The ESP Guitar Company

There is no best and worst, only personal preference.

Here are the facts:

Bolt on: The neck is bolted onto the body.
Neck-thru: The neck also forms the centre column of the body.
Set neck: The neck is glued onto the body.
Set-thru: The neck is glued onto the body and the neck joint is carved smooth.

Neck-thru and set-thru guitars generally have good upper fret access. A lot of people will tell you neck-thru guitars have better sustain than the others.

Set-thu's go a bit further into the body than Set neck's right ?

Aight, thats what I thought.. just checkin' ;)

There are some definite tone differences. I'll preface what I'll say with some clarification: I prefer set neck and neck through guitars. I've never owned a set-through joint guitar, however, so I won't comment on it.

Here follow some fucking broad-ass generalizations:

Bolt-ons: tend to have more treble and attack, a tight feel, and lots of 'springiness'. To me, that's what makes a strat sound like a strat more than single coil pickups alone (especially in a 25.5 scale). There's a lot of articulation, but some people think bolt ons can sound kind of thin. This really depends on the guitar, neck wood, etc. Bolt-ons can have excellent upper fret access (Take a look at Suhr Modern, for instance), provided the baseplate area of the body isn't an obscenely large block.

Set neck: warmer, more midrange, more 'pissed off' sounding, to my ears. More sustain to me than a bolt on and pretty tied with most neck throughs (I don't really buy the neck-through = more sustain serious biznezz). Chunkier sounding and a bit less articulated.

Neck through: Sometimes has more sustain than a set neck, usually better upper fret access (this depends though, on the design of a set neck vs. neck through heel and cutaways). Really present attack, usually pretty articulate, and a lot of focus on individual notes. When I think neck through, I think lead guitar. Downside is I feel a lot of NTs are kind of cold sounding. I don't really know why that is.

Take it with a grain of salt.

Pus, does ESP even do set-through?

LTD does. I'm sure ESP would do it, but I'm not sure if they have any production guitars that are.

I'm partway convinced set through is a gimmick. I can't really see any benefit to basically making a half assed neck through and essentially killing part of the resonating potential of the body by carving out a chunk of it. A long tenon joint with a sanded heel can suffice.

Amirite?

I don't get what you mean. Set-thru basically is just a long tenon neck with a carved heel.

Yeah, ESP has like 4 or 5 variations on bolt-on joints. I think Shinji posted them at one point, but I don't remember the thread.

ok i know this will sound noob but what does multi-piece necks actually do ?
say you have the choice between a 1 piece 3 piece and lets say a 9 piece neck which would be the best and why ? the 9 ?!?!

just askin because i saw the M had a 3 piece

laminate necks prevent warping

When you get into necks with more than 3 pieces, it's often done as decoration in through-neck guitars and basses.

Schecter does it, ya fag.

Star cut :hat

As I happen to do very often, I will disagree with GFunk. Bolt-ons are not everyone's cup of tea (GFunk likes to take his personal opinion as the universal truth). For example, I have quite small hands and short fingers. On a bolt-on with a big bulky heel (such as on many ESPs), I REALLY have trouble reaching the last frets, especially when I'm playing fast. My first guitar was a LTD M-50, been using it a damn lot and I'm still uncomfortable at the highest frets. My SV Standard has a thicker neck than the M-50, but it's neck-through and I have much less trouble reaching the last frets. Depends on your hands and habits, if you can, just try out the different constructions and see which one suits you best.