Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
Excellent - thanks, Muttley.
muttley600
Banned
It's rubbish because it isn't true. Gibson and all other guitar makers do not select mahogany based on it's weight and reduce it to a consistent measure across instruments. It just doesn't work like that. No two pieces of mahogany in the Gibson shop are the same tonally or otherwise. "weight relieved" as a term means absolutely nothing. So many people analyse the difference between what Gibson do to there instruments and why and read stuff into it that just isn't the case. Gibson themselves just don't work that scientifically. They introduced selectively removing mass from their guitar bodies for entirely different reasons. You cannot make a piece of wood sound more like a Les Paul or less for that matter by putting cavities in it.
OK so I may of been a bit harsh in my words to you, sory about that, but thats because I hear this stuff and lots of other myths perpetuated everyday when I speak to people. I have spend a good deal of time undoing misconceptions created by big brand marketing spin and well meaning players who fall for it.
If you re read what I said I didn't say you did claim that. I was pointing out that you wont thats all.
I'd also hazard a guess that you'd prefer the cosmetic look of other rosewoods these days because the Brazilian stuff thats around now is no where near as good as it used to be. There are several reasons for that.Personally I prefer the look of the Indian that is used these days over The Brazilian. Brazilian stuff is still available to them but the extra costs and falling quality of it have made it un economical for them to use it. Me too.. I have some and the cites to go with it but I tend to use it on acoustics with Brazilian Rosewood back and sides. Not many people do them any more and on an acoustic you do start to hear a difference because of the overall increase in stiffness that it can result in. It is expensive stuff though. On an electric that little benefit is lost in the pickups.
Light has dealt with this. Thanks..
So I ain't slamming you just that us makers hear so many half truths, spin and misconceptions about how and why the big boys do stuff it's unbelievable.
Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
If the goal was not to acheive a consistent weight across the range, why do you think they did this? Some people are of the opinion that the chambering was done to try to regain some tonal element that had been lost over the years due to differences in the mahogany avaible for use. I have no idea if that's true or not.
Light
New member
Maybe the Chiropractors Union stopped making their payments to Henry, so he decided to stop ruining his customers backs?
Seriously, have you ever tried standing up with a Les Paul for a four hour gig?
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
I have done so, many times.
Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
....with a non-weight-relieved 1976 Special. A bit lighter than a Standard because of not having a maple cap (I would guess), but quite hefty nevertheless. It never bothered me or any of the other working Les Paul players I've seen over the years.
Light
New member
Then you know what I'm talking about.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
muttley600
Banned
Had more to do with producing guitars of a given weight/mass. As we all know some of those LP's can be a bit on the heavy side. Thing is you just can't take a piece of mahogany of a given size and hollow it out to give you a specific mass and expect the results to be consistent. It just doesn't work like that. Gibson know that.
I'm not knocking them they have some clever marketing guys that will sell a supposed advantage for all it's worth. Gibson aren't the worst in that respect, that award goes to Taylor. They have a quite remarkable ability to streamline manufacturing techniques and homogenise the whole process and sell it back to the public as a technological and acoustic breakthrough when most times it's the opposite. Add to that that the manipulation of tone colours in an electric guitar body is very general and nowhere near as specific as it can be on acoustic instruments and you can safely ignore any claims that their custom shop make about special considerations they take when voicing those instruments. It just isn't the case. Go find one you like the sound of and plays right don't worry about whether it has chambres or 4000 year old fossilized Martian rosewood on it. With any luck it will look good too.
Come to think about it where people get most of these ideas from? All that happens is that Gibson's or "whoever" marketing throws out a little bone and the guitar buying public and grapevine starts elaborating on it. All of a sudden you have people who will only settle for a custom shop Les Paul reissue Goldtop, chambred on the bass side and made on a Wednesday in March, because THAT is what everyone says is the best. If we all believed the advertising over promises that we see everyday we'd live to a hundred with wrinkle free skin and hair the colour it was when we were 10 and silk like to touch. You get the picture.
If you want a guitar that sounds like a Les Paul get a Les Paul. Don't bet hung up on the detail because it really isn't that way. If you want a custom reissue thats fine too just don't believe that you a getting something significantly superior in it's design and execution because you aren't. What you are getting is a nice guitar that took longer to make by more people with some nicer looking timber.
If you want a unique sounding instrument with that tone you've always hunted out and plays just like you want and no one else in the world has or ever will have one the same. Speak to me.
muttley600
Banned
Yep, and when the public started turning toward lighter instruments en mass. They had to do something..
Back pain has always been a problem for me, our line of work doesn't help either.
I build light for myself and like to do so for others as far as possible. If people want a solid lump of Lignum Vitae strapped round their neck thats fine but not me..
muttley600
Banned
Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
This quote is worth its weight in Custom Shop guitars.
Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
Well, they're heavy, but after a time I just never noticed it.
D
donkeystyle
New member
QUOTE.........."The gibson american guitars are weight relieved. The custom shop guitars are not."
Again, I can't comment on current issue, but the Custom Shop "Elegant" model which was discontinued not too long ago was chambered and it wasn't a reissue.
Are you saying that all "standard" factory produced LPs are chambered and if so, when did they start doing this?
Chambered and weight relieved are 2 different things. I don't know when they started the weight relief thing. They recently announced (sometime in the last year) they they changed their weight relief system to make the guitars sound better though. They showed a picture of what the old weight relief system looked like and what the new one looks like. The old one was just a bunch of holes randomly routed throughout the body. The new system looks much closer to the chambers on the cs 356 and the chambered reissues. I don't know where on the site it was posted because I saw the links on the les paul forum.
muttley600
Banned
Like I said they'll throw out a little bone for the people to run with. Don't fall for it.
If you can find the specifics of their claim about them sounding "better" I'll explain exactly why It's nonsense but essentially I've done so already.
Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
muttley, are you saying that cutting all that wood out of the body really doesn't matter in terms of tone and sustain?
muttley600
Banned
Of course it will have an effect. Two comments one of which I've made already and is key. You cannot predict or control it. Especially when done in the manner that Gibson do, it would require that each instrument is built buy one or at a stretch two people from start to finish. Second the effect as far as it goes it is going to move the sound further from the traditional Gibson sound. No it will not increase sustain. As I've said many times, sustain is a result of simple physics. Hollowing the body does not increase sustain in itself.
The claim that is improves the sound is nonsense. As opposed to what? It will give you a different sound and Gibson don't have the ability to control and manage the effects in each case. They simply produce too many instruments and too quickly. The Gibson "sound" has more to do with their recipe ie. the body shape and timber combination and most importantly when discussing electrics, their pickup configurations.
Nicole_Rose
Great White North Girl
does the swiss cheese holes weight relief or full chambering reduce the sustain then?
muttley600
Banned
Could increase or decrease it. It depends on some simple fixed things that physics has given us.
With a vibrating plucked string you have...
A given amount of energy in the string dictated essentially by how hard you pluck it.
The sustain or in acoustic terms the decay is dependent on several things. All relate to the rate at which energy is lost from the string and how quickly. The pickup detects the movement of the string and reports the amount of movement as amplitude or volume. These two things are forever linked. More sustain equals less amplitude and vice versa.
One of the primary ways the string loses energy on a guitar is via the bridge and less so the nut or neck where you fret. Some is lost to the body in the form of vibration and can never be got back, some is lost to internal friction (heat) depending on the stiffness and density of the body material, some to the air as sound waves, some of it is reflected back down the string to keep the string moving.
Think about what happens when you palm mute a note what you are doing is draining energy from the string. Turn that palm into a very stiff dense material such as glass and you have a bottle neck and the energy is sent back to the string more efficiently. The body material essentially just absorbs or reflects energy depending on the stiffness, mass and damping properties it has.
Now those properties in wood are anisotropic, in other words they are different in all directions and throughout every point of the material. Consequently removing or adding mass will not behave consistently and uniformly. A good builder is able to predict this with a degree of accuracy but it takes a lot of care and experience.
One thing that selectively removing mass does do is change the natural or fundamental frequency of the resulting piece and allows you to "tune" or "tap tone" a piece of timber. But that is another essay..
Nicole_Rose
Great White North Girl
every time i take a deeper look into any part of the field of music, i am constantly amazed at the amount of knowledge there is about it. music theory blows me away there's a whole science to it. how the brain processes sound is also amazing. one little factoid i picked up from a book is that volume is a psychological phenomenon and not a "real" one. and now getting a glimpse into the science and art of making a guitar blows me away again. i really appreciate the time you take to answer all of our questions Muttley. your answers are always enlightening.