Yes, the neck is an exception, although some figures really work great with just plain old sphere mapping. (Sphere mapping really was at its heyday with the 3rd Gen Matt / Maddie and the 4th Gen Kids 4 meshes. These were the last meshes issued of their resp. generations, so they benefitted the most from the lessons learned from their predecessors)

I just try to keep weightmapping to a minimium because I often transfer rigs between different meshes. And while sphere rigs are quite flexible, weightmaps (can) need a lot of adjustment if transferred between figures.

I also use JCMs A LOT. In fact for my personal figures, I often make a "Full Body JCM" to fix a certain pose and save a pose file with that JCM already activated.

It's a very primitive way to "rig", but I don't have to make any compromises regarding shapes or worry about different JCM's interferring with each other. I know one can set up a complicated matrix to control JCMs by multiple actors simultanously, but I never bothered to wrap my head around all the necessary computations.

"Dammit Jim, I'm an artist, not a mathematician."

;-D