Best I can tell, part of all of this is the typical response lag to customer comment from Gibson and part is as a result of the fact that they maintained for a while that there were little or no acoustic effects on the sound of the guitar from their efforts at weight relief. That had an effect on people's response. Folks tried out the schemes and discovered for themselves that there were effects in sound and balance.
The original "Swiss Cheese" scheme disproportionally took weight from the lower bout of the guitar, making some of the guitars headstock-heavy.
From what I can detect, Gibson next tried chambering because it allowed them to both better balance the guitar and shed more weight. However, the chambered guitars lost some of the girth in the sound and added something of the resonant sound of the ES-335. That's fine if that is the sound you are looking for but doesn't sound like a classic LP.
So, Gibson tried Modern Weight Relief, a designed group of elliptical holes with mass maintained around the bridge/tailpiece area, which aided in weight relief but kept balance and a more solid-body sound.
And most recently they've adjusted the Modern scheme and called it Ultra-Modern Weight Relief. The biggest adjustment sems to be to the holes in the waist are. This one adjusts the holes some to reinforce sonic girth with just a little better balance.
Does that help?
Bob
Best I can tell, part of all of this is the typical response lag to customer comment from Gibson and part is as a result of the fact that they maintained for a while that there were little or no acoustic effects on the sound of the guitar from their efforts at weight relief. That had an effect on people's response. Folks tried out the schemes and discovered for themselves that there were effects in sound and balance.
The original "Swiss Cheese" scheme disproportionally took weight from the lower bout of the guitar, making some of the guitars headstock-heavy.
From what I can detect, Gibson next tried chambering because it allowed them to both better balance the guitar and shed more weight. However, the chambered guitars lost some of the girth in the sound and added something of the resonant sound of the ES-335. That's fine if that is the sound you are looking for but doesn't sound like a classic LP.
So, Gibson tried Modern Weight Relief, a designed group of elliptical holes with mass maintained around the bridge/tailpiece area, which aided in weight relief but kept balance and a more solid-body sound.
And most recently they've adjusted the Modern scheme and called it Ultra-Modern Weight Relief. The biggest adjustment sems to be to the holes in the waist are. This one adjusts the holes some to reinforce sonic girth with just a little better balance.
Does that help?
Bob
