are edwards LP's chambered or not. which models

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japanstrat said:
One way to test for chambers is to take off the knobs and loosen the pot bolts and pull the pots away from the top and then get a bit of bendable wire and bend a length of the tip so the bent bit of the wire is wider than the pot hole and insert it into the pot hole and see if it turns around without hitting anything.
If it doesn't hit anything then the Maple top is chambered.

Or just stick a bit of wire or whatever into the pot hole at an angle and move it about and see if it hits anything.

Hell, it's trashed already. Take a circular saw and cut it in half! :wink:
 
Exactly cut the thing up and have a look. :eek: If you have a look at all LP style guitars the wood thickness near the knobs is very thin, look at the binding on the edge of your guitar, the top of the guitar at the sides is thinner than the binding, and if you look in the control cavity you will see there is no room for chambering in the maple cap. That also brings up another point the quality of the maple used, ?? this wood also varies in weight depending where the maple was sourced, rock maple, as is on my ls 180 is denser and harder and i assume heavier than the cheaper cuts of maple and it makes my Honduras mahogany Tokai heavier than my other Tokai. If you have contacted ESP and they say solid why would you not believe them, its not as if these guitars are vintage collectables worth a bloody fortune, so they would risk their reputation this way , i think not. They can be picked up dirt cheap 2nd hand so if your that concerned buy a knocked about one and cut the bloody thing up, end of story.

Mick
 
It might be like you say.

I had a look at my Grecos control route and the Edwards top thickness in the control route area seems to be about a 1/3 of what my Grecos is.

A knob piece like the 4 5 6 piece would not go through the top of my Greco like it has on the Edwards.

The Edwards has a thinner than normal top around the control route and is not very sturdy IMO.

If the Edwards are using very thin tops then that might explain it.
 
So it looks like they do use a very thin Maple top which sort of makes it nearer to a Les Paul Studio rather than a usual Les Paul which might be why the Edwards sounds a bit different to some owners http://www.tokaiforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=9919

Using a very thin Maple top would also knock down the weight so some Edwards that are around the 7.5 lbs mark (which is what the Gibson chambered Les Pauls weights are around) could be just using very thin Maple tops which must make them sound a bit different to a regular Les Paul.

But this Les Paul Studio Lite is around 7.5 lbs http://www.stevesmusiccenter.com/GibsonLPStudio.html and has a thin maple top but Gibson apparently drilled/ routed holes and then filled with this stuff called Chromite or Chromolite according to this page http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/gibson-les-pauls/1450-weight-relieve-vs-chambered-2.html so I'm still not totally convinced that an Edwards can get down to 7.5 lbs without using some chambering.
 
Possibly but the further you get from the pickup cavity the thinner the top gets on all LP's due to the shape of the carve. I have a burny apart at the moment and there is not much wood around the pots where they come through the top.

Mick
 
I have no complaints on mine except the lack of a long neck tenon that i was lead to believe that my JP relic had....

if mine is chambered however it wouldnt suprise me,
the wood dents very easily

but the tone on mine is killer!
 
no camera at the moment, im gonna crack it out right now tho and give you best description of it that i can....


gimmie 2 minutes!!!!
 
okay .... i even sanded it down for the last ten minutes to see if anything was hidden like if the tenon was somewhat deeper into the body and the build up of glue was covering it.....

when you look at the end of the neck where its going into the pickup cavity it looks likere it supposed to be a tongue but the more i sanded down the pickdown cavity i couldnt see any outline of where a tenon would be....theres a build up of glue that i got away and you can see a short line before the back of the cavity ends and it looks like what might be a long tongue like tenon but i sanded down some more and you cannot see the outlines of the sides of the tenon if there is one it is pretty deep into the body and cant be seen but im hoping to get pics up as soon as im able to get ahold of a camera
 
Dann said:
okay .... i even sanded it down for the last ten minutes to see if anything was hidden like if the tenon was somewhat deeper into the body and the build up of glue was covering it.....

when you look at the end of the neck where its going into the pickup cavity it looks likere it supposed to be a tongue but the more i sanded down the pickdown cavity i couldnt see any outline of where a tenon would be....theres a build up of glue that i got away and you can see a short line before the back of the cavity ends and it looks like what might be a long tongue like tenon but i sanded down some more and you cannot see the outlines of the sides of the tenon if there is one it is pretty deep into the body and cant be seen but im hoping to get pics up as soon as im able to get ahold of a camera

Dann ...

does it look similar to my Eddie ???

lp13.jpg


When I purchased it in 2004/05 I was also in doubt about the long neck tenon - you can't see it because all is covered by glue and paint ... but Katana (the seller) assured me that it has got one ... I still have my doubts ... :-?
... on my Tokai you can see at least the seam where neck and body fit together ... at the end of the binding ...

T20.jpg


... and BTW - the maple top must be very thin around the pots because you need short shaft pots when you're replacing the stock ones ... and as the cavity is beneath that area this is the first breaking point obviously ...

Roger
 
I can't see any part of the tenon extending into the neck pickup cavity on the Edwards but the pickup cavity is covered by finish so it's hard to tell.
The Tokai has no part of the tenon extending into the neck pickup cavity.

The Edwards seem to have a thinner top than a lot of other LP's around the control route which is not that surprising because ESP says they use thinner tops on the Edwards.
The only real way to tell if chambers are being used is a X-Ray but it's hard to arrange unless your a doctor that owns a lot of Edwards LP's.

Just having a thinner Maple top doesn't cut the weight down by that much as Gibson Les Paul Studio owners will say that a non weight releived (no swiss cheese holes or chambers) Gibson Les Paul Studio with a thin Maple top still comes out on average 8.5-9 lbs.
A weight relieved Gibson Les Paul Studio with a thin Maple top comes out on average 7.5 lbs (see link above).

The new Gibson chambered LP's come out around 7.5 lbs.
And some Edwards are around the 7.5 lbs mark and some aren't.
If there are a lot of Edwards around the 7.5 lb mark and that seems to be the case then I don't see how they can get the weight that low without using weight relief like swiss cheese holes or chambers because just having a thinner Maple top won't reduce the weight down to around 7.5 lbs.
 
japanstrat said:
I can't see any part of the tenon extending into the neck pickup cavity on the Edwards but the pickup cavity is covered by finish so it's hard to tell.
The Tokai has no part of the tenon extending into the neck pickup cavity.

Mate,
my Tokai has the long tenon although you're missing the 'lip / tongue' into the cavity ( red arrows ) ... look at the pic ... you can see the seam/small gap where neck and body are fit together ...

tenono.png


Those seams can't be seen on my Edwards ... :(

Roger
 
last night I sanded down the paint and glue and crap and still cant quite tell if im seeinf any tenon outlines or not....i really need to post a pic up
 
The tenon to body fit is amazingly tight. On both my Edwards, if the finish wasn't thin or translucent over the joint, I wouldn't be able to see the seam. Really, the joint couldn't possibly be any tighter!
 
peacock72 said:
The tenon to body fit is amazingly tight. On both my Edwards, if the finish wasn't thin or translucent over the joint, I wouldn't be able to see the seam. Really, the joint couldn't possibly be any tighter!

exactly what he said... check out the tenon on my edwards, if not for the translucent finish, you wouldn't know it was long

274415775.jpg


as for the maple being thin... well here's a clear picture of just how thick the maple cap is... (1.5cm at the thickest point in the pickup cavity)

281082064.jpg


I think that's the SAME thickness as on Gibson LP standards.

There are 2 reasons why the maple cap is thinner at the tone/volume pots than on other LP's
1. The Edwards has a "deep dish" carve (found on vintage Gibson LP's, but not current ones). This means thinner maple towards the edge binding of the guitar.
2. The 4 individual pot cavitities are drilled deeper than the control cavity is... i.e. 4 holes are drilled from the INSIDE of the control cavity towards the guitar top... leaving the wood maybe 0.3cm thin at that point. The following picture will make this clearer (note how the pots appear to be SUNKEN)

279531721.jpg

279531723.jpg


So in summary
- The maple cap on an Edwards is just as thick as a Gibsons
- The pots have less than half a centimetre of maple between them and the volume/tone knobs
- The long neck tenon is done so well that it is quite hard to see sometimes... as this pic helps to illustrate

281082060.jpg


Edwards guitars are built exceptionally well. These rumours are not helping their reputation :( I hope my pics have cleared things up for some of you :)
 
Sorry tudor I didn't explain it that well.
When I said no part of the tenon extending into the neck pickup cavity I meant it had no lip / tongue part.
btw the Tokai has got a great Maple top.
 
They really do route the hole for the pots deeper than most makers.
If the Maple top is about the same thickness as most other LP's then that makes it even harder to explain the 7.5 lbs Edwards light weight.

Until anyone can show otherwise you have to assume the Edwards are a solid body with no chambers or swiss cheese holes.
The Edwards I've seen look pretty good to me although I've never owned one.
If ESP is getting LP weights down to around 7.5 lbs with no chambering or swiss cheese holes I think Gibson would be interested in how they do it.
Gibson had to use chambering/swiss cheese holes to do it.
 
Gibson are more interested in making money so they source lesser quality wood. I read a story somewhere where it said the japanese had huge stockpiles of good quality wood and gibson had to buy some of it for their high end guitars. I don't know how much truth there is in that story but like i said earlier i have ATM 5 lp's and 2 are really heavy and 3 are much lighter. Mick
 

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