Is lighter weight desirable?

[zmf]

Originally Posted by Mattface

Does that difference in weight tell us anything constructive about the tone of the guitar? I know there are other variables which maybe can't be measured so easily, but if you can't hear them in person, I'm wondering if this data point can be useful, or if it means anything at all.

The most simple answer is no.

[Duck916]

If everything else is exactly equal, I'd choose the lighter guitar. It may be more responsive.

But, everything else is never exactly equal. If I were buying online with no opportunity to listen or play, I'd choose the prettier, heavier guitar over the less pretty, lighter guitar, every time.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Mattface

…In this case several new 000-28MDs.

Hi Matt
No, the weight (in pounds/ounces) is not the deciding fiber. You need to play every one of them to see how responsive they are - especially manufactured guitars where every part is milled to identical size.

That is a large factor in hand-built guitars are improved. They are milled individually and the tops/backs/sides thinned appropriately and INDIVIDUALLY for maximum resonance, projection etc.

If you make 100 guitars identically to spec, 10% will be below average, 10% above average and the rest varying degrees of average sounding.

You might get lucky and choose a guitar which was built right according to spec and it could weigh exactly the same amount as the worst sounding guitar in the lot.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Scotso

Generally lighter is better yielding a more responsive guitar. BUT...it can go too far. There are some boutique guitars that have taken light too far in my mind. I have seen bellying, in a bad way, in some of these brands in new to newish guitars. Where that line is drawn is hard to know for a non luthier like myself.

Hi Scotso

Over a dozen times I've taken students/friends to a Taylor dealer with massive depth of stock (as many as a dozen of identical models), and there was no correlation between the weight of the guitars and the responsiveness of them. So my experience doesn't match with your response.

I've twice seen some under built guitars by luthiers which started having serious…not a frequent issue at all.

[Earl49]

There is considerable confusion between "lightweight" and "lightly built". A lightly built guitar will be more responsive than something heavily braced, like a house in earthquake country. I could not tell you which of my guitars is heaver or lighter, but I can surely tell you which ones have "all that" for sound quality.

And I agree that there is no discernible correlation between overall weight and tone. In my opinion (worth both pennies that you paid for it)....

[bufflehead]

If you take two boards of the same wood, milled to the same dimensions, the lighter one will no doubt be the older one, probably having a lower moisture content. It's just like firewood: a log will weigh more when freshly split than after drying a year or two.

To the OP question, I'd prefer to purchase a guitar built of wood that's been drying for a while rather than freshly milled. So I would gravitate to the lightest weight, if ordering a guitar blind.

That said, I tend to want to play a guitar prior to purchase, and A/B it with its conspecifics. Despite my strong preference for light guitars, tone trumps weight any day.

[Scotso]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Scotso

Over a dozen times I've taken students/friends to a Taylor dealer with massive depth of stock (as many as a dozen of identical models), and there was no correlation between the weight of the guitars and the responsiveness of them. So my experience doesn't match with your response.

I've twice seen some under built guitars by luthiers which started having serious…not a frequent issue at all.

maybe...but if a Taylor old dread weighs 4lbs 14oz and a Santa Cruz dread weighs 3lbs 14 oz, I would bet 11-13 outta of 15 times most guitarists would say that the Santa Cruz is more responsive. Now if comparing an individual Santa Cruz model of differing weights you are prob right. But then your definition and my definition of responsive may not be the same. Who knows?

"Generally" I will stick by the statement that weight is correlated with responsiveness...generally.

Similarly there are some boutique builders who heavily heavily scallop their bracing and use very small bridge plates. There is even a builder who heavily scallops the bracing where the bridge plate meets the bracing (under the theory that the design gives a better hinge effect). I have seen some issues with those builder's guitars. I am not smart enough to know if they are one off or consistent probs. But given the build design, I wonder.

[justonwo]

In theory, it depends where the guitar is lightly built. For example, in theory, you can have heavy double sides because the sides aren't acoustically active. In practice, all of my very favorite guitars have had an overall light weight. I can't tell you why that is. Perhaps the theories are incorrect . . .

[zmf]

Does the notion of active vs reflective backs enter into a discussion of overall weight? I don't know enough about this to stake out a position -- except to suggest that active backs tend to be lighter (?)

[Peter Z]

Now you made me curious and I checked my guitars:

Martin D-18MD: 1820g loud
Gibson Dove: 2230g, loud
Gibson Hummingbird: 2105g, medium
Gibson SJ-200: 2250g (!!!), soft but deeeeeeep
Gibson J-45: 2030g, soft
Martin CEO-7: 1630g, quite loud

So, of the 2 loudest guitar one is light, one is heavy.
Second loudest is the small and light CEO-7. No idea how they made this thing.
The heaviest guitar is not loud but has the lowest bass by far.

Honestly, that tells me ......... nothing.

[Andyrondack]

Originally Posted by Mattface

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my question. I'm not asking about the difference in weight between a Gibson J45 and a Martin 00-18. I'm asking about the difference in weight between otherwise identical guitars. In this case several new 000-28MDs.

My question is: if you have two brand new guitars that are the same model, built on the same assembly line in the same year, is there anything useful that can be gleaned from knowing the weight difference between the two?

The reason I'm asking is because some online sellers actually include this information, so I assume it might mean something, but I'm not sure what. If I were A/Bing them in the shop, a few ounces one way or another would mean nothing to me, and neither would prettier grain. I'd close my eyes and play them and decide based soley on the way they sound and feel, but since I can't feel or hear them, I'm wondering what if anything this one data point might suggest about any differences in otherwise identical guitars.

I have two guitars of same brand same model same woods, one is significantly lighter but to my ear they sound the same, but then I have no idea from where in one guitar the extra weight is missing.

[stephenT]

Given a choice between several on-line guitars that I couldn't play before buying, I would buy the lightest.

Sweetwater comes to mind for their weight and pictures of individual guitars. On my Martin D Jr weight was the deciding factor, I liked the grain pattern as well. It turned out to be a great D Jr.

[FrankHudson]

Is light weight desirable with guitars? Yes. I'm an old guy. I don't like heavy stuff anymore. If I was richer, I'd also replace all my conventional wood guitar cases with light-weight alternatives too. I'm not to the point where I'm switching to ukulele yet, but if I like the sound of two different guitars and one is a few pounds lighter, that's the one I'd pick, because I'm going to play it more often. An ounce or two lighter? I don't think I'd notice.

Does it indicate something about superior sound? This is the one that most are answering in the thread, and I agree with the consensus: it might indicate something sound-wise in a weak and non-repeatable way with similar designs.

On electrics I'm not sure of the effect on sound, but the comfort thing is a factor there too.

[Alan Carruth]

bufflehead wrote:
"If you take two boards of the same wood, milled to the same dimensions, the lighter one will no doubt be the older one, probably having a lower moisture content. It's just like firewood: a log will weigh more when freshly split than after drying a year or two."

Although any piece of wood tends to lose some weight as it ages and seasons, that loss is small compared with the variation in density between pieces of wood of the same species. I've been measuring the properties, including the density, of the wood my students and I use for quite a while now; it varies a lot more than you might think. It's not hard to find a Sitka spruce top, say, that is 10% denser than average (specific gravity ~.46), and not too unusual to find one that is 15% denser, and you'll see the same range of variation on the low side. The densest piece of softwood I've found (so far) is a piece of European spruce that was cut somewhere between 200-400 years ago, with a sp. g. of .541.

If that normal ~10% range of density I see in softwoods holds for hardwoods (and I suspect it does, although I don't have as many samples) then any guitar off the line could be as much as 6-7 ounces lighter or heavier than average, just by the luck of the draw. That would require that all of the wood used to make it was toward one end or the other of the 'normal' range of variation, of course, but it says that a 4 ounce difference is probably not unlikely in a sample of, say, ten production instruments.

I'll note that another thing I keep track of while I building is the overall weight of the top and back plates. I start out with the 'rough', over sized, bracing in place, and trim it down, using the 'Chladni' method, to get the bracing and the top (in particular) to work the way I want. It's a sort of 'tech' version of 'tap tuning'. At any rate, it would be unusual in this process to reduce the weight of the top by more than ten grams or so, and one can often see significant changes from the removal of a fraction of a gram. It's not so much what it weighs, but where the weight is that counts.

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by Mattface

I'm currently window shopping for a purchase in Mid-December. If I find a good example of the guitar I want locally at that time, I'll likely go with the one I can play, but when shopping online I really appreciate the sites that show pictures of the actual instrument, and I REALLY like it when they have more than one to choose from so I can actually choose the one with the prettiest woods (in my estimation). Some of these sites actually list the weights of the individual guitars, and I'm wondering if there is any common correlation between weight and tone within guitars of the same exact model and specs.

I've heard folks make appreciative comments about a lightweight guitar, and I know reducing weight if hardware is supposed to help volume and resonance, but when the guitars are otherwise identical I assume the weight difference primarily comes dow to the variability of the woods. So assuming everything else is identical is lighter weight desirable? Even if-so I'm assuming this is a generalization, and not a hard rule.

Given you parameters, I don't think it matters. The difference between any two guitars of the same model should tend to be a lot more with regard to sound than weight.

All things being equal I much prefer a lighter guitar. But all things are never equal and it's not something I base decisions on. It's a factor. But tone and playability and appearance are all more important to me.