Bolt-On Guitar Construction

Shown above are four different styles of bolt-on guitar neck joints.

Bolt-on design is as the name suggests: the neck is bolted onto the body of the guitar. Many people love the Bolt-on method of construction because of the freedom it allows for adjusting and even swapping necks, as does the Bolt-in method. The Fender Stratocaster is an example of a bolt-on guitar. The use of screws to secure the neck is said to have a tonal advantage over the Set-neck construction method because no glue is used, thereby allowing total wood to wood contact between the neck and body for better tone transference.

With Bolt-on guitars, most often the neck sits atop an extention of the body of the guitar at the upper bout. It is then attached with a metal back plate and wood screws.

Classic Single Coil Tone

The best example of a Bolt-on guitar is the Fender Stratocaster. The traditional Stratocaster guitar utilizes three single coil pickups to achieve its signature surfadelic tone. This is the pickup configuration with either a tremolo or hard tail, that is most well-known and has produced vast amounts of classic rock-n-roll music. The Fender Stratocaster is perhaps the most widely played and most famous guitar on the planet.