Gravure and Flame tops

[stephenslr]

What exactly is a gravure top?

Do they still put on gravure and flame tops to guitars that will be coloured with non transparent paint?

I was just wondering as the catalogue says the KE3 has a gravure top though also comes in non transparent colours.

s

[Greg Crowe]

Re: Gravure and Flame tops

Gravure is Jackson-speak for PHOTO FLAME. Those are fake tops, just pictures cleared over. Gravure tops were used in the mid-90's for 2-3 years only. Jackson now uses a thin flame maple veneer top.

[Black Mariah]

Re: Gravure and Flame tops

No, they don't put the tops on guitars that don't get transparent colors. There's no reason to, and you end up paying less for the solid colors.

I've seen some of the photo-flame tops and they're not all that bad. When you're talking about the thickness of the veneer they use, it's practically paper anyway.

[Newc]

Re: Gravure and Flame tops

Having worked in a major mass-printing facility, I can say with 100% certainty that Gravure means "printed on paper" [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Acually it's a fairly expensive process that involves etched printing plates instead of the faster/cheaper "micro-dot" printing.
Pick up the latest Guitar mag and look closely at the cover and pages - see all them teenie tiny dots? Just like what comes out of your household printer, just way better ink.

Now, go grab something that's been Gravure printed - no dots. No marks of any kind to indicate it's a printed piece.
But, like I said, it's expensive and slow, so you don't see much of it (there was one Gravure press and 8 regular/dot presses where I worked, and they are the largest printer in North America - Quebecor (formerly World Color Press til Quebecor bought them out).

Newc