Hey, one of my first electric guitars was an old Silvertone/Dan Electro--masonite on chipboard--and it sounded GREAT. Wish I still had that baby--and those old lipstick tube pickups now sell for pretty big money, if you can even find them (somewhere in Oklahoma there's a guitar-builder with suitcases full). All your guitar mfgr propaganda basically boils down to what I've been saying: body mass effects sustain, yes--tone? Well, maybe--mahogany's warm, maple's bright, ash is warm, alder's bright (see the contradiction?) on and on. I've been playing for over 30 years, worked for a big luthier supply company for six years, spent a lot of time hanging around with some of the best-known guitar builders in the country, and worked in retail for two years. I've put together and taken apart dozens of guitars, and had this conversation more times than I can count. One thing I've learned is that you can't quantify tone--it's pretty subjective, and different people hear the same guitars differently. It's a mistake to try to turn that experience into a science. Know why Fender started making Strats out of ash? It was CHEAP, and it took a finish well. Ditto alder. Now basswood. Gibson has always been in a different market-niche; much more oriented toward premium, high-end instruments--of course they're going to use expensive woods, otherwise, what are they selling? "I doubt it's lower than 10% unless one overpowers it with lots of electronics (builtin preamps and equalizers)." Ah HAH! You've made exactly my point. One DOES overpower the purely acoustic properties of one's electric guitar with electronics, every time one plugs in and turns that knob up to 10. That's what rock-n-roll is all about, dude. Walking into a store and selecting one guitar over another based on relative weight is just silly, and you know it. I say again, you're buying the propaganda. Hang on to your wallet! "99.9999% of electric guitars have wood bodies in an age of cheap synthetic plastics, metal alloys, and composite materials. That makes no sense. Wood is very resonant and can be very dense. Most of the other materials are good dampers or have horrid acoustic properties. That wouldn't make a damn of a difference if it were all electronics." There was, in the early eighties, a company that made guitars out of cast graphite--can't remember the name. They sounded pretty good, sustained like mad, but they were way too expensive--the guy who ran the company couldn't figure out a cost-effectively way to manufacture them. Plastics, light-weight alloys, etc., could all work fine, if you could figure out how to mill or cast and then assemble them at low cost (and safely--plastics are generally wicked toxic), overcome buyer prejudice, get them into stores, etc., though, come to think of it, what kinds of alloys are we talking about here? Is there one that's lightweight, extremely rigid AND inexpensive? I mean, titanium is out, right? Basically, the risk factor inherent in developing new materials is too great for most manufacturers to bear--why bother, when wood is still (relatively) abundant and cheap? Any guess what Fender's profit margin is on a mid-range strat? Dude, why do you think they assemble them in Mexico? "If the body has nothing to do with it, why all the fuss about body material and rigidity and mass?" What makes you think there's a fuss? Theoretically, maybe there is, but in practice most manufacturers use what's functional, abundant, cheap, and likely to be accepted by their customers. Gibson's convinced it's marketing a "legend," but I think they're making a big mistake by not following Fender's lead and producing a lower-cost, Gibson branded version of the Les Paul, in particular. Who wants a freakin' Epiphone, right?