Radiusmatters

We get very fired up about our fingerboard radius. Does it really matter?

Fender went for 7.25”; Gibson chose 12” and so from the early 1950s, the fingerboard radius debate began. This simple camber from the bass to treble side of a fingerboard can have a noticeable effect on a guitar’s feel and playability: the smaller more domed radius being the one for those that wrap their thumbs around the neck to fret the low E, the comfortable chording radius, while the flatter radius, at extremes, is for the thumb-behind shred brigade. The compound, or conical radius, as with our Cort, reflects the actual arch of the strings from the narrower width of the neck at the nut to the wider spread at the bridge. It’s often seen as a ‘modern’ feature when in fact it’s simply good guitar-making.