lucky1

thanks for the correction on my spelling wes , you da man

hello again, good point but don't think for a minute that in regards to your definition that it is not taken into consideration when constructing instruments. so It should be mentioned in guitar building as well, and I belive the application of the word tonality is being used in this thread as the description of the "timber" of a design, no, not a species of wood, but rather meaning its sound. I.E., a p-90 has a different timber than a tele neck pickup. welcome to the forum

hello everyone, Sorry I did not intend this to be a long post, but it came out that way. and since this is a public forum, then it should be expected that it can happen. metalluthier, Although I do not share your opinions, Its a good thing that you have passion for the instrument you want to create and belive in it the way you do however, It would be unsubstantial to disregard the gibson variety of guitars as only being popular because if its pricey nature. In my humble opinion I think that there is a deficit of information on the part of consumers who share this prejudicial misconception that keep them unfamiliar with the brand and the existance of the technology, engeneering, testing and development teams past and present of this fine company, as well as the reason why this myth exists today. Pricey is one way of looking at it, but If we are gonna take that stance lets try and find out why. We must look at the reasons why the product has become pricey to begin with. One reason they got to be pricey is because in the infancy development stage of the elecrified guitar they were a major contributor in its development, and far before that they successfuly developed acoustic guitars and madolins. To survive in that field you have to know a little bit about resonace, sound, tone and how to produce sustain. You play metal right? so, i'm assuming you use humbuckers. Well, please take this into account, The demand by the working guitarists of the time was for amplifying the natural resonant tones and harmonics of the guitar, but without the amplification of unwanted interferance that was prevalent in the existing technology of that period, the need was so great that it was answered by the legendary Seth Lover the engeneer credited with the invention and development of the dual coil magnetic pickup that you have in your guitar, not suprisigly he was a gibson employee if memory serves me correctly. The Gibson crew had the insight to invest in its development and offer the musicians community with a production line guitar with this groundbreaking inovation that changed everything. And if you want evidence of the viable practicality and perfection of this PU today, do a google search or an ebay search of the PAF pickup and ask yourself why these gibson pickups are so sought after not just by collectors but by players who are looking for that perfect tone. A perfect example of how great these gibson Pu's are, is Eddie VH with him trying to have his odd ball vintage Paf reproduced, and the story as I have heard a few times goes that he turned down over 70 percent of the attempts by the best pickup designers that tried to reproduce its tone. Point being, is that if a company that has the ingenuity and insight to give the us the humbucker as well as literaly well over 139 individual models that are sought after and desirable fretted instruments, Means that their engeneering department is not comprised of a bunch of slackjawed novices haphazardly throwing guitars togeather and expecting top dollar without a clue what sustain is all about and how to optimize it. remember les paul was a shredder in his own right back in the day, Hmm, musicians making instruments for other musicians, no wonder they set the bar. The Birth Of The Myth... Metalluthier, to be fair for arguments sake I will include that gibsons low point was in the eighties where they did manage to consistantly produce some very substandard guitars! This is the basis for the Myth that gibsons are only a name and not quality. I was about 20 at the time and worked a heavily trafficked music store in los angeles and we saw some really horrible sunbursts that looked like they were wiped on with a magic marker, in fact my friend who is a vintage guitar trader, has one and we bagged on it. In many guitars there was evidence of poorly joinded surfaces at the glue line, very spotty intonation and many poorly cut nuts. consistency was so chancey in those days that I saw customers literaly play every LP in the store at least a dozen at any given time to insure that they left with a keeper! ( man it was hard to get a commision off of gibson USA guitars back then.) The obvious reason at the time was that gibson was suffering from the introduction of the new age metal instrument craze( now adays known as Classic metal axes lol) that flooded the market I.E, charvels, jackson, b.c. riches, Ibanez shred models, headless instruments and the like (even aria pro made a killing with their low end metal axes!) good labor must have been hard to keep and afford with all of the opportunities at newer booming companies. But hey, keep in mind even Fender sufferd, with It's attempts to stay alive they had some ill fated solutions as well, like the "contemporary strat" lol! btw I have one here and I'm lookin at it! Any how gibson and fender did get back on track in the nineties. They offerd the epiphone series and the "smith strat" A.K.A. the modern mexican line! with the profits on lower end models, they have more funding to keep the top of the line models at outstanding quality. and even highly capable custom shops with back orders in as much as a year waiting period or longer. As far as modern gibsons go, they are as exeptional as the originals with improvements. its like how the american made fords and chevys brought back their market share after the troubled years, Quality. Nearly every top selling american made (or foreign for that matter)Item has gone through this type of syndrome. Most major companies that raise the bar for everyone else have a tendancy to take their success for granted and end up playing catch up in the end. Be mindful, that just like in a game of poker, It is how you recover from you setbacks and losses that keep you in the game, without being able to produce a winnig hand, In gibsons case, "quality", they would not be around today without that component. Surely with the over saturation of nich market guitars as well as the introduction of CNC capabilities in smaller companies ( I hear that cnc is how PRS makes those fine hand made guitars ROTFL!) Gibson would not be afloat. btw, there is only one robotic machine in the nashville gibson plant it is a sound hole cutter. not to shabby for a big company! And since you mentioned neckthroughs, we can even beat up gibson for the fact that the SG was originaly designed to be a neckthrough, but it was redesigned as a set neck at the request of the executives incharge of profit margins because the manufacturing overhead of the original plans made it impossible to put it in the hands of the average joe without costing him a fortune. But It all worked out in the end because the set neck vs neckthrough sustain debate was decided by the buyers and the demand for the SG is even stronger today. That decision happend probably before you were born but you know about SGs because they are stocked at your favorite music store, which clearly exhibits the evidence that underscores the fact that these guitars are known for their great sustain and do not lack any audible distiguishable lack of it from the original design. One of my friends from the old garage jam days has since become a gibson employee for some time now, although I havent been in contact wih him over the years, I do recal that we had a conversation about gibsons production of the LP, and I was informed that the design of that joint even in its minimal tenon dimensions could still yeild more than enough vibration coupling even in the event that glue had to compensate for a less than tight fitting joint. This is evedent in end gaps of the tenon on some LP models that I have seen in repair, Although glue may dampen certain frequencies when its mass is excessive, in its Dry state It still undoubtably physicaly vibrates along with the rest of the wood mass that is connected to the strings. so if a joint is adequately constructed and even on the lightest bodies and necks there is still enough mass of the peices being joined to vibrate sufficently enough to travel through the glue line and couple with the peice hosting the other end of the vibrating string. Perhapse we have a tendancy to think in extreemes about neckthrough designs vs set neck regarding the glue issues that tonewood is subject to in each design. I see an overwhelming number of neckthroughs being constructed with their cores comprised of several laminated peices, yet there is no distiguishable want for sustain at all. how can this be? Does not that defeat the whole purpose of a neck through? Even with all those seams why does it still sound better than lots of set necks? In practicality It works, perhapse it could be explained that when these surfaces if square and true are laminated togeather the clamping pressure squeezes out the undesired glue mass and leaves an ideal amount that does not inhibit resonance and the moisture content within the glue when curing activates the molecular structure of the wood releasing an organic bonding agent within its natural fibers that coaxes the seperate peices to couple. thats the way paper and card board are made. if I remember correctly the natural adheasion qualities of moistend wood fiber under pressure are enough of a bond to make pizza boxes and toilet paper as well as our shop favorite Particle board. and that is why the wood breaks out side of a glue line. My favorite retail guitar is the LP. I am sure that you can appreciate the LP because I did not oversee that your project is based on a squared out LP. I agree with american jesus in making the available retail length of neckthrough blank a long tenon, why? because if you had the desired blank length you wanted, and went as far as to attached wings that met behind the bridge end of the blank, it would actualy be better than adding two wings that were not in contact with eachother. As southpa said, since the seperate wings will host the bridge posts, they would only tell half of the string vibration story, than if they did join, because instead of two seperate peices using only the neck to vibrate from, if attached to the neck and each other you would have more vibration coupling for optimal resonance! Just because its glued together does not mean that it sucks, If the opportunity for joining one vibrating peice to another comes along then do it if practical. You can look at the peices as a bunch of little singing voices put togeather to make a powerful choir. And adding a maple top is like adding a soprano to your choir or whatever characteristic voice an alternate tonewood at your disposal and liking may be. Those resonant benefits should undoubtably out weigh the largely inaudible frequency dampening that a proper glue joint would have. As it has been posted, Even with vibration and frequency gauges to compile data, it may make a difference to those instruments, but not to ears of the majority of mere mortals such as my self, although I and a few others are sensitive to dead string length on an excessively angled headstock. Well metalluthier, in the end it is up to you and your prefferences to build your guitar to your liking and to your expectations, and to remind you, that is what these experienced builders are counting on, you will find the practical lessons they are trying to give you. they have been there and done that. and they just might have an idea where your at because they know what you will find. you may feel the same as them after a few builds. This I cannot fully speak from experience yet since I am a beginer my self, but I do know that what I have learned so far is with all of the facts that they have uncovered to me, and the supporting information found on other sites, that they know what they are talking about. my understanding of what goes into a guitar has changed for the better 100%. Sure it is possible to build something better than the guitars offerd on assembly lines so go for it, I think thats one of the reasons why many of us here want to pursue the heavy challenges of doing it yourself. but please take in all of the info before you trash proven designs and their designers and if you don't beleive anything people tell you than find out the arguments from all aspects and then move on it. if us novices all acted upon what we thought was the right way to build a guitar and it came out perfectly, there would not be a need for a site as this, nor would you or I be asking them questions here to begin with, but reality proves to us that we need to be here.