Learning to play the guitar is no doubt one of the coolest yet most difficult things that anyone can face. Once you’ve learned the ropes, you’ll be able to rock out with your friends, play covers of your favorite songs, and maybe even write your own! However, before you can do all of that fun stuff, there are a lot of challenges in your way.
From doing the initial research to purchasing the guitar and its accessories, I found my first guitar purchase pretty stressful. Every guitar looks different, with unique bodies, strings, and necks. I struggled with that last part as a beginner guitarist – should I get a thick or a thin neck, and does it make a difference?
I’m here to tell you that it does, especially when it comes to acoustic guitars. Interested to find out more? Well, read on to hear all sorts of exciting details in my thin-neck acoustic guitars guide! I’ll be covering why thin necks can sometimes be exactly what you need, how to size up a guitar, and I’ll even be recommending to you my favorite thin-necked acoustics. Let’s get into it!
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Bottom Line Up Front: Thin neck acoustic guitars usually have a neck of less than 1.9″ when measured from the nut, and can greatly benefit children or adults with small hands. The thinner neck has no negative effect on the sound of the guitar as demonstrated by acoustics such as the Taylor 214ce, and overall can have great benefits in terms of ease of use.
You might have read that heading and think it sounds like a bit of an obvious question – thin neck guitars are simply guitars with thin necks, right? That is correct, but I thought that I would cover it in slightly more detail for any beginner guitarists out there.
The neck of an acoustic guitar is the long piece of wood that comes out of the body, usually having a wooden finish on the back whilst being covered by frets on the face. On the face of the neck is the fretboard, a literal board of guitar frets that allows the guitarists to play different notes. This is worth mentioning as many people get confused between fretboards and necks – they are two different things. The fretboard is
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The neck of the guitar is the main place where a guitarist’s left hand will be navigating, constantly moving around it to hit different frets on the fretboard. As a result, guitar builders have experimented for years to find the ultimate depth for the neck. Generally, they measure out at around 1.9 inches around the bolt, but some of them are significantly thinner than this. Why exactly? Let’s take a look!
I remember when I was first learning to play the acoustic guitar – I was only about eight years old and I thought I was the coolest kid in town, especially since I had decided to learn the guitar. I was at that sort of age where I thought bigger always meant better – I wanted the biggest burger, the biggest shoes, and I certainly wanted the biggest guitar.
My Dad had taken me guitar shopping and I had my eyes on a gorgeous jumbo acoustic guitar, and I walked out of Guitar Center with it. If only my Dad knew how bad of a decision that was! Why exactly? There were several reasons – let’s break them down.
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Perhaps the most obvious reason that someone would purchase a thin-neck acoustic guitar is so that they can navigate the fretboard properly. That’s right – if a guitar neck is too thick, you simply will not be able to wrap your hands around it, especially if you are a child like I was! I would sit down at my guitar stool ready to practice my new favorite hobby, and my left hand would barely fit around the neck.
Limited in terms of what I could do. Sure, I had no problem hitting the high G, B, and E notes as they were closest to where my fingers were placed when wrapped around the neck. This meant that I had no issues with playing some basic open chords such as D Major, but as soon as I started to learn chords on lower strings, problems arose.
I couldn’t even reach the low E string with my fingers, let alone play a basic bass chord such as E Minor! It was a serious problem, as every song I tried to learn had an E Major in it, and I wouldn’t be able to play them.
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I did temporarily solve this problem by applying to a high fret at a point where the neck was thinner, allowing me to navigate the neck easier. However, it was a solid year or so until I was finally able to move my hands around and reach the full range of strings.
Learn from my mistakes – if you’re purchasing a guitar for a child, or perhaps you just have small hands, consider buying a thin neck acoustic guitar over a thick one.
I mentioned how it’s not just children that may struggle with thick-neck acoustic guitars, but adults too. If you have small hands like my wife, you could struggle with a thick-necked guitar just as much as any child. Sure, you could probably just about reach all the strings, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a comfortable experience.
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That brings me to my next point – discomfort. Even if you can successfully navigate the entire fretboard of a thick neck guitar, it may be an uncomfortable experience. You may experience this discomfort whilst playing, distracting you from having fun learning your new favorite song, or you may instead experience the discomfort after you play. Warping your hands to reach those hard-to-access frets is no doubt going to cause discomfort and perhaps even a finger injury.
Why put yourself through all that pain when there is a simple solution? Get yourself a thin neck acoustic guitar, and you won’t have to worry about experiencing such pain. There is no shame in doing this – sure, thin neck acoustic guitars are great for kids who are just starting to learn the instrument, but they can also be fantastic for adults with small hands. There’s no shame in that!
Believe it or not, some adults and children will not realize that their acoustic guitar neck is too thick for them. They’ve gone through all of the beginning stages of learning the instrument, learning to navigate the fretboard, and developing calluses on their fingers, without realizing that they have a serious problem – they are unable to fully develop their guitar technique.
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That’s right – this is perhaps one of the most common problems I have seen with thick-neck acoustic guitars. You may be able to comfortably navigate the fretboard of a guitar and feel like there is no problem, but the reason for this is that you are limiting yourself without even realizing it. You’ve never bothered to learn hammers-ons and pull-offs, and you’ve never mastered that tricky B chord.
It’s a darn shame that some people put themselves through this. They would rather choose a ‘normal sized’ guitar neck just to fit in over a thinner neck, at the complete detriment of their guitar playing ability. Imagine a world where you are unable to truly master your favorite instrument, just because you are worried about what people think!
If you’re reading this and that sounds like you, consider testing your guitar-playing ability on a thin-neck acoustic guitar and see if this has any effect. You might just find that you are capable of achieving much more complex technique and masterful playing simply because the neck is thinner!
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I’ve saved this last point because I relate to it on a very deep level. It encompasses all of the other points but has a much more significant consequence.
When I began to learn the guitar on the jumbo acoustic that I mentioned earlier, I suffered from all of the problems that I have listed – I couldn’t navigate the fretboard properly, playing the guitar was uncomfortable, and I was unable to even think about learning advanced techniques.
I complained about this to my parents, but unfortunately, they were none the wiser about guitar necks. They simply told me to keep practicing, and the skill would develop naturally.
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I took my parents’ advice and persevered, but it was only going to take me so far – at the end of the day, my hands were simply too small for the thick jumbo acoustic neck that I had. Day by day, my motivation to play the guitar got lower, dreading my classes and practice sessions for the discomfort that I knew that I would experience. I began to practice less and less, and I began to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. Eventually, I put down the instrument altogether.
Just like that, I had decided that the acoustic guitar was not the instrument for me – I simply wasn’t good enough, and I might as
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