Woks I'm always on the look out for a challenge for you what do you think lol.

[kimball492]

Come on Woks it's not as if you've got loads to do buddy lol.

[wazkelly]

Reckon it's no good for heavy metal.....aluminium not being a heavy metal?.....I will see myself out, OK.

[Simon Barden]

My friend Ivan had one of the original Travis Bean basses with an aluminium neck. Sounded lovely, just wouldn't stay in tune as the temperature changed.

[wazkelly]

My friend Ivan had one of the original Travis Bean basses with an aluminium neck. Sounded lovely, just wouldn't stay in tune as the temperature changed.

Didn't think the low temps in UK would affect aluminium too much? Maybe when playing under 1000 watt par 64's where the temp can get over 40 degrees Celsius it would probably have been out of tune before the end of each song.

[wokkaboy]

Cheers KB for the suggestions but that one is out of control. Nice looking axe if it stayed in tune

[kimball492]

Woks it depends on how much you drink as to how out of tune it gets lol. I imagine 4-5 it would start to sound ok lol. I once sat with a buddy keyboard player went to watch a band play. He turned more and more ashen as the band played. I said what's up, he said the keyboard player is playing out of tune and it's making me really ill. It genuinely was making him really sick. Mind you I remember he would demo these massive Keyboatds for Yamaha or Kawai Pianos. Before a gig he'd drink half a bottle of scotch and play like a demon. Amazing could play anything in seconds. Made me sick lol.

[Simon Barden]

Waz, temperature expansion and contraction is all about relative temperature changes rather than absolute temperature. You bring in a guitar with a metal neck that's been sitting in the band's van at 4°C for a couple of hours into a 20°C room then it's going to take a while to stabilise. If the stage then warms up to near 28°C over a couple of hours as people come in and the stage lights (pre-LED) blaze down, you are going to get lot of tuning issues. Wood suffers far less from temperature than metal. Strings, being so thin, adjust quickly to temperature, so don't take much time to adjust (though they still affect tuning), whilst more massive items like metal necks take a lot longer to reach equilibrium.

I'd imagine a metal guitar body would suffer less of the effect, as the distance between bridge and neck is only about 1/3 of the overall neck distance, but it would still have a small effect. Steel has half the coefficient of expansion of aluminium, so a rusty Trussart Tele wouldn't suffer so much from temperature changes as an aluminium bodied one would.

[wazkelly]

Thanks Simon.

Physics was not my strongest subject in high school.

[Simon Barden]

The overall expansion isn't huge - around 0.5mm on an aluminium bass for a 20°C change (or a similar contraction if going from hot to cold), but you know from intonating a guitar or bass how even a small change in the saddle position can have a noticeable effect on the tuning.

[kimball492]

I see someone else has made this style of guitar with all wood Woks and just inlaid an aluminium top on it. Zemaitis was big fan of aluminium and stainless engraved the tops. Tony Zemaitis used to make a lot of guitars for artists especially Ron Wood and I believe his son has now taken over his work. http://zemaitisguitar.com/