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In this Discussion
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Sound Comparison - Does weight matter?
Ok guys, following some other comparisons earlier this year. Here's a quick one I've put together.
3 guitars, all Historic Les Pauls with Custom Buckers. Both 2017s have an R9 neck, the 2014 an R8 profile.
Otherwise they are the same, except the weight.
3 samples, the first clean through a PRRI 65. Then Lead and overdriven chords through a 50w Orange EL34 head into an orange 2x12 with Vintage 30s. Micd half way between the centre and edge of one speaker with a SM58, recorded into GarageBand with a Focusright 2i2.
Apologies for the very dodgy lead playing
Each clip has the guitars played in the same order. Can you guess which they are?
Clean
Lead
Overdrive
3 guitars, all Historic Les Pauls with Custom Buckers. Both 2017s have an R9 neck, the 2014 an R8 profile.
Otherwise they are the same, except the weight.
3 samples, the first clean through a PRRI 65. Then Lead and overdriven chords through a 50w Orange EL34 head into an orange 2x12 with Vintage 30s. Micd half way between the centre and edge of one speaker with a SM58, recorded into GarageBand with a Focusright 2i2.
Apologies for the very dodgy lead playing
Each clip has the guitars played in the same order. Can you guess which they are?
Clean
Lead
Overdrive
0
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Wisdom
LOL 0 Wow! 0 Wisdom Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
I could not tell a good guitar on weight alone - I think their is a guide line of acceptability on any guitar - Be it a Strat/Tele, which I'd expect to be under 8lbs and probably above 7lbs 4oz or so - I would not expect to find many LP's under 8lbs 6oz let alone 8lbs, but many Customs are in excess of 9lbs
But if I see a guitar listed at any weight, then that alone tells me little with regards to how it will sound, certainly with regards to the finer nuisances of the tone
I think it is a good guitar because of some 'mojo' within that piece of wood and not the weight alone
I recently had a delivery of 4 x Custom Shop 64 Strats - all the same spec - All within 7lbs 40z and 7lbs 10oz - All sounded similar but again the finer nuances of the tone were different but not better - 5 customers and me played all 4 guitars trying to pick a winner - We all had a different opinion
Doesn't always work, so not a case of the Gospel according to ? - But tap the body and listen to the 'unplugged' tone/note and as a guide line the higher the 'acoustic pitch the brighter it will be - Likewise the lower the pitch, the darker the voice - This is again is not about better or worse - But different
Call it the resonance, or the acoustic vibrant qualities of the wood, whatever term you want to use - But weight alone, IMO wont tell you as to which you'd prefer to play
Sorry... It's just, I've lost four stone over the last few years and my playing's definitely gotten worse. I thought this might be about that.
But it's not.
So...
[gets coat]
Long answer - maybe. What's interesting is that the first one sounds the most different, the other two more similar. The first also has less sustain than the other two, and the third is the loudest - this is actually visible in the traces too.
So, if I'm guessing based on what I find different weights *typically* sound like - the order is 7.9, 8.75, 9.
But there's so much variation between individual guitars that it could easily be the other way round, or a randomly different order! Cop-out I know - but I'll stick with my guess
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Ive commented on your 2014 R8 before- that’s a guitar I’d marry for looks alone! Looks better than the R9 to me.
I agree with @gringopig that the middle one sounds “the odd one out”, being to my ears a bit less airy and more mid focused. That’s mainly on the overdriven examples as clean I found them hard to distinguish.
In a mix I think any differences would probably be indistinguishable.
If this is a trick and one of these is a single coil Strat or Harley Benton I’ll eat my hat!
The other two are all I’ve played for a nearly a year now. After a lot of time with an instrument I come to recognise their idiosyncrasies.
Put it this way, I’ve blind tested them all
multiple times and can easily tell them apart. But they are very similar!
yep they are very similar indeed - all very les pauly.
Its more for the fun than anything else. Don’t want to say too much, but there’s already some intriguing guesses here.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
The other thing that may play a part is things like pickup height. The third one does seem to be a bit louder, but are the pickups a little higher?
It would be interesting to hear some stuff where you dig in a bit more. For me, tonal differences tend to show themselves more in the attack when you dig in a bit.