How much should neck wood influence pickup choice?

[witeter]

Hi guys was wondering about how much influence the guitar neck wood has on pickup choice as I have only normally taken into account the guitar body's wood.
So I have 2 6string-guitars, both are mahogany body but one has a set-in mahogany neck and the other a bolt-on maple neck. Say if i was going to put a set of aftermath pickups in both guitars-what tonal differences would the neck construction and wood offer? What type of pickups would offer a great modern tight metal tone for each guitars? Thanks!

[Roobubba]

I don't have a reference right now to the source, but I believe that a well constructed guitar is more important than the type of neck join. For all guitars, the strings are attached to the neck, the neck to the body (ignoring the multitude of broken gibsons lol), and the amount of neck wood is not insignificant, so you can't discount the tonal impact of the neck wood.

Based on this,  I would say you'd find the bolt-on maple-necked guitar brighter than the set-on mahogany-necked guitar to some degree. Both should retain that aggressive attack that the aftermath makes its own, but I would expect a bit more in the upper mids and highs from the maple neck instrument.

Just my ill-informed web opinion, wait for some professionals to show up for a proper answer ;)

Roo

[witeter]

hey Roo thanks for that-it does make sense actually.
So maybe should i go for something like a Miracle Man/cold sweat combo on the bolt-on maple neck and maybe go with the Aftermath set on the Mahogany body and neck guitar?

[darkbluemurder]

So maybe should i go for something like a Miracle Man/cold sweat combo on the bolt-on maple neck and maybe go with the Aftermath set on the Mahogany body and neck guitar?

Yes, if you want the guitars to sound more similar to each other, i.e. if you want to compensate wood properties with pickups. Of course you could choose the same pickup set for both guitars and accept the different wood tonalities or you could choose pickups to accentuate the wood properties to get radically different sounding guitars.

Cheers Stephan

[witeter]

Hey man yes that makes sense. Just that i dont want too get a sound thats too trebly, hence why id stay clear from a painkiller for example in my bolt-on neck guitar. What other suggestions would you recommend to bring out the woods of the guitars  and give them interesting characteristics?

[gwEm]

neck wood is important to tone in my opinion.

i like maple for tightness.

[Telerocker]

Like gwEm says, the neckwood is important the tone as is the fatness of the neck.