I have an old school graphite neck NS with bass guitar frets. I love the way it feels and plays but I realize at some point Emmett changed the base instruments design to incorporate rails instead of frets and hardwood over graphite. What I was wondering is if any of y'all had opinions on whether the new design is superior to the old one and why.

Thanks fellow nerds!

I can't speak to the old designs, but I do like the new sticks. You should order a new one, then compare it yourself. I've heard some stories about graphite being less stable than wood, e.g., when going to different temperatures the tuning goes off.

I have noticed that heavy gauge strings stay in tune more so than medium.

I had owned one of the first 300 made that had a Wenge neck with bass guitar frets. I sold that back to Emmett a few years ago and purchased a new NS with Wenge body and neck with the new style of fret rails. For tapping you can’t beat fret rails. They do not wear like bass guitar frets which important for being able to keep the action low. I had owned that first NS for 10-11 years or so and the fret wear got to the point it needed a little work. I also own a Graphite Grand so I had something good to compare to as well as my guitars and basses.

I did get to play an NS with a Graphite neck in Australia about 10 years ago and typical to bass guitars they do have the same characteristics you would expect from a high end carbon fiber bass. I had owned a Zon for 27 years, so the sound and feel of the Graphite NS was on par with my Zon in the bass guitar register. What I did not like about the Graphite NS was the upper register. I did not find it to be the same as my grand. No surprise there as my grand does not have a wood body. Listening to the owner play it sounded fine, but I preferred my wooden neck NS when it came to me playing. I had also decided to sell the Zon as the lack of a truss rod never let me fine tune the action on it. I had a guitar tech work on it but that didn’t help much.

Greg Howard explained something to me about carbon fiber a few years ago that made me realize better what’s going on - higher frequencies decay longer on a carbon neck. For some people they love it, others no. That might explain why you see more carbon basses around than guitars. I do own a full one piece carbon fiber doubleneck acoustic guitar and I’m very happy with the sound and playability with it. Surprisingly the twelve string sounds quite warmer than one would expect for a carbon fiber guitar.

Similar to bicycle frames, how carbon fibers are layered, molded, etc can be altered to obtain different results. My Grand Stick is heavier than most of its wooden counterparts. With bicycles I’ve owned one CF time trial bike that was heavier than most aluminum frames and was extremely rigid; not at all forgiving on harsh pavement as it was designed for all out speed. So whether it’s a musical instrument or a bicycle, there’s a lot going on that does not make everything carbon equal.

Fascinating... I'm at a little of an impasse now lol On one hand I love my NS and it's cool having one with a graphite neck. On the other hand those are some fine selling points on the wood necks, I'm not a rich guy though so I'm stuck with one or the other. I might be able to get the graphite neck retrofitted with rails, I'll have to call and check.

If you want to get the most out of your instrument talk to Gary Jibilian. I recall him having a graphite at one point. Unless you have some serious fret buzz going on, refretting might not give you as much bang for the buck you might expect. Gary should be able to tell you how to get the most out of it as is before you go the refret route.

Might it be possible to replace the whole neck also ? That might possibly be cheaper than a refret . Worth asking anyways.


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