why the Gibson LP supreme is chambered?

  • Thread starter Thread starter didigao
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didigao

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Hi guys, I've learnt that the body of a gibson les paul supreme is chambered.
Why?
And I would appreciate very much if any of you can show me pictures of the chambered room.

Thanks!
 
I think that the chambered body serves 2 (and maybe more) purposes:
- to reduce the weight of the instrument
- to change the resonance of the body (for better or for worse, I don't know)

I've seen an x-ray pic posted here of a chambered Les Paul body. It had holes that were about 1.5" or so in diameter drilled in different places around the mahogany part of the body. Then the maple top covered it so you couldn't tell just by looking at the instrument that it was chambered.

I'm trying to find that pic but having no luck. I'll keep trying and post it here if I do come across it.
 
didigao said:
Hi guys, I've learnt that the body of a gibson les paul supreme is chambered.
Why?
And I would appreciate very much if any of you can show me pictures of the chambered room.

Thanks!
Click to expand...


I bought a Supreme 2 years ago. Damn nice guitar. It's definately lighter than say a standard. Probably by a pound or so. There's a picture of it with me playing it. God I love that guitar.

attachment.php
 
Supremes actually aren't chambered in the way that a Standard is. The Standard has round holes drilled in to the mahogany about 1.5" in diameter or so. The Supremes chambers are huge, almost like a semi hollow, I'll go look for a picture to show the chambers.
 
here's the picture, along with a link to the thread in a different forum
 

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The Custom Shop Elegance models were also chambered. They have a different (I'll avoid words like "better", "nicer", etc) quality sound than the "solid" models, add to that the fact that each block of wood imparts it's own individual character to an instrument which means that each guitar sounds "marginally" different.........sometimes it's a subtle change, sometime it's quite noticable.

:cool:
 
ausrock said:
The Custom Shop Elegance models were also chambered. They have a different (I'll avoid words like "better", "nicer", etc) quality sound than the "solid" models, add to that the fact that each block of wood imparts it's own individual character to an instrument which means that each guitar sounds "marginally" different.........sometimes it's a subtle change, sometime it's quite noticable.

:cool:
Click to expand...

But I thought that the heavy body was the point of the Les Paul design.
 
ggunn said:
But I thought that the heavy body was the point of the Les Paul design.
Click to expand...

that's what i thought too. except for the Goddess and the Vixen models. those are made specifically to be lighter so that women can play les pauls too. :D
 
ggunn said:
But I thought that the heavy body was the point of the Les Paul design.
Click to expand...

Who really knows what the point of the original design was :confused: .

The fact is that a LP Standard's weight can vary considerably, I just checked two of the three Stds we have......one is 8.5lbs, the other 11lbs, also I checked one of two LP Elegance and it is approx., 8.25lbs.

:cool:
 
ausrock said:
Who really knows what the point of the original design was :confused: .
Click to expand...

Well, I'm pretty sure it was designed intentionally with a heavy body to maximize sustain. I read some articles some years ago that talked about body damping limiting sustain, and the point was that the inertial component contributed by the mass of a heavy guitar body worked against body damping. The archtop Les Paul was specifically cited as an example of a guitar designed with that in mind.
 
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