Gibson Les Paul weight debate

[nevusofota]

Absolutely its BS. You can't "pick up vibrations through the body". Pickups only pickup metal vibrating. Obviously somebody's thinking is that by mounting the pickups directly to the body that the pickup will vibrate more causing the relative vibrations of the strings to the pickup to be larger which might be true, but not in a measurable way. The pickups mounted to the body MIGHT move an extra couple thousanths of an inch which in comparison to the quarter inch amplitude your low E is moving is jack squat.

OK.
So build a guitar with a LP neck, 2 metal or plastic rails to hold the pickups and bridge simply attached with screws.
Use the same pickups and bridge as in a regular les paul.
I bet they sound the same


That is your theory.
Sorry, but you may need to see a doctor to have your head removed from your dark cavity.

 

[Flump]

Absolutely its BS. You can't "pick up vibrations through the body". Pickups only pickup metal vibrating. Obviously somebody's thinking is that by mounting the pickups directly to the body that the pickup will vibrate more causing the relative vibrations of the strings to the pickup to be larger which might be true, but not in a measurable way. The pickups mounted to the body MIGHT move an extra couple thousanths of an inch which in comparison to the quarter inch amplitude your low E is moving is jack squat.

OK.
So build a guitar with a LP neck, 2 metal or plastic rails to hold the pickups and bridge simply attached with screws.
Use the same pickups and bridge as in a regular les paul.
I bet they sound the same


That is your theory.
Sorry, but you may need to see a doctor to have your head removed from your dark cavity.

Yea, thats exactly my theory, I should have had you explain it.

My point was that there would be no discernable difference in a guitar because of how pickups are mounted to the body because it is such a subtle difference. Hell I'd be willing to bet that if you did mount a Les Paul neck to a wood plank, a plastic plank, and a metal plank with the same pickup, bridge, etc....that one single person on this forum could guess each time which is which more than 85% of the time.

Just make sure that all your guitars have nitro on them because it lets the wood "breathe". That'll help the natural tone of the wood bloom through your amp.

 

[Flump]

I always thought that the more dense the wood the more efficiently it transferred the sound waves. Similar to how sound waves travel in water vs. air. I'm not a physicist but thats how I looked at it.

You are correct in that assessment.
Heavy, dense wood is more efficient, but has the exact opposite effect on tone.
Heavy wood has less open space in the wood cells.
Think of these cells as microscopic rooms.
The more space inside the wood cells gives you a natural resonance or reverberation.
So in a dense wood the sound travels fast through the wood and does not sustain as long as a piece of wood with space to echo inside.
Think of a chambered body verse a solid body and it's acoustic properties.

so then why do luthiers, to increase sustain, use dense mahogony blocks to mount pickups to (as in my EBMM BFR JP6). with your theory wouldnt they use something less dense, like basswood?

For the exact same reason I said.
The bulk of your string sound comes between the 12th fret and the neck pickup.
If you put a dense piece of wood in that area, it is going to transfer the vibrations quicker into the rest of the body, hence increasing sustain and resonance.
It's just getting the tone from point A to point B quicker.
This is the reason Gibson LP lovers go for guitars with long neck tenons.
You create a very efficient transfer point for the sound to spread through the wood.

I don't believe this is entirely correct. Mahogony blocks are not used to transfer vibrations from the strings to the body, but to help transfer vibrations from the body to the pup. Vibrations from the strings are sent to the bridge/saddle/nut, through the body, then through the block to the pup. Yes the pup "picks up" the majority of the vibrations of the string directly through the air, but the block is used to send body/wood vibrations to the pick up, it has nothing to do with the strings having the bulk of its sound between the neck pup and the 12th fret.

I call bs on that theory after having done extensive testing...there's another thread around here that goes into a bit more detail. In a nutshell, there was no audible difference between a direct mounted pickup and a ring mounted pickup in the tests that we did.

Absolutely its BS. You can't "pick up vibrations through the body". Pickups only pickup metal vibrating. Obviously somebody's thinking is that by mounting the pickups directly to the body that the pickup will vibrate more causing the relative vibrations of the strings to the pickup to be larger which might be true, but not in a measurable way. The pickups mounted to the body MIGHT move an extra couple thousanths of an inch which in comparison to the quarter inch amplitude your low E is moving is jack squat.

However, you can hear sound coming through the amp, especially in high gain situations, when VERY lightly touching the pickup. Also, pickups do act as transducers, under the saddle pickups (pizo's) being a very sensitive example. Can't you hear light taps from your finger on the body, especially when the amp is cranked? This is from vibration from the body to the pick up. Therefore, I don't think it's 100% B.S.

That's a good point, but to be honest I'd be willing to bet that most of the noise is caused by the actual vibration within the pickup. If someone has time take a pickup and hook it up to an input jack. Hold it in your hand and then tap it with your finger or a screwdriver. Obviously it will still make noise. The noise it makes is still WAY quieter than any noise caused by plucking a string.

 

[nevusofota]

I always thought that the more dense the wood the more efficiently it transferred the sound waves. Similar to how sound waves travel in water vs. air. I'm not a physicist but thats how I looked at it.

You are correct in that assessment.
Heavy, dense wood is more efficient, but has the exact opposite effect on tone.
Heavy wood has less open space in the wood cells.
Think of these cells as microscopic rooms.
The more space inside the wood cells gives you a natural resonance or reverberation.
So in a dense wood the sound travels fast through the wood and does not sustain as long as a piece of wood with space to echo inside.
Think of a chambered body verse a solid body and it's acoustic properties.

so then why do luthiers, to increase sustain, use dense mahogony blocks to mount pickups to (as in my EBMM BFR JP6). with your theory wouldnt they use something less dense, like basswood?

For the exact same reason I said.
The bulk of your string sound comes between the 12th fret and the neck pickup.
If you put a dense piece of wood in that area, it is going to transfer the vibrations quicker into the rest of the body, hence increasing sustain and resonance.
It's just getting the tone from point A to point B quicker.
This is the reason Gibson LP lovers go for guitars with long neck tenons.
You create a very efficient transfer point for the sound to spread through the wood.

I don't believe this is entirely correct. Mahogony blocks are not used to transfer vibrations from the strings to the body, but to help transfer vibrations from the body to the pup. Vibrations from the strings are sent to the bridge/saddle/nut, through the body, then through the block to the pup. Yes the pup "picks up" the majority of the vibrations of the string directly through the air, but the block is used to send body/wood vibrations to the pick up, it has nothing to do with the strings having the bulk of its sound between the neck pup and the 12th fret.

I call bs on that theory after having done extensive testing...there's another thread around here that goes into a bit more detail. In a nutshell, there was no audible difference between a direct mounted pickup and a ring mounted pickup in the tests that we did.

Absolutely its BS. You can't "pick up vibrations through the body". Pickups only pickup metal vibrating. Obviously somebody's thinking is that by mounting the pickups directly to the body that the pickup will vibrate more causing the relative vibrations of the strings to the pickup to be larger which might be true, but not in a measurable way. The pickups mounted to the body MIGHT move an extra couple thousanths of an inch which in comparison to the quarter inch amplitude your low E is moving is jack squat.

However, you can hear sound coming through the amp, especially in high gain situations, when VERY lightly touching the pickup. Also, pickups do act as transducers, under the saddle pickups (pizo's) being a very sensitive example. Can't you hear light taps from your finger on the body, especially when the amp is cranked? This is from vibration from the body to the pick up. Therefore, I don't think it's 100% B.S.

That's a good point, but to be honest I'd be willing to bet that most of the noise is caused by the actual vibration within the pickup. If someone has time take a pickup and hook it up to an input jack. Hold it in your hand and then tap it with your finger or a screwdriver. Obviously it will still make noise. The noise it makes is still WAY quieter than any noise caused by plucking a string.

I do agree with you that a pup will send more sound to the amp with a string vibrating above it versus just vibrations through the body.