Tailpiece of Aria Pro II PE-175?

[Jonah]

I am considering to get into the restoration of this guitar that I get almost for nothing.
I have a luthier friend who would be ready to help with a good discount.
It has a few issues.

Before getting it to final survey I checked some things and I saw that L5 style tail piece is pressed down into the top.

Is it common for these tailpiece?
I always thought that it should be designed without pressure going on to the top.

It looks like the Ddent was there already from the beginning.

[Little Jay]

Isn’t that a design feature of these tailpieces? (Or at least the early examples of them, I don’t see it on later ones). Meant to adjust the string angle or something?

It would press down on the tail block, so construction-wise it’s possible.

[Little Jay]

Early one:

[Little Jay]

Later one:

[Little Jay]

Apparently it’s called a Varitune (or top crusher )

[ARGewirtz]

I am considering to get into the restoration of this guitar that I get almost for nothing.
I have a luthier friend who would be ready to help with a good discount.
It has a few issues.

Before getting it to final survey I checked some things and I saw that L5 style tail piece is pressed down into the top.

Is it common for these tailpiece?
I always thought that it should be designed without pressure going on to the top.

It looks like the Ddent was there already from the beginning.

jonah,
If you look at the pics of my PE-175 that I sent in reply to your previous post about your guitar, and the Greco that you found, you’ll see that my guitar has the same tailpiece. It also has the same stabilizer bar that rests on the top of the guitar. There is no indent in the top of my guitar but I can see how it could happen. If the weld to the top of tailpiece causes the angle of the stabilizer to be too big the pressure of the strings could cause it to dig into the top. I had the reverse problem when I got my guitar. The stabilizer was barely touching the top of the guitar creating a slight vibration that I could only hear when playing without the amp, so I put a piece of felt between the stabilizer and the top to damper the vibration.
Andrew

[Hammertone]

The Gibson "Varitone" top-cracker feature was introduced in 1939 to crack the tops of L-5 and S-400 guitars so that customers would eventually buy new archtop guitars, but it was not marketed that way. When production of these guitars resumed in 1947, Gibson enlarged the business end of the cracking mechanism, as it was clearly not breaking enough guitars. @1973/74, the cracker was eliminated, along with the tailpiece access hole, as most Gibson customers had no interest in archtop guitars, carved, cracked or otherwise, so, there was no reason to bother with it.

Gibson resumed production of the L-5 and S-400 in Nashville after leaving Kalamazoo in 1984, but made only a handful of instruments until the Custom/Historic shop was formally set up in 1993. After this, Gibson made a few handsful of these models, sporting tailpieces with no top-cracker but with an adjustment hole for one, as a tip of the hat to the good ol' days and to provide guitar nerds with something to discuss.

The Japanese began to copy the L-5 tailpiece in the 1970's, but didn't get the memo about the deletion of the top-cracker, so their extremely good copies typically include it. The best way to adjust it on these tailpieces is to make sure it does not touch the guitar top, or to cut it off.

[ARGewirtz]

I was watching a Rich Severson livestream yesterday afternoon. Rich had recently acquired a 1983 Aria Pro II PE-175 Herb Ellis. He was doing a demo of the guitar and was talking about its features when a question came up about that strange piece of metal on the underside of the tailpiece. The tailpiece was designed as a replica of the 1940s L5 tailpiece, including that piece of metal on the underside of the tailpiece that sits on the top of the guitar, previously referred to as the “stabilizer” or “top-cracker.”

I happen to own a 1978 PE-175 Herb Ellis and I remembered seeing this post with a question about the tailpiece, so I went back to reread the thread and did some further digging.

I found this comment about the "top-cracker" on a Les Paul Forum: " That's actually called a "Vari tone". I have an original instruction sheet and hang tag somehwere..... They were supposed to allow the owner to "tune" the top. Gibson got rid of it after enough cracked top warranty claims convinced them that maybe the general guitar playing public wasn't ready for the responsibilty of such a precision device."

The above seemed like a pretty reasonable explanation and after some more research I found what I think is the true answer on a website dedicated to Gibson Pre-War guitars. Here's a link to the page with the explanation of the "Vari-tone" feature of the tailpiece:

Gibson Pre-War Guitars, Kevin Mark Designs - Gibson 1940 L5

If you go to this link about 3/4 of the way down the page there's a references to the "Vari-tone" Control and the instructions for its use that was provided by Gibson with the guitar. This also explains the reason for the mysterious hole in the top of the L5 tailpiece. It seems that this feature of the tailpiece was designed to allow you to customize the tone of the guitar. The adjustment was made with an L-wrench provided with the guitar that fit into the hole on top of the tailpiece and was used to adjust the string tension and therefore the tone. It seems that the L-wrench fit into the hole on the top of the tailpiece and when it was turned right or left would exert pressure on the "top-cracker" that would then allow the tailpiece to either put more or less pressure on the strings and therefore alter the string tension on the bridge and change the tone.

Now it makes sense why this feature earned the name "top-cracker." If someone were to get too aggressive with the adjustment the "top-cracker" would push hard against the top of the guitar and potentially crack the wood or at the very least dent the top.