Gibson SG (part one)

Q: I have a 1980 Gibson "The SG"  that sounds "Dead" when played without an amplifier.
 
When the action is setup to just above where the strings are buzzing, the tuneomatic bridge is too high for me to put the stop tailpiece all the way down to the body.
 
I've tried, but when the stop tailpiece is all the way down, the strings press against the back of the tuneomatic bridge.  I'm believing this is why I'm not getting a great deal of tone out of the guitar's body.
 
My question is this, would it be of any value to get a piece of hard wood to place under the Stop Tailpiece, or the Tuneomatic Bridge?
Would this help transfer any energy to the body itself?
Thanks in advance,
 Lee

A: The deadness has nothing to do with the stop tailpiece not touching the top. An acoustic guitar gets it's sound from very heavy strings moving a very light top. The vibration of an acoustic string is dissipated by moving the top. The more efficient the acoustic instrument is the more volume it produces, and the less sustain. Banjos have great volume and almost no sustain. A solid body electric guitar is all about making sustain by trapping the vibration of the strings between the nut and the bridge, and then gauging the effect of the steel in the strings on the magnetic field of the pickups. The immobility of the nut and the bridge create sustain. Electric guitars tend to have very light strings trying, and failing, to move a very heavy bridge. 
        The body of an SG is specifically designed to not resonate. The sound you hear is the strings moving the air around them. If this sound is "dead" you must look to the action. Raise each string out of it's nut slot. The contact point will look like shiny pencil lead. The contact point must be all way at the fingerboard end of the slot. If it is at the peghead end, the part of the nut slot, out ahead of the contact point, is muting the string. Then check the contact point in the bridge saddle slots. If the strings are fresh and the strings don't buzz against the frets and the contact points are correct, you are getting all the acoustic tone that this guitar will produce.
        It's probably time for a tune up and oil change on this guitar: frets filed and rounded, nut, bridge, tailpiece and truss rod adjusted and fresh strings installed. It might solve your problem and if nothing changes in the "deadness" area you will know that you've done all that can be done.
 
Steve Mason