building.
The counterfeiting sucks, but I bought an unbranded "paddle" headstock roasted maple neck that allowed my to shape the headstock however I wanted. It was very nice after some fretwork, swapping to a Graptec nut, and adding staggered locking tuners.
However that was just for a beater. My own builds use woods (always laminated), profiles, radii, and frets I can't get off the shelf. And when it gets down to all those fine details, I doubt I'll ever get exactly what I want off Ebay. That's fine though, I enjoy the building process.
I just found a paddle headstock roasted neck for a great price from the stratosphere on eBay. what a time to be alive.
Great video, man.Thanks for the info brother
Bob Ross talking about guitars!
excuse me sir.. after Fret leveling,crowing and setup the trusrod. how low that string action can u go? sorry for my bad English language 😅
I have .60/.40 action, .004 relief. No dead notes. No buzz. Chinese necks
Maple necks are alright. But cheap Chinese mahogany necks (e.g. for Gibson style guitars) are usually made from rather weak sap wood mahogany.
But in general: yes, there is absolutely some nice stuff being made in China
@@notexpatjoe the Chinese guitar kit that I built once, it had the light brown mahogany and the neck would bend quite a bit. But maple necks were good so far, wenge as well :)
@@notexpatjoe very likely, yes
Such a great video and approach!
Love the tone and finish of the first one and the idea of using the stock neck as starting point. You have a new subscriber!
I'm building a natural roasted ash sss hardtail ST as my second project. Do you have or can recommend any videos on strat pickups? There are so many options available and the type of clean tone on this video sounds great to me. (Amazing playing btw)
Total noob here, hence the ask. Keep up the awesome videos coming!
I bought the cheapest alnico 5 pickups from guitar madness on eBay. I like alnico 5, low resistance pickups. can't go wrong with the guitar madness pickups. super cheap.
@@MarkGutierrez Thanks so much for guiding me, Mark! Have a great day!
I've come across many of the budget Asian necks that are not stable for holding tune. I suspect the woods are not cured properly in some cases.
I’ve had to send back 3 fender vintera strats all with badly backbowed necks ..no amount of working on them would get them to straighten out and play right ..so it ain’t just Chinese necks that are bad .I’ve had quite a few Chinese squiers and they’ve been a lot better Finish wise than those fenders and played better ..
I bought a chinese neck and it plays like concrete. I don't know what wood it is, but it's definitely not your typical guitar neck wood. There's something about its vibrations that makes me feel like it's just completely dead, I hated playing it and I ended up taking it off and throwing it away.
I saw a decent looking one on eBay for $57 + $10 shipping. I offered $48, seller countered with $53. I countered back with $50. He accepted the offer and the deal went through.
I always negotiate the price with the seller. You can sometimes get away with knocking a few bucks off.
@@MarkGutierrez Yeah, I've also noticed that if you keep the item in your Watchlist, they'll see that you viewed the item and make you a lower offer.
They are twice as expensive on eBay UK, £95 which is $122.
I wonder if it would be cheaper to order from eBay US?
The amount of runout in that first neck is crazy, I would never use that in a million years on any guitar I built @3:43
Yeah. Unfortunately tho I've seen Fender USA guitars w equally crappy necks, 5 layers of grain. I bought a Jimmy Vaughn Strat neck off ebay w over 20. That took me all of 1 second to hit buy it now.
I prefer quarter sawn but I assume the torrefaction has to add some stability.
@@MarkGutierrez I've made necks w the grain plane perpendicular to the strings, best for not bending. And necks w the grain plane parallel to the strings, not as strong but better sounding. So quarter is half way in between ? Do you know why that is cut that way ? I've never seen it in the real world on necks , but it seems like that would be prone to twisting warps. BTW Indonesian necks seem fine, but like China the wood might be suspect. I don't know for sure , but my Firefly seems like it could have been made in Fenders Squier factory there. Its the same as a Squire model.
You get extra points for using Brian Eno as your background music
I won't buy these necks for commercial use because of the copy right infringement with the ender sticker on them - this is illegal. The other issue is " how will these necks age " if the wood is not quite Canadian Maple as advertised ?
I’ve looked on eBay and can’t find one, any clues as to how
Search on eBay for "Strat Neck" then use the filters on the left hand side to filter by Country of manufacture. Check the box for China. Then set the maximum price threshold to 80 dollars. Then you can set the filter for Item Location to Worldwide.
China’s been making instruments for FMIC and Gibson and everyone else for decades.
People forget back in the day US made stuff was considered trash to the world. Japanese made was considered trash. Times change. I’d argue that with the decline in American work ethic, over regulation, and over taxation American made products aren’t nearly as good as they used to be, much of it being overpriced and inferior.
Gibson is American and can't seem to build anything correctly.
Chinese stuff wasn't considered trash when they started... I have a nice Chinese Yamaha. However they are not going about it in the right way if they want to be respectful of brands, then they may have a chance. Pushing out tonnes of counterfeit goods is not the way to build a brand.
American workers have the highest productivity of any country in the world. American guitars are considered the best everywhere in the world, including China. American manufactured goods have always been considered high quality since the beginning of the industrial revolution. You literally know nothing.
@@APMTenants I believe that you believe that. Don't let me dissuade your coping mechanisms. Carry on.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Very good video man. Subscribed !
Thanks so much,gonna get one .
I'm always looking for necks which are wider at the nut than average. Are these available from China or do they stick to regular sizes?
Man the sound on the daphne blue guitar, where did you buy the body and electronics for that one? Great video!
I made the body out of ash. It's heavy. The pickups are alnico 5s from Guitar Madness. Probably made in china.
@@MarkGutierrez thank you!
I bought a neck from the same vendor on ebay that you did and it was junk. It looked nice but had a severe back bow that couldn't be corrected. It was $40 shipped . I took a chance and lost. You get what you pay for.
Bob Ross of Imported guitar necks
Neck radius matters to me. I dislike flat fingerboards. I've noticed that most Chinese eBay sellers do not list a radius for their necks, and when it is listed it is usually 14" or flatter. Anyone have any luck finding a seller with 10" or less radius necks?
I been wanting to get a rosewood replacement neck but Fender prices are ridiculous. I will try a Chinese made 👍🏾
7:12 CAT! 😁😁
The big problem with Chinese stuff is that it’s super inconsistent depending on how the factory is run. You have to talk to other folks and know which ones can be trusted.
You should test it for lead. I did. It made the test kit react very positive on the bridge and the frets. I wonder what chemicals they used to finish it. Good luck. I tested some Gibsons and fenders at guitar center, and they didn’t react positive for lead…. Just saying. It’s repeatable…. Buy a test kit and find out for your self.
Thanks for the heads up.
I wonder if what you get is conistently good? I mean, 80 or 90 percent of the time you get a good neck, as opposed to having a 50/50 shot. I'm also curious how well they stand up over time. Seems like a reasonable risk
It probably depends on who you're getting it from, but there are so many neck counterfeiters out there that you can't really be certain either way. This guy is talking about grabbing them off of eBay, but pretty much every account associated with fake necks have a decent amount of negative reviews because the necks are not good or aren't spec'd how they were in the listing. I'd rather just pay for a legit Fender neck or something from an established company than rolling the dice. There's no guarantee you're going to get the actual radius they state in the listing, or the neck shape, nor that your tuner holes are going to be correct, that it's the wood they claim, etc. He says "a lot of those myths are grounded in the past" about Chinese necks, but again, I've looked at plenty of neck counterfeiters and they've got plenty of negative, recent reviews. I'm probably going to trust the reviews buyers on eBay post more than some random guy making a video on RUclips to make some easy money off of ad revenue.
@@ectoplasmI haven’t seen many reviews on the necks on eBay complaining. I do find it funny that they’re virtually all Jazz necks (for bass) … a few Tele style, but no precisions.
i got a flame maple neck with rose wood felt board from taobao for hk$320 ,around $40 US dollars , not including shipping cost, i dont even have a body to bolt on or any parts to build a guitar, there basically all strat,tele neck around under $40 us dollars ,if not a very fancy one, just normal roasted maple around $30 us dollars , 70s big headstock maple neck with block inlay and binding tin finish $25 dollars.
and i want to buy a les paul body for that fender flame maple neck , im not a guitar builder, i dont know how to make it work , bolt on gibson les paul with fender headstock looks funny .
great playing .
Mark, I agree with you 100%. I’ve been saying the same thing for years. A guitar is made of wood and metal. The final outcome doesn’t matter what color, nationality, religion, gender, etc. the builder possesses. Instead, the guitar reflects the ability to sand, paint, install and attach. A false sense of “American pride” causes people to not even look at what’s before them. I live in Southern California and I have been to the fender Ensenada factory in the 90’s, right after the fire. My brother and I saw first hand, USA cut bodies and necks sent to Mexico in order to complete production for their Mexican made models. These were USA fenders with a made in Mexico decal. Great guitars! Look at the modern day guitars coming out of Indonesia, especially G&L and D’Angelico. Unbelievable guitars!
But I ask you, please remove the word “counterfeit” from your title. These aren’t counterfeit necks, they’re “aftermarket necks”. They can replace any fender neck with the same quality and construction. There’s nothing counterfeit about them. They are in fact actually solid maple necks.
It's funny cause i would have easily seconded every single word you pronoucend one week ago, but unfortunaltely for me, one of these "roasted" mpale neck broke suddenly as i tried 11-52 gauge strings, once broken, i could see the fibers of the wood and i'm pretty certain this was never maple, it was a very light wood, the whole neck was hardly 500 grams (without tuners), this said of course, the seller never replied to my messages, so money lost absolutely but yey, i'm ready to try the experience again cause pricewise, it's unbeatalbe and i'll stick to 10-46 max
Hey brotha. How do I go about contacting you to build a custom neck?
He'll just buy you one. They're only 60 bucks😅
@@peachmelba1000 haha, they don’t seek what I need anywhere other than Warmoth. And I’ve already tried them.
@dayshellofficial But in all seriousness, I could build you one. I'm in Canada. You in the US?
Leveling and crowning require tools and skill. Not easy. If you pay a tech you may as well pay for a Fender MX neck.
The Chinese and American governments have a deal where their people pay nothing or almost nothing to ship stuff to the US.
Do you think it works the same for products going the other direction?
No…likely not.
How much is shipping typically to you?
It's either free shipping or around 19 bucks.
I remember seeing jokes on TV shows and generally in culture in the 90s or so about stuff being made in the US being crappy. I think if people have a problem with low quality stuff being produced for cheap, what they really have whether they realize it or not is a problem with crapitalism.
Its no surprise that quality control and lutherie culture has trickled down to even the cheapest necks from china. After all, all the major players have moved a large portion of their manufacturing overseas anyways in the last 3 decades or so, and with that: knowledge and skill.
Over the holidays I helped my dad purchase and eastman taylor style acoustic used for $800. That thing is pound for pound as good or better than a taylor at 4-5X the price.
Only reason to buy name brand is resale value. Either go cheap and pay or do the setup or go big and work with a local luthier whom you like their style of work.
very true, though name brands depreciate somewhat, resale value is a big factor to consider when buying.
@@MarkGutierrezNot at these prices. So you put $200 into your Chinese Partscaster. It’s probably never going to sell for less than $125 later. Depreciation? You’re not going to spend a grand building a Chinese Partscaster. Now if we’re talking Warmoth assembled parts… you’re talking depreciation.
I once got an AliExpress scalloped neck....it was firewood.
Fk warmoth. They charge you hundreds of dollars for a neck that they don't even fully set up. Scam !!
not to mention the tools it would cost contributing to the value
Roasted is just a marketing ploy and the smoothness comes from lack of finish not from wood process. Baked is essentially dry wood and that was never sought after.
If time and money is a concern with how you build guitars then just pick a complete guitar off the shelf, or assemble kits.... Im not too worried about a Chinese factory slapping out multi laminate all Australian hardwoods with top tier truss rods and quality frets any time soon. I get what youre trying to say, but for most builders, theyre going to stick with what they can hand on heart back as they made it start to finish...
I got one that was tinted yellow and i hated that color so i sanded it down and behold the skunk stripe was painted on....
So how did they install the truss ? Skunk stripes are there because its one piece w a back truss route. Was it a separate fingerboard ? The level of stupidity in not replicating properly by counterfeiters is amazing.
Yep ...👍
The neck I bought last week has a slight depression on one end… an imperfection yes… but proof that it’s not just painted on.
china necks are good !! no question.