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Replica Les Pauls show em!!

michelebisignano

michelebisignano

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Joined
Jan 13, 2006
Messages
132
This is my new addiction...
V6OwkMjkuOCy_sNQs97fQ2g_gSSGOvsIgQRFaMK2F6Fx9TPBhdzcznZ1K_xMDKWGSrQZeRIPK83tlzLKWQnuG5opby76Hh4HJgYogdsfp5WAd8Ag00vmIAfU3aa6OIZJtjd2HY2VDragh-ZwKGNXSPZ0blX6qKsNV_n57D28dJ_3rxXx9rKGj7KU5Ze43soH3QCemI5DJZEb6l-1aEv9GG8PUZ1V-wSouFgpfS4QDRcwGoq6Nxw8cjp24wa23sdOQwloigJTI_YL37M3yODeN3L2zZ_Dt4Vhn_n0xa531WDLXXBtI9gmwhNtItdIKKx_32OtzdfyRZ6JBG77ueijdwXLGNh2vUgQl5JNb2V6DOfhzqJb7PzQpq4lgGtQz-sF9vcbby-aI4EfiZlQvn3XWUuiavbKH0Eph_e5XkMwtoYoIWSWTDELf0P8tZkXebWpVBvbhp1PnbxaNSx3_FyHRwO1wR5Gt-BT9r6584bLTGTBmdl2JmEAzr6brXqaJPwi-fDYC2EZTCQSfJTG64-y79etUpIhqNyZoAJgWUCNdBZJX63oHz1_d8B8oMMlDv01tq3eGJfgXr4OOyx_wIdOChBdpbcwkC6RcQJHdLU=w1120-h1492-no
 
Mars Hall

Mars Hall

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Nov 26, 2008
Messages
1,829
Elliotman said:
I love this guitar. Gil Yaron must be a genius. If that's what it takes, Gibson should make them all out of reclaimed lumber.
:)
Click to expand...

He definitely has the correct "recipe" for making a great guitar. I believe a large portion of the tone comes from the choice of wood.
 
oldflame

oldflame

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Jan 11, 2004
Messages
1,142
Mars Hall said:
I believe a large portion of the tone comes from the choice of wood.
Click to expand...

You would think so.

However, last year I had one of those Tom Murphy, Edwin Wilson and Yasuhiko Iwande 2014 'hand selected' '59 Murphy Burst's (what a mouthful!). Whilst the guitar looked lovely, I can only describe the sound of it as soulless. Meaning no character I spose.

Luckily I didn't pay top dollar for it as it came with a trade. Interestingly enough, I was the 3rd owner, so that told me something too. Gone now of course.

So I dunno about the wonderful choice of wood thing.:hmm
 
Mars Hall

Mars Hall

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Nov 26, 2008
Messages
1,829
oldflame said:
You would think so.

However, last year I had one of those Tom Murphy, Edwin Wilson and Yasuhiko Iwande 2014 'hand selected' '59 Murphy Burst's (what a mouthful!). Whilst the guitar looked lovely, I can only describe the sound of it as soulless. Meaning no character I spose.

Luckily I didn't pay top dollar for it as it came with a trade. Interestingly enough, I was the 3rd owner, so that told me something too. Gone now of course.

So I dunno about the wonderful choice of wood thing.:hmm
Click to expand...

"Hand selected" could mean merely grabbing the next piece on the pile. :hee Here are some of Gil Yaron's thoughts on choosing wood to make a good Lester...




"Experience is a bless when selecting a piece of wood in order to get a target tone and I will not get into details about this, but in general there are a few things to consider:

For a given specie at a given size:

1) Weight (mass): more mass = more sustain, more treble, less midrange, clearer low end (in one word, "punchy"). Less mass = blurry lows, more midrange, less treble, less sustain (in one word, "warm").

2) Cut orientation: Quartered = slightly rounder tone , Slab=more "open" tone

3) Grain: even straight grain is easier to "read" as far as tone expectations while swirly and "crazy" grain has a higher tendency to surprise...(sometimes in a very good way)

4) Tap tone: long sustaining tap is always good... the pitch doesn't mean much by itself (you'll soon see why) but will give an indication to the density of the wood where higher pitch=denser and lower pitch=airy. I use tap tone mainly to find dead blanks and discard them. If it rings loud and has good sustain (bell) it passes.

5) Tap tone evenness: it's not enough to tap one area and it's crucial to NOT hold the wood in your other hand when tapping... it needs to be set on very small lifters at the very corners of the blank. The tap tone should be more or less even across the blank (it never gets 100% since tapping the center is nothing like tapping close to the edges... but you can develop a feel for this and get an idea of the evenness of the blank)

6) "Surface tone": without a better name for this weird wood attribute I just call it "surface tone"... when you move your dry hands over the wood blank you'll hear a "whishhhh" sound... if the whishhh is not crispy and strong enough it means that there will be less high end harmonics in the tone... not always a bad thing of course... but it's a great way to tell. (no I'm not insane... try this for yourselves)

This pile has passed the stages mentioned above with great success (-;"


"OK... so once done with the quick and easy tests I should have a pretty good idea of the quality and general attributes of the blanks. Now things get a little more complicated...
Any piece of wood is a non homogeneous volume of material with a lot going on inside it... Density changes, inner tensions, grain direction curves, sap % levels, sap crystallization levels, humidity... etc... every area of the blank may have different properties but the sum of all the areas together gives the entire "average" properties of the entire blank. Now here's the problem... every time the wood size is diminished by cutting it down the entire "average" may change and the volume shape is changed. Those two factors can get pretty far off from the original blank attributes.
So... what I do next is bring the rough blanks to their almost final shape."

"Once they are at their final size and shape I run a two (sometimes 3) octave tuning fork tests. This is done by running different forks all over the entire body, neck, top or board.
I note the level of each fork between 1 to 10 and mark hot and dead areas if found.
I give special attention to the neck joint and bridge area on a body and the body joint and headstock on a neck. Fingerboards have to be 100% perfect to prevent dead spots.
The bodies will be checked again with the tops attached to get the final tonal properties."

"High mids dropped and the tap tone wasn't very good any more. The entire upper area of this body bellow the waist was dead! Without this extra test I could have got me a dead-burst...
Did it ever happen to you that a great sounding rectangular blank ended up with a lemon guitar? If it did, the explanation above might help to prevent that.


Aside from the passed/failed test the response to all the different frequencies tells me what to expect from that part... and that brings me to the next and final step which is matching.
Selecting a killer body, neck and board means nothing unless they are matched.
Matching is consisted of two aspects that can be used together:
1) Cancellation
2) Resonance

A good example for cancellation is a light weight early 50's Strat where the body is warm with a lot of low mids and less treble and the neck is bright being a one piece slab cut hard rock maple with a fat profile. In that case the brightness from the neck will be canceled a little by the lack of brightness on the body. That means that the overall acoustic level is sacrificed in order to get a warmer tone. The guitar will still keep some nice brightness... but nothing like... say... if we use a bright heavy dense Ash body (70's style).

Resonance, on the other hand, is achieved by matching parts with similar EQ properties in order to get them enhanced.

A careful use of both of the above aspects can get you into the tone design domain.
It takes some practice and trial and error like anything in life... but the theory is solid and allows for some serious tools to help building better instruments. There's much more to it of course but one has to experiment and develop his own feel and taste for things.
I can only say this... it's almost impossible to get a killer sounding guitar by chance. Good and nice ones yes... but not the ones that will drop your jaw to the floor.
Even in the old days, they never did all that in the rapid production lines but they gave more attention to at least selecting the lumber quality, weight and origins. Many of the original Lesters are not so great but some are just amazing... same with Teles, Strats...etc... only some (I believe less than 20%) are really amazing guitars and it's a result of pure luck of the draw at the factory.

The next layer of tone design are the pu's which are also matched in pretty much the same way as wood to the other parts. but this is a whole other story and I think I'm starting to get tired of myself... this post is too long (-;"

 
fakejake

fakejake

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Joined
Sep 3, 2010
Messages
1,291
averagehacker said:
Can't believe I've not seen this thread before! Here are mine, common as muck! :laugh2:

'54

italianjobgoldie_zpsa36b929f.jpg
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'58

Click to expand...
:wow
The paintjob and aging on those goldtops looks just incredible. Were these done in Europe?
I tried to send you a pm but it seems you've got them disabled. Contact me if possible, cheers!
 
rob livesey

rob livesey

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Feb 28, 2007
Messages
655
fakejake said:
:wow
The paintjob and aging on those goldtops looks just incredible. Were these done in Europe?
I tried to send you a pm but it seems you've got them disabled. Contact me if possible, cheers!
Click to expand...

He says they are "common as muck". That's a big hint right there as to the origin of these guitars.

I have one too, from a muddy field not far from me.

Rob
 
Pellman73

Pellman73

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Aug 9, 2016
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1,762
I just traded my newly acquired faded cherry Gil for a dirty lemon.... should be here next week! Psyched for this one!
 
Pellman73

Pellman73

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Aug 9, 2016
Messages
1,762
traded (cough kinda) my cherry for this lemon!

i'm in love! I"ll never sell or trade it! (if I had a nickle for that one)....

anyhow...

 
corpse

corpse

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Jun 9, 2007
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4,883
Very ghosty top. Looks like it will make some spectacular noise.
 
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