1peice vs 5peice bolt on necks

One has more pieces than the other :D

No idea man, sorry

a 5 piece neck could be engineered that way because of the idea of stability; grains of each piece could run in different directions thus eliminating the potential of a warped neck...as could happen with a single piece neck.

some say a laminated top is better than a single layer top.
Ive no problems with engineering.

Im not sure of the pros or cons of each.
my single piece necked guitars have never given me any problems
so Im not searching for anything else.

Are you asking what the pros & cons are of electric guitar bolt on necks versus "set" necks? If so, there are a lot of thoughts about that. Here are just a few of the "major" arguments for each. I think either one is fine; it depends on the guitar:

Bolt on:

1. Easy to replace a neck if it is damaged, etc.
2. Cheaper/easier to build.

The most famous bolt on is the Fender Strat or Tele.

Set neck:

1. Some think the sound/sustain is better than bolt ons.

The most famous set neck is the Gibson Les Paul or SG.

I hope this helps, I pulled the information below off a website:

Set (or "set-in") Neck
This simply means that the neck is glued into place. This method has been used as long as acoustic guitars have existed and is almost always used in acoustic guitar construction (with one notable exception, described below). The set neck is carefully cut to match its mounting point on the guitar body and the two sections are almost always connected with dove-tail joints to maximize the gluing surface and minimize neck wiggle. The Gibson Les Paul models are prime examples of electric guitars with set necks.

Bolt-on Neck
This term was applied to Leo Fender's first electric guitar, which would eventually be called the Telecaster. Ironically, Fender didn't use bolts at all - his guitar neck was attached to the slab body with four wood screws. Nevertheless, the name stuck. Some manufacturers actually do use bolts. Taylor, a custom builder of acoustic and electric guitars, developed a special bolt-on design in which the head of the bolt is inside the body of the guitar. Almost all other bolt-on necks are seen on solid-body electrics.

Neck Through Body
This approach is limited exclusively to solid-body guitars. The "neck" is actually an integral part of the guitar's body and extends the entire length of the instrument. In fact, Les Paul's early experimental guitars began with a 4" wood post that ran from tail to headstock, with the sawed-off halves of a guitar body glued onto its sides. More advanced neck-through designs use dovetail joints or dados - a "tab" in one piece that fits into a slot in the other - to connect the full-length neck to the body wings. Some players feel that the lower mass of the body wings cuts down on low frequency resonance, creating a bright, thin-sounding guitar. Neck-through instruments work well in high-volume playing situations that call for definition and clear low end. Some neck-through guitars (Gibson's Firebird, for example) use a mahogany neckpiece. This softer wood provides a warmer, rounder tone more characteristic of a set-in, or set-neck, guitar. The Parker Fly Classic combines a neck-through design with light basswood underneath its carbon/glass "exoskeleton" to provide a lightweight guitar with the feel of much denser, harder woods.

That's some good information CFB, but I believe he is just asking about the difference between a single piece neck and a neck composed of five pieces. I have also wondered this and have seen three piece necks as well.

At first I thought that the less pieces the better; less parts, more sturdy. Reflecting on what dogbite said, it would make sense that more grains the stronger and more sturdier the neck would be.

But I suppose as everything dealing with guitars goes, each has its own benefits and flaws and it is mostly opinion.

isnt there a big debate about sonic properties between the two.

solid being better.
but with todays technologies a laminate would be considered 'solid'.
? dunno.
not an issue for me.

I play one piece bolt on necks.
Fender player here.

There are no real warpage/stability issues 1 versus 3 versus 5 -piece these days, as good makers know how to make stable necks in any of these versions. It's cheaper to laminate, as the pieces of wood can be smaller, but the results are perfectly fine. Laminations of the neck are used decoratively - usually by placing a contrasting color between layers of like wood.

One exception to all this is headstock construction. Many makers now slice on angled headstocks for a couple different reasons. For maple neck -- where strength and shock resistance are NOT and issue, this allows use of smaller peices of wood. For mahogany and similar, slicing the headstock onto the neck eliminates grain runout at the weakest part of the neck, significantly strengthening the headstock, and making it more resistant to accidental breakage. Taylor splices most (if not all) of its headstocks.

Lengthwise splicing (laminating) will also strengthen the headstock-neck area