Thought I'd post this in case there's any confusion or misunderstanding.
There are two types of Les Pauls - Gibson USA and Gibson Custom Shop.

Gibson USA
If you read enough threads, sooner or later you'll discover that weight-relief started around 1982/1983. Every Gibson USA Les Paul between 1982 - 2007 is weight-relieved. They do not have solid-body construction. Weight-relief is when nine holes are drilled out of the body in order to reduce the weight of the guitar.

Chambering officially began for 2007. Every 2007 and newer Gibson USA Les Paul is chambered, except for the Les Paul Traditional. The Les Paul Traditional is weight-relieved. Internet rumors are that chambering actually began in October 2006. Chambering is essentially hollowing out the body. Again, this is in order to reduce the weight of the guitar.

Gibson Custom Shop
Gibson's Custom Shop makes regular production guitars and historic reissues. The regular production guitars, such as the Les Paul Custom, are also weight-relieved. They are not solid. The historic reissues, '58 reissue (R8), '59 reissue (R9), etc, are solid. All historic reissues, be it Standards or Customs, are solid. The exception being the chambered reissues. Chambered reissues are often referred to as Cloud 9 guitars. They are identified by their serial number, which begins with CR. www.chambered-reissue.org

So, a quick test...

A 2003 Les Paul Classic is weight-relieved.
A 2008 '57 reissue is solid.
A 1995 Les Paul Standard is weight-relieved.
A 2008 Les Paul Studio is chambered.
A 1984 Les Paul Custom is weight-relieved.
etc.

This is what a chambered Les Paul looks like:


This is what a weight-relieved Les Paul looks like:


And this is what a solid Les Paul looks like:

Some chambered and weight relieved les pauls look like that too...




Anyway... I was wondering, is there any sience to the weight relieving holes? If you look at the chambering image it looks very well planned and nicely done, very professional job in there... lots of care and attention to detail.

Now you look at those swiss cheese holes and some of them are not aligned as one would expect... and don't say they are meant to be that way... my opinion is they didnt even care and made the designed number of holes somewhere near the desired place, as oposed to those chambers that are made to fit certain spaces and so have to be done the right way or they end up trashing a perfectly good guitar.

Opinions?

I am not saying another word about w***** r******* or c*********.

Following is just stuff I've read from the Gibson website:

Supposedly the original weight relief was done without any rhyme or reason. When the guitars were made, they just routed out some wood before the cap was put on. Some time in the 80s they put some researchers/engineers onto a project to find out how drilling holes like this affects tone/sustain/etc and then assigned that research team to design a routing system to reduce the weight of the Les Paul while still maintaining all of the sonic integrity of the instrument. Basically, that's how they started chambering guitars instead of just drilling holes in them. They found the chambers increased sustain and blah blah blah all that other stuff that Gibson writes on their site to advertise how awesome their guitars are.

At least, that's what I've gathered so far.

Yes.

The Les Paul traditional is Weight relieved as well.

My head friggin hurts!

This is a non-xray picture of a chambered body of a Dark Fire looks like.

Tim,

Did you keep your chambered reissue?

Maybe you know the answer o this one Tim, isn't it more expensive to make a chambered guitar? I mean, they have to do the routing, chambers, and other stuff, no matter how its done (man or machine) it has to increase the cost (and the time it takes to build each guitar which translates in other factory and salaries costs)...

Did you buy your chambered RI new or used? Do they sell new for the same amount as a non-chambered reissue?


I, like max, do think Gibson should offer some solid bodied USA guiutars, maybe a special edition on the standard, but of course as you noted, it would defeat the purpose of the solid reissue line (though there are other differences).