Re: Weight relived Les Paul article
I don't freaking care if they are chambered or weight relieved. It doesn't affect my life in the slightest. I've never played a Les Paul from the 50's or 60's and I probably never will. What matters to me is if it plays and feels well enough for me.
That said, I'm jonesing bad for a LP Trad Pro. My bandmate is selling is and I'm praying he has it long enough to where I can buy it from him. I had it for a week to do a setup for him on it and as it settled in, it played better and better. Then I played it at a gig and just fell in love with the thing.
Some people need to quit sniffing glue or whatever else they are on and listen with their ears and feel with their hands and heart rather than spec sheets and internet banter.
Yeah, we should definitely not discount a guitar because of one feature or another. It's all just a part of the whole.
My nicest, most expensive guitar has a fully chambered mahogany body and a laminated maple top. It's built incredibly well, plays perfectly, and has sweet tone that you can't get anywhere else. It's a Gretsch Duo Jet.
But ...
I think the thing that is bothering a lot of people is not that a chambered or weight relieved Les Paul sucks; it's that the reasons for carving up the body are a bit suspect. Like I said, the original (and now most coveted) Les Pauls were completely solid. Gibson didn't have to drill weight relief holes or route chambers, because the wood they used back then was nice and light. A typical Les Paul barely weighed more than a Strat or Tele.
Now they're telling us that they have to weight relieve the mahogany, otherwise we'd end up with 13 lb boat anchors strapped to our shoulders. The thing they still haven't told us, even after this informative article, is
why they have to do this now. Of course, the answer is plainly obvious:
the wood they're using isn't light enough.
If Gibson were willing to pay for lighter mahogany, they would. What probably happened is that someone did a cost-benefit analysis of paying more for better wood vs. chambering the cheaper wood, and went with the second option. That's it.
So now we have Les Pauls that have drifted away from the original design simply because someone in the corporate office wanted to save a few bucks, not because it makes sense from a product quality standpoint.
That's the way things work now, I guess.
