74 lespaul specs?
- Thread starter joolzriff
- Start date
Guitar Zilla
ゴジラ ギタリスト
- Messages
- 2,201
They also came with those pancake Norlin bodies too from what I remember 
John Phillips
Member
- Messages
- 13,038
On a lot of 70s Les Pauls, the body is not one piece of mahogany with a maple cap - it's three layers of mahogany, laminated horizontally... two thick and one very thin in the middle with the grain running at right-angles across the body (sometimes mistaken for maple since the opposite grain catches the light and looks paler). It was done either because Gibson couldn't get the right quality of mahogany in thick enough pieces, or to stop warping of improperly dried wood... or some other cheapskate excuse for not doing the job properly . You can see it clearly on natural-back (eg goldtop) or sunburst models.
There's probably nothing really wrong with it from a structural point of view, but there's some evidence it affects the tone (although there are a few good-sounding examples with it, there are also a lot of bad ones), and it just looks cheap.
This is also the time when the neck was changed to three-piece laminated mahogany - to stop warping and try to reduce headstock breaks, neither of which it really did, and it affects the tone too - and eventually to three-piece maple, which did help the breakage problem but massively alters the tone.
... and when the headstocks on all Les Pauls other than the Custom were made wider, a little at first but eventually to the full Custom width on all the models, which without the Custom's binding just makes them look like boat paddles.
. You can see it clearly on natural-back (eg goldtop) or sunburst models.There's probably nothing really wrong with it from a structural point of view, but there's some evidence it affects the tone (although there are a few good-sounding examples with it, there are also a lot of bad ones), and it just looks cheap.
This is also the time when the neck was changed to three-piece laminated mahogany - to stop warping and try to reduce headstock breaks, neither of which it really did, and it affects the tone too - and eventually to three-piece maple, which did help the breakage problem but massively alters the tone.
... and when the headstocks on all Les Pauls other than the Custom were made wider, a little at first but eventually to the full Custom width on all the models, which without the Custom's binding just makes them look like boat paddles.
John Phillips
Member
- Messages
- 13,038
Not all of them, only the later ones - from when they were introduced ('70 I think) until around '75 they're mahogany.
Some other models seemed to change over sooner - a friend of mine recently had a '74 ES-335 with a maple neck.
tonedaddy
Member
- Messages
- 11,326
Agreed.
Check out this pic of the '72 ES-345 in the Emporium:
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/94909
Trending Topics
-
-
Has Youtube just killed guitar videos and lessons?- Started by thelespaulman
- Replies: 56
-
-
Our bass player always plays riffs in-between songs; I wanna break fingers.- Started by godzilla
- Replies: 215
-
How is Sweetwater, etc. Still Doing 0% Interest When Everything Else is High?- Started by attorneyriffic
- Replies: 100