The laminations on the headstock strengthen that vulnerable joint significantly.
My '78 medium scale was sent on a flight off of the third tier of a stage riser from a guitar stand when my foot pulled on the cable as I walked off for a break. It travelled all the way to the audience floor, about 20 feet down and another 10 forward, taking a jbl 12 monitor with it from atop an A7 main speaker, snagging the monitor cable on its perilous journey (the monitor landed on the back of the neck!). The bass landed /smack/ onto its face, with the monitor rolling off to the side. This was in '79, and the bass played the rest of the night, and for 6 months after that before a luthier helped out by soaking some glue into the myriad little cracks which formed on the back laminates.
Having once broken the head off of a Gibson Thunderbird by slipping on ice up some steps on the way to rehearsal, I came to deeply appreciate the thought and care in the development of the head/neck joint laminations.
