Finicky les paul, wood/tone issues?

[bognerman]

I've had this happen on several guitars, maybe someone knows what's going on.

The guitar can go from being fat and solid sounding, to being very thin and plinkly---all acoustically/unplugged.
Obvious huge reduction is bass, fullness, solidity and sustain. Sometimes the guitar sounds "right", other times
it's horrible. It can can change in the middle of playing it too, but I can't tell where the change is happening.

Could it be humidity, truss rod, something else?

Wondering if anyeone else has had this happen on one of their guitars.

I had a luthier look at it and he couldn't tell anything.

 

[Scumback Speakers]

Wait a minute. Do you have a fan on in the room you're playing this unplugged, or some other wind making device? The only time I notice a change in my guitar tones unplugged is when the air is disturbed in the room (fan, wind, opening a window, etc).

Have you had your ears checked? Maybe you've got an infection going on in one of them.

I know when I go scuba diving, I come back and my guitars sound off for 24 hours or so until my ears dry out and re-equalize.

 

[cardinal]

That sounds strange. Maybe it's not the guitar but your technique or ear fatigue. I know that if I'm being lazy or sloppy with my picking hand technique, I can get frustrated with my tone and start a bunch to tweaking on the amp when the real problem was me.

 

[boost]

That happens to my guitars when the action gets to low. For me, a twist on the truss rod getting the action up brings back all the things you state you lost. Worth trying.

 

[bognerman]

No fan, this is unplugged.. ears checked.. you can feel it in the guitar too--the loss of resonance & bass frequencies.

Wait a minute. Do you have a fan on in the room you're playing this unplugged, or some other wind making device? The only time I notice a change in my guitar tones unplugged is when the air is disturbed in the room (fan, wind, opening a window, etc).

Have you had your ears checked? Maybe you've got an infection going on in one of them.

I know when I go scuba diving, I come back and my guitars sound off for 24 hours or so until my ears dry out and re-equalize.

 

[bognerman]

That happens to my guitars when the action gets to low. For me, a twist on the truss rod getting the action up brings back all the things you state you lost. Worth trying.

Will try raising the action. I'm thinking it's the truss rod too, but it's flaky & random.

 

[bognerman]

That sounds strange. Maybe it's not the guitar but your technique or ear fatigue. I know that if I'm being lazy or sloppy with my picking hand technique, I can get frustrated with my tone and start a bunch to tweaking on the amp when the real problem was me.

Could be! But I'll notice it unplugged when practicing w/o amp, prior to ear fatigue.

The last les paul that had this, the drummer stopped in the middle of a song and said "what happened to your guitar?" It's like the guitar was fine for years, and then one day it got very flaky. Switched to a backup guitar and the problem was gone--but that les paul continued to be flaky.

 

[boost]

Sounds like a neck issue to me. Getting warped or fret sprout maybe?

Worth checking the electrical connections and the pickups to. Make sure there are no cold solder joints or loose connections. Maybe a winding in the pickup too? Electronics can drive you nuts when they don't work right and cause all kind of havoc that you think is something else.

 

[bognerman]

Sounds like a neck issue to me. Getting warped or fret sprout maybe?

Worth checking the electrical connections and the pickups to. Make sure there are no cold solder joints or loose connections. Maybe a winding in the pickup too? Electronics can drive you nuts when they don't work right and cause all kind of havoc that you think is something else.

Yah, not sure--it's all an unplugged tonal change (that translate into plugged in issues too)

My luthier had one other guy with the same issue on a les paul--he could not figure it out and sold it.

 

[Anonymous]

Like someone else mentioned, it could be subtle room noise differences: fan, computer fan, refrigerator, heater, anything that can overlap with some of your guitar's frequencies

 

[flimz]

Even though its unplugged, maybe a pickup is doing something weird to the magnetic pull on the strings?

 

[ibenhad]

Could be humidity or lack of. It wouldn't just happen that quickly though. Seems kinda weird.

 

[Kevin11]

I have a LP Custom that gets this way sometimes. The guitar just feels more dead and muted. The only thing I've been able to deduce, like ibenhad said, is the humidity content in the air. I do a lot of outdoor gigs in the Summer and the humidity can settle into the guitar (neck, finish, etc.). If I take it out of the case back home and leave it out on a stand in a fairly "normal" humidity range, it'll go back to it's old lively self in time. Mine is super-sensitive to it, so even slight changes in my home can affect the way it feels. Obviously worn strings can add to the dead factor too.

 

[Nico]

Its the voices in your head, they're playing tricks on you...

Try with the action I'd say, although it makes no sense if the guitar sound good one day and then bad, then good...

 

[halebox]

Is it a historic? I had a 57 that I had to tweak a bunch of times. I think its the wood they use now. My 69 sounds consistently great