Swimming pool routs: Pros and Cons?

[allen st. john]

I'm about to buy a USACG body for my tele project.
Here's my question. Tell me why I shouldn't get a swimming pool route, or something like it.
It seems to me that removing wood under the guard should
a) reduce weight
b) increase the acoustic resonance of the guitar
which are both very desirable qualities, no?

I'm sure there must be a downside. What is it?

best
Allen St. John

[Rizo]

Well another bonus would be that your pickup swaps choices would be wide open.

The major con I see is a loss of mass, namely tone wood, which may or may not affect the sound of the instrument.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy a guitar with a swimming pool rout if it spoke to me though.

[John E]

Originally Posted by allen st. john

I'm sure there must be a downside. What is it?

You have no choice but to use a pickguard!
That's the only thing I can think of. Other than that I think it's pretty desireable, especially if you like to swap and experiment with lots of different pickups.

Rob D had a strat with a bathtub, he also wired the jack out of the pickguard. He could literally wire up any pickguard with whatever pup config he wanted, and change it on the fly. It was VERY cool!

[BootRoots]

Until you can go into a store, play a dozen teles, and correctly identify which ones have pool routes and which ones don't, I think your fine with either one. But if you can do that...please Mr. Eric Johnson tell me when you are coming to town next. ;)

[mojocasterman]

When I ran an interview with Pete Biltoft from www.VintageVibeGuitars.com - and no, I can't post a link to it - here's what he had to say about it:

14. Many people will tell you that the "swimming pool route" in a strat is detrimental to tone. Does your personal experience validate or invalidate that statement?

Rich Flynn (lead guitarist in the band Public Eye) has a strat with the swimming pool route and I made a custom PG with three P-90 soapbar style pickups for this instrument. This instrument has phenomenal tone in his hands.

I think the swimming pool route when executed on a guitar body made of soft wood can lead to a very “dead” sounding instrument. I would suggest “tone tapping” a guitar body as described by Robert Benedetto as the best method for finding a good sounding body independent of the type of pickup cavity routing.

The wood in a guitar body and in the neck definitely does have a very significant role in the tone of an instrument. I have seen several guitars that had a very bright tone (to the point of being annoying); these instruments tend to have too much maple- maple cap on the body and a maple neck.

[mojocasterman]

edited... double post.

[boogaloo]

Originally Posted by BootRoots

Until you can go into a store, play a dozen teles, and correctly identify which ones have pool routes and which ones don't, I think your fine with either one. But if you can do that...please Mr. Eric Johnson tell me when you are coming to town next. ;)

Right on- even better still have someone else play them and correctly which ones do and don't (too much of a possibility of touching / tapping the pickguard and discovering the void beneath and thus "coloring" your opinion if you are the player).

I admit I don't have the greatest ears- but I can absolutely hear good and determine good tone from bad (even this is somewhat subjective, eh?). But nuances created by swimming pool routes...I dunno. Highly doubtful I could..highly doubtful to me that many of us could. Would love to see an experiment as out lined abouve..

Brian

[mellecaster]

Originally Posted by BootRoots

Until you can go into a store, play a dozen teles, and correctly identify which ones have pool routes and which ones don't, I think your fine with either one. But if you can do that...please Mr. Eric Johnson tell me when you are coming to town next. ;)

A Great Big Ole AMEN....to That !!

[Stuco]

I would prefer to have extra routes (for ex between the two tele pup routes) than one huge routh for the neck and middle. It just seems the pup needs tohave some mass around it. I don't like the idea of pups floating around in there.

[geoffreysnow]

I don't think it makes a difference, especially in a tele. The swimming pool isn't much bigger than a couple HB routes.

[tiktok]

Originally Posted by allen st. john

I'm about to buy a USACG body for my tele project.
Here's my question. Tell me why I shouldn't get a swimming pool route, or something like it.
It seems to me that removing wood under the guard should
a) reduce weight
b) increase the acoustic resonance of the guitar
which are both very desirable qualities, no?

I'm sure there must be a downside. What is it?

Both are negligable in any real world scenario.

[Rick S]

I'm not sure that I've ever played a Tele with a bathtub rout. I have played Strats like that, and for someone like me that has many years of use on these guitars, I found the difference considerable and something I could never get used to.

I'm sure it would be less of an issue on a Tele, but I would think that long time users could detect the difference, and find it unusual.

[BradKM]

Rob D had a strat with a bathtub, he also wired the jack out of the pickguard. He could literally wire up any pickguard with whatever pup config he wanted, and change it on the fly. It was VERY cool!

I've got one like that too. I've got no problems with the tone. Another thing to consider, with Strats anyway, is that there is very little contact with the body wood. The pickups hang from a plastic pickguard and the strings make contact with the bridge, which is then held to the body using springs, anchored by two or three large screws. I'd be much more concerned about the bridge, block, springs, and the wood where the trem claw screws in than the wood under the pickups.

[stevieboy]

Originally Posted by Rick S

I have played Strats like that, and for someone like me that has many years of use on these guitars, I found the difference considerable and something I could never get used to.

Could you give us a little more--how was it different to you?

[mellecaster]

Originally Posted by Rick S

I'm not sure that I've ever played a Tele with a bathtub rout. I have played Strats like that, and for someone like me that has many years of use on these guitars, I found the difference considerable and something I could never get used to.

I'm sure it would be less of an issue on a Tele, but I would think that long time users could detect the difference, and find it unusual.

You wouldn't Happen to be a Bettin Man...would you ??? (hehe)

[captain gorgeous]

i have one on my main guitar (i only recently discovered after three years of playing it... duhhh) and... this is going to sound really big headed but it's really not... sod it. i didn't say it and i'd never claim as such... but i recently had two people (one a respected session guitarist and the other a local producer) tell me that i had the best live guitar sound they'd heard in a long time.

sorry if that sounds egotistical it really isn't. i trully suck as a player it's just that i've got a nice sounding guitar and have happened upon a setup that works for me. and it includes (albeit unwittingly) a bathtub route (apparently)

don't worry about it.

[BradKM]

I have played Strats like that, and for someone like me that has many years of use on these guitars, I found the difference considerable and something I could never get used to.

If you're talking about the American Standards that sported the pool routes for several years, there's a lot more going on with them that could have major effects on the tone. Multi-piece bodies with front and back laminates, two point trems, tonally questionable trem springs (coated with some sort of plastic), the list goes on. I'd blame those trems and springs before the pool routes.

[eryque]

I honestly doubt you're going to find a noticable difference in *any* characteristic. The amount of wood removed is a few ounces at most (roughly 1/3 of an ounce per cubic inch, I just did the math).

You are not going to be creating a resonating cavity with that plastic pickguard mounted over the hole by just a few screws, so I sincerly doubt that either the acoustic or electrified sound will change at all.

[Sarge]

Though I don't have any tele's with the "swimming pool" route, I have several strats with it. With or with out the route, any guitar purchase wouldn't be influanced by either route, unless it was a hack job by a previous owner. That being said...I'm really not able tonally to differentciate between the two.
As far as the pro's and con's as stated above, having the vast pick up options
are a big plus, I see no con's unless your a purist and just like the standard single coil route.

[Durtdog]

Originally Posted by Sarge

Though I don't have any tele's with the "swimming pool" route, I have several strats with it. With or with out the route, any guitar purchase wouldn't be influanced by either route, unless it was a hack job by a previous owner. That being said...I'm really not able tonally to differentciate between the two.
As far as the pro's and con's as stated above, having the vast pick up options
are a big plus, I see no con's unless your a purist and just like the standard single coil route.

+1. I've had several Strats with the swimming pool and they sounded great.

[yegbert]

Unless you have a piezo pickup, I don't think your pickups will amplify the acoustic tone. They amplify the vibrations of the strings.

Something like the resonance of the guitar body may affect the string vibrations by absorbing some frequencies while reflecting others, and so if removing a little more wood changed that, it might change the tone. I'd bet it wouldn't change it at least not significantly though, and I don't know of any way to test whether it did change. No two pieces of wood are alike so you can't take one body and rout it larger than another and then compare. You'd have to establish testing methods and then you'd get one shot on any one piece of wood to test it with standard small routs and then with a bathtub rout. You couldn't put the wood back the way it was previously to retest.

I'd like to see someone develop testing methods for that kind of research. But it would cost a lot of money, and so I'd bet anyone doing that wouldn't want to do it for free or give up the information afterwards for free. Andany guitar making enterprise that could fund it would have the potential to want to put a spin on any results published in their favor, so I would take what they would tell us mere mortals with a grain of salt.

[Mark Davis]

What you would have to do to see what affect it has would be to take a standard routed body make recordings then make it into a pool route and make more recordings and compare.

I do know Leo Fender himself never built a guitar with a swimming pool route. After he sold Fender they did it and after he died and BBE took over G&L they did it too.

[Bones]

The Deluxe Nashville I bought last night and promptly converted to a standard with 50s wiring, has a big swimming pool route. I sounds great and weighs 8 pounds on the dot. It definitely gives me some pup options and i may try a P90 or mini-hum in it in the near future. It sounds like a telecaster, so in this instance, it's a non-issue.