Sosomething
Well-known member
I know this is about a discontinued model, but I'm fascinated.
The Armada was obviously quite a departure for EBMM both in specs and construction method. They do lots of neck-through guitars with the Majesty, and, if I'm remembering right, some of the BFR Petruccis, but I've never seen a Ball with an angled neck joint like a Gibson before.
And to add to that, I've never seen ANY neck-through guitar with an angled neck joint EVER. How did they do it without having grain run-out where the neck meets the body? On my natural / red tint Armada, the mahogany section is transparent enough that I can see that the grain runs straight all the way through the neck but is also running straight down the body as well, despite there being about a 13° pitch where they meet. Wood doesn't do that!
The headstock is also angled. Again, when I only had my black Armada where the mahogany section is opaque, I couldn't figure out how. I assumed they must either be just throwing caution to the wind like Gibson does, or using a scarf joint of some kind at the nut. Now that I have the transparent one, I can see the answer is actually more complicated. They seem to be using some kind of finger joint like you see on Taylor acoustics, so you have straight grain in the neck AND headstock. It's a complex joint that requires a lot of precision to do properly compared to standard scarf joint. Maybe the neck is attached to the body in a similar way? But then, can it really be called a neck-through design, if so?
I've searched online and only found typical guitar reviews but no explanations on the actual build process. Anybody got any info?
The Armada was obviously quite a departure for EBMM both in specs and construction method. They do lots of neck-through guitars with the Majesty, and, if I'm remembering right, some of the BFR Petruccis, but I've never seen a Ball with an angled neck joint like a Gibson before.
And to add to that, I've never seen ANY neck-through guitar with an angled neck joint EVER. How did they do it without having grain run-out where the neck meets the body? On my natural / red tint Armada, the mahogany section is transparent enough that I can see that the grain runs straight all the way through the neck but is also running straight down the body as well, despite there being about a 13° pitch where they meet. Wood doesn't do that!
The headstock is also angled. Again, when I only had my black Armada where the mahogany section is opaque, I couldn't figure out how. I assumed they must either be just throwing caution to the wind like Gibson does, or using a scarf joint of some kind at the nut. Now that I have the transparent one, I can see the answer is actually more complicated. They seem to be using some kind of finger joint like you see on Taylor acoustics, so you have straight grain in the neck AND headstock. It's a complex joint that requires a lot of precision to do properly compared to standard scarf joint. Maybe the neck is attached to the body in a similar way? But then, can it really be called a neck-through design, if so?
I've searched online and only found typical guitar reviews but no explanations on the actual build process. Anybody got any info?
