Lower end Japanese LP copies. Pankcake bodies, plywood tops, what does it all meeeaaaan?

[Cirrus]

OK So I think I know what the pancake bodies are all about. Two thinner slabs of wood glued together to make a full body thickness, for some reason with a really thin bit of wood between them in the middle (why?) and Gibson did it the same way back in the '70s.

Does it do much to the sound?

I'm looking at a late '70s Aria LC500 just now that's got that, and also a (probably maple) plywood top, in the pickup cavity you can see that the top is maybe 5 or 6 layers of plywood.

So... what's that all about? Does that do much to the sound? There's a translated brochure that lists the body construction as:

Maple/ mahogany sandwich arched hollow (?) ply top


I'm not really interested in mysterious abstract posts about tonewood etc. I'm just wondering if anyone's got any practical experience of the difference between a solid maple top, a maple ply top, what the word "hollow" might mean in this context, and just generally how much it matters.

 

[Frodebro]

Pancake bodies with plywood tops are built with cost in mind, and nothing to do with tone.

 

[laxu]

All of these were done with no other purpose other than cost cutting to increase profit margins. If you sandwich stuff you can use thinner or narrower pieces of wood so you maximize the amount of guitars you build out of the wood you have. None of this was for the benefit of the end user.

How much it actually matters is debatable and I don't think you will find that anyone has been able to scientifically test this.