Re: Weight relived Les Paul article
In my option the reason why Gibson weight relieves pretty much any Les Paul except most historics is that they buy cheap wood.
Wrong. They still use Honduras Mahogany, the real thing, it isn't cheap to get it legally. They get it from a farm in honduras that complies with renewable resource laws. The reason they weight relieve (which is completely different from chambering) is some people like lighter guitars. That's it. The wood ain't cheap.
PRS et. al., with the exception of a few small luthiers, use fauxhogany, i.e. "african" or "asian" mahogany, which is not mahogany. Guitar makers picked that lie up from the furniture industry, where nothogany is called mahogany because the grain and color are similar. The tone of your kitchen chair doesnt matter. The tone of your guitar does. Fauxhogany doesn't sound terrible, but it sure doesn't sound like real mahogany either. Had lots of both, I've never, ever heard a fauxhogany guitar have the same sound quality that a real mahogany guitar does. It just isn't the same.
Guitar builders should call the wood what it is, i.e. Khaya, Agathis, whatever, not mahogany, but they know most of the public doesn't know better and they also know that when the guitar buying public sees "mahogany" they think classic Gibson tone, though that almost always is not what they are getting nowadays in terms of wood. It is pure marketing BS, designed to mislead.
I can't say for sure, but I doubt that farm in honduras charges any more for a light weight board than a heavier one. Gibson sorts them with the lighter ones generally going to the historics, but the cost of the wood probably does not vary.
I was under the impression that weight relief is a necessary consequence of using denser, heavier African mahogany. The "golden age" LP's were made from lighter Honduran mahogany, thus weight was not really a problem.
Also wrong, see above. For a while in the late 90s/early 2ks, they slid away from using real mahogany. They are back to it. Weight relief existed both before and after the brief fauxhogany era. It actually started before the end of the Norlin era, not in 1990 as someone above claimed.
Side note: It never fails to amuse the sh*t out of me when I see 2003 LPs with braz rosewood boards go for $6k used. That was the fauxhogany era, and while the braz rosewood is a nice touch, the whole guitar was the wrong wood, making a huge upcharge for a small piece of braz rosewood, which is about half plastic inlay anyway, beyond silly.
Old LPs varied in weight from the lighter side to boat anchor. The quote that "old lps were light so they didn't need weight relief" is a complete myth. People didnt complain about weight back then, so they didn't do it.
I have examples of solid, weight relieved, and chambered. I do not hear a difference in tone due to weight relief vs solid. There is a marked difference in tone for chambered, which is essentially a hollow body without F holes, and solid or weight relieved. It is an interesting tone and not bad at all, but also not exactly what you expect from a LP. Whether that is good or bad is subject to taste.
The ONLY solid wood LPs are the historics. Not all of those are solid, they do chambered versions of some because people still complain about the weight, which IMO negates the value of having a historic anyway, but such is the sillyness of the guitar buying public.
mg:
