LP Style project

[fourdogslong]

Hi guys, I want to build a LP type warmoth guitar, I have some wood combinaison in mind but I'm still not sure what to get.
I heard that a good weight for a LP is around 9.5 pounds and I'm wondering how much the body only of a guitar like that would weight?
I liked the weight of the Gibson R6 gold top I tried, it wasn't light in my opinion but it wasn't back breaking either, it just felt like a good and solid guitar to me.
On a solid body, does weight affect the tone really?

Right now I think I want that guitar to have a gold top with darkback.
The body will most probably be mahogany with maple top, I red that korina is a good choice also but I don't want that guitar to be too light and I heard a clip on youtube comparing a LP custom korina to a LP custom mahogany and prefered the mahogany one, it was fatter, it was only a youtube clip though and I never tried a korina guitar before.
If I want the neck to have a darkback too to fit with the body I'll have to take either a korina or mahogany neck and have it finished in solid or transparent black, I'm leading toward an ebony fingerboard cause I like the les paul custom tone.
The thing is that a wenge neck with ebony fingerboard is also tempting me for the tone and feel and also because it would make my guitar a "one of a kind" instead of a gibson "clone".
I red only good stuff about those neck, the problem with it though is that it won't match with the darkback of the body (would it look good?) and it might create some neck dive problem so I'd have to specify that I want a heavy mahogany peice for the body to make sure this doesn't happen, if I do so, I have no clue how heavy that thing will be and how it's gonna sound, I don't like light guitars but I'm pretty sure a 15 pounds guitar would be a bit too much...

Anyway, that's a whole lot of possibilities, too much for me so I'd really like some opinions about that, I've been thinking about this project for a couple of weeks now and I still don't know what to do.
This guitar will be my only good guitar, I play rock, I like to have great clean tone as well as powerful distortion tone, for the clean tone I prefered the Gibson Les Paul Custom I tried compared to the R8 that I also tried the same day in the same amp, same setting... not sure about the disortion tone though.
I was thinking to put 2 Seymour duncan P-Rails in it to have the P-90 and Humbucker sound in the same guitar, as well as the single coil, but some seems to say that this isn't such a good pickup... any clue about that?

Hoepfuly someone can help me.
Thanks

 

[kboman]

Orpheo on this board has tried the P-rails (and pretty much all other pickups) and wasn't all that impressed by them, but as always that's down to personal taste. The general consensus here is that on a solidbody electric guitar, pickup choice matters more than body wood choice so I would give that some serious thought. There are few bad pickups out there but many unsuitable pickup choices.

YT comparisons are always a gamble - was the only difference between the guitars the body wood? If you liked the all mahogany LPC, maybe you should consider a rosewood neck? It's closer to mahogany in tone than wenge, and should feel a lot nicer to hold than a finished neck.

 

[fourdogslong]

Orpheo on this board has tried the P-rails (and pretty much all other pickups) and wasn't all that impressed by them, but as always that's down to personal taste. The general consensus here is that on a solidbody electric guitar, pickup choice matters more than body wood choice so I would give that some serious thought. There are few bad pickups out there but many unsuitable pickup choices.

YT comparisons are always a gamble - was the only difference between the guitars the body wood? If you liked the all mahogany LPC, maybe you should consider a rosewood neck? It's closer to mahogany in tone than wenge, and should feel a lot nicer to hold than a finished neck.

Yeah pickups are pretty important that's for sure, I prefer to start by choosing my woods and all that to get a really good acoustic sound first and then I'll think more about the pickups, I was curious to see if anyone liked those p-rails but that's it for now.

I thought about a rosewood neck too but it seems less appreciated, some say it sounds nasal or something like that.

 

[swarfrat]

YT comparisons are always a gamble - was the only difference between the guitars the body wood?

Not to mention, that if laptop/pc speakers really were good enough, we probably wouldn't spend all our time arguing korina vs mahogany, alnico II vs alnico V, let alone ceramic, Fane vs Celestion, carbon comp resistors, types of magnet wire insulation and different brands of same construction type capacitors.

 

[fourdogslong]

YT comparisons are always a gamble - was the only difference between the guitars the body wood?

Not to mention, that if laptop/pc speakers really were good enough, we probably wouldn't spend all our time arguing korina vs mahogany, alnico II vs alnico V, let alone ceramic, Fane vs Celestion, carbon comp resistors, types of magnet wire insulation and different brands of same construction type capacitors.

Yes of course I know there's a load of element that can afect the tone in a lot of different way but let's keep it to the wood for now.
The guitars in the youtube video were both gibson les paul custom but I can't confirm that they were the exact same thing except for the wood used.
Here:s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH1g2RTwJsU
The same guy also makes two other video of the same guitars.
I find that the korina has more mids, like pretty much everybody say, but it also seems to take away some of the lows associated with les pauls, it's a hard choice cause I hear the little something korina adds to the tone but I feel like it sounds tinner also which isn't what I'm after.
I saw another video from another guy on youtube also comparing korina to mahogany and I had the same feelings, maybe in real life lorina doesn't sound tinner than mahogany? Anybody wanna share their experience with those wood?

 

[swarfrat]

I wasn't trying to bring those things in. What I was trying to say, is that people argue about those kind of things, which even trained ears need to strain at, but then we're listening to highly compressed, questionably recorded audio through 1/2" laptop speakers.

 

[fourdogslong]

I wasn't trying to bring those things in. What I was trying to say, is that people argue about those kind of things, which even trained ears need to strain at, but then we're listening to highly compressed, questionably recorded audio through 1/2" laptop speakers.

That's true, it kindda sucks but sometimes that's the only way someone have to hear a product before buying it.

 

[fourdogslong]

Back to the woods, concerning the weight, how much should a body alone weight to get a guitar that's around 9.5 pounds once assembled? And is there really a difference in tone between a heavy solid body and a light solid body?
Thanks for the help

 

[OzziePete]

Back to the woods, concerning the weight, how much should a body alone weight to get a guitar that's around 9.5 pounds once assembled? And is there really a difference in tone between a heavy solid body and a light solid body?
Thanks for the help

That is a hard question to answer....woods are an individual piece of organic matter. Mahogany is generally a heavier wood than say Korinna, but that's not to say there isn't light pieces of Mahogany or heavier pieces of Korinna....Heck there could be heavier pieces of Alder than some Mahogany, as I said it's individual to the sample slab taken in a lot of cases. The wood cutters would look for a denser Mahogany......they know that is preferred, and an average weight of Alder is preferred to a heavier piece of Alder....I know I am talking in circles here but you get my point?

I'd suggest you take a look at the Warmoth Showcase galleries, and filter in Mahogany and see the variances in weight that ranges on each body shape. Obviously there'd be more Mahogany Les Paul bodies than say a Mahogany Strat body, but you will see within the body shapes the range of weight that exists. Warmoth do not weigh their necks so that is not available, but if you add some chunky tuners that light neck might jump significantly in weight anyways...I'd guess and say a +5lb or so Mahogany Les Paul body would be reasonably hefty for a guitar body and head towards a 9.5lb total guitar, easily.

 

[fourdogslong]

Back to the woods, concerning the weight, how much should a body alone weight to get a guitar that's around 9.5 pounds once assembled? And is there really a difference in tone between a heavy solid body and a light solid body?
Thanks for the help

That is a hard question to answer....woods are an individual piece of organic matter. Mahogany is generally a heavier wood than say Korinna, but that's not to say there isn't light pieces of Mahogany or heavier pieces of Korinna....Heck there could be heavier pieces of Alder than some Mahogany, as I said it's individual to the sample slab taken in a lot of cases. The wood cutters would look for a denser Mahogany......they know that is preferred, and an average weight of Alder is preferred to a heavier piece of Alder....I know I am talking in circles here but you get my point?

I'd suggest you take a look at the Warmoth Showcase galleries, and filter in Mahogany and see the variances in weight that ranges on each body shape. Obviously there'd be more Mahogany Les Paul bodies than say a Mahogany Strat body, but you will see within the body shapes the range of weight that exists. Warmoth do not weigh their necks so that is not available, but if you add some chunky tuners that light neck might jump significantly in weight anyways...I'd guess and say a +5lb or so Mahogany Les Paul body would be reasonably hefty for a guitar body and head towards a 9.5lb total guitar, easily.

Thanks, I thought the body would have to be heavier than that to get a 9.5 pounds guitar but I gues that makes sence because of the added hardware and neck could probably weight 4.5 pounds by their own.
Did anybody ever ordered a mahogany LP and requested to have an "extra heavy weight" wood for the body, if so how did it turn out?

 

[dmraco]

If your target is 9.5 lbs, do not go chambered.  Solid it the way to go.  All of my Warmoth LPs are solid and I love it.  Not so much from a tone point of view, I just like the feel and the weight.  I have both korina and mahogany and sonicially in the real world...not much different.   Being more traditional and looking at how you plan on finishing, go mahogany.

I have a set of P-Rails in a Korina strat and love them.  Your call.  I do think there are better humbuckers available.  If you are craving a p-90 sound, mix and match...I am really considering a guitar with a p-90 in the neck and humbucker in the bridge...Gibson beat me to it...
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZvn9PTzJVU[/youtube]
GOOD LUCK

 

[fourdogslong]

If your target is 9.5 lbs, do not go chambered.  Solid it the way to go.  All of my Warmoth LPs are solid and I love it.  Not so much from a tone point of view, I just like the feel and the weight.  I have both korina and mahogany and sonicially in the real world...not much different.   Being more traditional and looking at how you plan on finishing, go mahogany.

I have a set of P-Rails in a Korina strat and love them.  Your call.  I do think there are better humbuckers available.  If you are craving a p-90 sound, mix and match...I am really considering a guitar with a p-90 in the neck and humbucker in the bridge...Gibson beat me to it...
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZvn9PTzJVU[/youtube]
GOOD LUCK

Yeah I'm going with a solid body that's for sure, I'm just not sure if it'd be worth it to ask for an extra heavy weight for the wood, it's 40$ or so and I'm not sure how heavy it could turn.
Still not sure about the pickups, the rio grande tallboy humbucker seem pretty nice too, anybody tried them? I'm not a huge fan of the P-90 in the neck position but otherwise it would've been a good idea to do like you said.

 

[fourdogslong]

Did anybody ever tried a Korina neck with a mahogany body or vice verca?
I don't know a lot about woods, it's all new to me, if someone can tell me which part affects the tone the most, neck or body, that'd be great.

thanks

 

[Orpheo]

Hi guys, I want to build a LP type warmoth guitar, I have some wood combinaison in mind but I'm still not sure what to get.
I heard that a good weight for a LP is around 9.5 pounds and I'm wondering how much the body only of a guitar like that would weight?
I liked the weight of the Gibson R6 gold top I tried, it wasn't light in my opinion but it wasn't back breaking either, it just felt like a good and solid guitar to me.
On a solid body, does weight affect the tone really?

Right now I think I want that guitar to have a gold top with darkback.
The body will most probably be mahogany with maple top, I red that korina is a good choice also but I don't want that guitar to be too light and I heard a clip on youtube comparing a LP custom korina to a LP custom mahogany and prefered the mahogany one, it was fatter, it was only a youtube clip though and I never tried a korina guitar before.
If I want the neck to have a darkback too to fit with the body I'll have to take either a korina or mahogany neck and have it finished in solid or transparent black, I'm leading toward an ebony fingerboard cause I like the les paul custom tone.
The thing is that a wenge neck with ebony fingerboard is also tempting me for the tone and feel and also because it would make my guitar a "one of a kind" instead of a gibson "clone".
I red only good stuff about those neck, the problem with it though is that it won't match with the darkback of the body (would it look good?) and it might create some neck dive problem so I'd have to specify that I want a heavy mahogany peice for the body to make sure this doesn't happen, if I do so, I have no clue how heavy that thing will be and how it's gonna sound, I don't like light guitars but I'm pretty sure a 15 pounds guitar would be a bit too much...

Anyway, that's a whole lot of possibilities, too much for me so I'd really like some opinions about that, I've been thinking about this project for a couple of weeks now and I still don't know what to do.
This guitar will be my only good guitar, I play rock, I like to have great clean tone as well as powerful distortion tone, for the clean tone I prefered the Gibson Les Paul Custom I tried compared to the R8 that I also tried the same day in the same amp, same setting... not sure about the disortion tone though.
I was thinking to put 2 Seymour duncan P-Rails in it to have the P-90 and Humbucker sound in the same guitar, as well as the single coil, but some seems to say that this isn't such a good pickup... any clue about that?

Hoepfuly someone can help me.
Thanks

I have very much the feeling we have emailed last week about les pauls, am i correct?

here are my thoughts (again, all in plain sight, publicaly available )

whats highlighted in red in your post, will be answered in my post in somewhat more detail.

weight. its a bullshit factor. really. I have a guitar which is around 3.4 kilo's (which is light!) and that guitar sounds just as good as my 6 kilo les paul. 6 kilo is like 12-14 lbs by the way. weight says nothing at all.

prails. they suck. you cannot have the p90 tone AND the humbucker tone in 1 guitar in the bridge. the p90 in the neck is nice, but for me, it didn't work. I want fat, direct, articulate, transparant tones in my neck position. the pickup should have that, so I can play my jazz stuff there, my stratty stuff there (with a coilsplit), for my john mayer-moods, but also my heavy metal leads if I wanna do steel panther

the p90 in the neck 'looks' versatile, but sucks. for me, anyway. the prail is the pinnacle of suckyness. it doesn't do anything well. it doesn't have the clearity a humbucker has, not the quackyness, honkyness and midrange dip of a singlecoil, and not the dirt and raunchyness of a p90!

for the bridge, I wanted a pickup that can twang when coilsplit, which will clean up nice with the volumepot, with AWESOME dynamics and harmonics. it should pump everything in my amp which I put into it, to the highest level of detail. with high gain, it shouldn't be mushy. Wether or not its bright or warm voiced, doesn't matter. I want BOTH. one pickup with a bright voicing, one with a warm voicing. (meaning I need 2 guitars, though I have solved that problem with another coil underneath the pickup and a 500k resistor on the volumepot and a slideswitch in the backplate of the cavity. slide it out, and the 500k gets in the signalpath of the volumepot, making it a 250k pot, and the coil gets active too, making the whole thing a touch warmer and smoother).

anyway

mahogany vs korina. I have both, and the story that korina is per se lighter, is bullshit. in fact, my korina/maple LP, with a tremrout, is one of my heaviest guitars! goes to say, huh?

mahogany lacks the complex mids korina has. korina is a touch fatter, more mids, more 'oompf', more power. its a great wood, really. what I hear in that clip, is something like what I get with my guitars, but the YT compression sucks! I can hear the lows punch through, the mids cut and crunch, and the highs sing.

a 15 lbs guitar is really heavy, and VERY hard to get! I have a les paul with a wenge back, padouk top, padouk neck (25.5'', 1 3/4 nut) and even that guitar isn't 15 lbs!

wenge, rosewood, whatever. it won't make a neckdive. I have superlight bodies (1,6 kilo's) with fatback necks. no neckdive. if you make the back a dark brown, the neck will look great with it, cause the neck is brownish too, its not black like ebony.

 

[fourdogslong]

I have very much the feeling we have emailed last week about les pauls, am i correct?

here are my thoughts (again, all in plain sight, publicaly available )

whats highlighted in red in your post, will be answered in my post in somewhat more detail.

weight. its a bullshite factor. really. I have a guitar which is around 3.4 kilo's (which is light!) and that guitar sounds just as good as my 6 kilo les paul. 6 kilo is like 12-14 lbs by the way. weight says nothing at all.

prails. they suck. you cannot have the p90 tone AND the humbucker tone in 1 guitar in the bridge. the p90 in the neck is nice, but for me, it didn't work. I want fat, direct, articulate, transparant tones in my neck position. the pickup should have that, so I can play my jazz stuff there, my stratty stuff there (with a coilsplit), for my john mayer-moods, but also my heavy metal leads if I wanna do steel panther

the p90 in the neck 'looks' versatile, but sucks. for me, anyway. the prail is the pinnacle of suckyness. it doesn't do anything well. it doesn't have the clearity a humbucker has, not the quackyness, honkyness and midrange dip of a singlecoil, and not the dirt and raunchyness of a p90!

for the bridge, I wanted a pickup that can twang when coilsplit, which will clean up nice with the volumepot, with AWESOME dynamics and harmonics. it should pump everything in my amp which I put into it, to the highest level of detail. with high gain, it shouldn't be mushy. Wether or not its bright or warm voiced, doesn't matter. I want BOTH. one pickup with a bright voicing, one with a warm voicing. (meaning I need 2 guitars, though I have solved that problem with another coil underneath the pickup and a 500k resistor on the volumepot and a slideswitch in the backplate of the cavity. slide it out, and the 500k gets in the signalpath of the volumepot, making it a 250k pot, and the coil gets active too, making the whole thing a touch warmer and smoother).

anyway

mahogany vs korina. I have both, and the story that korina is per se lighter, is bullshite. in fact, my korina/maple LP, with a tremrout, is one of my heaviest guitars! goes to say, huh?

mahogany lacks the complex mids korina has. korina is a touch fatter, more mids, more 'oompf', more power. its a great wood, really. what I hear in that clip, is something like what I get with my guitars, but the YT compression sucks! I can hear the lows punch through, the mids cut and crunch, and the highs sing.

a 15 lbs guitar is really heavy, and VERY hard to get! I have a les paul with a wenge back, padouk top, padouk neck (25.5'', 1 3/4 nut) and even that guitar isn't 15 lbs!

wenge, rosewood, whatever. it won't make a neckdive. I have superlight bodies (1,6 kilo's) with fatback necks. no neckdive. if you make the back a dark brown, the neck will look great with it, cause the neck is brownish too, its not black like ebony.

Maybe I did email you about that... are you Nim?
Is it me or are the mids on the korina making it sound less like a les paul? I hear clearly the added mids and punch that they add to the sound but it seems to take away that little "mid scoop" and low fatness that the mahogany had? Is it just me thinking that? It might be the youtube quality but I still hear the lows with the mahogany guitar...
I really want to prefer korina because that way my guitar wouldn't be a clone of a gibson and that'd be nice.

Now for the weight, I'm glad to hear that I won't get a 15 pounds guitar even if I ask for extra heavy weight, I just like the feel of a heavy guitar better and if it doesn't change the tone that's a plus.
Concerning the P-rails, I'm thinking about going away from them, did anybody try the Rio Grande Tallboy humbucker? They could probably give me a good split sound from what I red.

Anyway, thanks for all the help.

 

[Orpheo]

yeah, we talked through mail

no, the korina will, if any, emphesise the LP tone. it will give you more of that mids which mahogany lacks almost all the time.

I tried that rio grande, I wasn't really that impressed. its dull, flat sounding.

you know which pickups are bloody awesome? www.tonefordays.com jon moore makes awesome pickups. even better is to buy a duncan fullshred and a duncan distortion bridge model, and make a hybrid. that pickup is by far THE best allround les paul pickup. its got everything. those complex mids, the tight lows, singing highs and everything you wack into it, it delivers.

the PATB2 is also a great one, especially if paired with a stagmag.

the '59/custom hybrid is VERY nice too. like the fullshred/distortion hybrid, though a touch more 'classic', vintage.

the jb/jazz is also great. its got a midrange 'honky' tone, sweet and articulate. my 'santana' pickup of choice

but of the standard sets, the dean baker act and the dean hands without shadows, or the schenker-set, are easily the best. those pickups are really, truely awesome and great. everything a standard dimarzio, duncan or rio grande lacks.

 

[fourdogslong]

Concerning the wood.
I've been a fender guy pretty much all my life, had an ibanez for quite some times then when I got older I switched to fender and played a lot of my friends' fender too, I always liked that bright and dirty tone.
Then at some point I tried a les paul. I couldn't believe how good it felt in my hands, heavy, fat, solid with a really nice sustain, no plastic sound there at all.

Now that I wanna build one, I really want to do it right you know, what scares me about the Korina is that it's rated "brighter" than mahogany, with fenders I never had all the lows that the LP has so I want to make sure that korina, even if it has more mids than mahogany, will provide all the fatness of mahogany. Apparantly korina is "tighter" than mahogany but I like that loose low end that I heard on the mahogany LP.

So tell me people, can korina sound as fat in the low frequencies as mahogany?


Now, let's say I go with korina, does it make good solid neck? Cause that idea of a Gold Top Darkback is growing on me so for now I think I'll go with a wood that can be finished.


Concerning the pickups, that's all new to me, can you tell me a bit more about those hybrid process?
Thanks A LOT for all the help!

 

[riverbluff]

You may want to consider Bare Knuckle Pickups as well.  You can e-mail Tim at BKP and tell him what you are looking for in a pickup and he'll give you his recommendation.  I have been very pleased with the BKPs I've used in my Warmoth builds.

 

[fourdogslong]

You may want to consider Bare Knuckle Pickups as well.  You can e-mail Tim at BKP and tell him what you are looking for in a pickup and he'll give you his recommendation.  I have been very pleased with the BKPs I've used in my Warmoth builds.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check those out.

 

[fourdogslong]

Just a thought...
I prefered the tone of the Les Paul Custom to the one of the Les Paul R8 that I tried in the same amp with the same settings.
Both guitar have different pickups from each other, different fingerboard, one is solid the other is chambered, one has a fat neck the other doesn't.
I liked the detailed clean sound of the Les Paul Custom, do you think part of it can be attributed to the ebony fingerboard?
Also, on a korina LP, would a maple top and ebony fingerboard work well, would it be too bright because of the added mids of the korina?

Thanks guys.