another reason i'll never own a vintage guitar
When finding out why the PRS McCarty 594 guitars have 594 in the model name, that started me down a rabbit hole.
According to Paul Reed Smith himself, the 594 comes from a 1959 four-knob guitar where the scale length was measured at 24 and 19/32". If you divide 19 by 32, that's 0.59375. When you round that number up, it's 0.594, hence the scale length of a McCarty 594 model is 24.594".
Okay, great. Good to know. But as I kept reading on from place to place across the internet about scale lengths and such, those vintage electrics are just... ugh.
I didn't see this coming, but it happened.
Sam Ash is a musical instrument retailer that had 42 stores in the USA across 16 states, 9 of which were in Florida. I did shop at the Tampa store several times. In fact, that's where I first saw the then-new Squier Vintage Modified series back in the early 2010s. They had all the models, and it's where I got to play my first Squier Jazzmaster. It was amazing.
So when did this happen?
What I will describe to you in a moment actually works for almost any bolt-on neck, but it's the Fender and Squier guitars where people notice this the most.
Misaligned guitar neck defined: This is when the high-E string or low-E string is too close to the edge of the neck, causing it to buzz out like crazy and/or "jump" off the fretboard during guitar play.
Examine this photo first:
