All guitar companies need to start listing 1st and 12th fret measurements

Since it's more difficult than ever to go in a guitar store and actually try guitars, 1st and 12th fret measurements should always be listed.

Above is a Yamaha Revstar. Now while true Yamaha buries the information on 1st and 12th fret neck thickness measurements very deep in their web site, all the measurements for the Revstar are right here. The only thing not listed is weight, but Sweetwater is usually pretty good about listing that info for most guitars they sell (which includes the Revstar), so I'll give Yamaha a pass on that.

The way Yamaha lists info for their guitars should be a standard model for all guitar companies, because you get all the info you want to be better informed when going to buy. It is VERY nice...

...but I'd be happy enough if guitar companies at least followed what Yamaha does for stating neck thickness. It's stupidly easy. The column is called "Thickness @1st fret/12th fret", and right after that under each model, the 1st/12th thickness is plainly stated.

There are many guitars I won't buy because of the lack of this info

Yamaha, Schecter and Ibanez all list 1st/12th fret neck thickness. Some others do too. But Fender, Squier, Gibson and Epiphone don't. All they tell you is the neck shape and maybe one word like "thin" or nothing at all which implies "not-so thin"? That's all you get.

If for example I go to the Epiphone web site, look up info on the SG Standard and scroll down to the neck, I get this:

The only info I get for any sense of what the neck thickness is comes from the profile listed as "60s SlimTaper".

No mention of neck shape or thickness whatsoever. You're just supposed to magically know what 60s SlimTaper actually means. And I guarantee if you asked five different guitar players what that is, you'd get five different answers since the SG model has been around for so long.

If Epiphone simply listed the 1st and 12th fret depth measurements (and listing the neck shape would be nice too), that would at least give me some sense of how the neck feels on this thing.

But nope, you don't get that. You want that info? You're gonna have to go to guitar forums and hope somebody actually bought the model from this year, was kind enough to measure the neck, and actually post the measurements.

(Tip to all guitar forums: Create a board called "Guitar Specifications (Only)" if you don't already have one. I guarantee you'll get lots of traffic from that, because it's info people want more than anything else.)

To guitar companies: LIST ALL THE INFO

By "all the info", I mean all of it. In addition to what is already there, list the neck shape, 1st fret neck depth, 12th fret neck depth, string-to-string distance, average overall weight of the guitar, pickup output in DCR (follow what Seymour Duncan does there).

No web pages have to be redesigned. No massive effort needs to be done to get this info. All a guitar company has to do is get an intern, sit him or her down with a line of guitars, have the intern take measurements, weigh them, measure pickup output, then send the info to the web guy and update the product pages. Yes, it's that easy. It would take one day to do this for current run models.

And no, listing that info would not confuse potential customers. Not at all. Guys who play guitar not only want this info but need it.

Want more sales, guitar companies? Yeah, you do. List all the info and you'll get more sales.

Published 2021 Feb 25