Members twotimingpete Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 1) how would you best describe the tone difference from a thick solid body, such as a mahagony LP? 2) why would the tone really be different, anyway, since the pickups don't pick up sound, they only pick up the vibration of the strings? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members larry50 Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 Hollow and semi-hollow bodies produce a natural acoustic resonance that cannot be obtained from a solid slab of wood. The vibrations produced by the natural acoustic sound box of a hollow or semi-hollow causes the the top wood to vibrate just like an acoustic guitar, and these vibrations are also "heard" by the pickups, so its not just the strings alone. This produces, at least to my ear, a degree of natural acoustic-like harmonics and complex overtones that I cannot get from a solid body no matter how hard I try. There is a complexity to the tone from a good ES335 that you cannot get, IMO, from a Les Paul. There are pros and cons to this. While the tone can be incredible (eg a good ES335 etc), the natural resonance causes feedback that can be tough to control (semi's were created in part to try to cut down feedback), but which can be very useful as well. Some people have said that a hollow or semi can sound a mushy or flabby at high gain levels, but they were and are not really meant for thrash metal gain levels anyway. Once you've played a good one, you'll want one, and there are lots of different options now. They seem to have grown in popularity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Pascal Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 2) why would the tone really be different, anyway, since the pickups don't pick up sound, they only pick up the vibration of the strings? Action/reaction: if the strings do shake the excitable top via the bridge, vibrations of the top will also affect the vibrations of the strings. Enhance some harmonics, cancel some others. I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zacman0126 Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 Something I find right off the bat with a semi compared to a solid is the semi sounds a lot more "airy" and seems to have some natural reverb to it too. Like they were saying above, basically sounds a bit like an acoustic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mishek_zim Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 2) why would the tone really be different, anyway, since the pickups don't pick up sound, they only pick up the vibration of the strings? plug in your solid body. don't touch the strings/neck. tap with the soft side of your fist on the back of the body and listen to the sound the strings make through your amp. you are getting a lot of the natural resonance coming throught the amp right now, without the added attack of the strings. when you play properly, the resonance actually is embedded into the rest of the sound made by picking/strumming. with a hollowbody, there is a greater amount of the resonance sounds caught up in the sound of the guitar. ..... I think that is right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Doctor49 Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 plug in your solid body. don't touch the strings/neck. tap with the soft side of your fist on the back of the body and listen to the sound the strings make through your amp. you are getting a lot of the natural resonance coming throught the amp right now, without the added attack of the strings. when you play properly, the resonance actually is embedded into the rest of the sound made by picking/strumming. with a hollowbody, there is a greater amount of the resonance sounds caught up in the sound of the guitar. ..... I think that is right. Good demo. The fundamental note and harmonics of a vibrating string depend on its length, material, mass, tension and also on the way it is fixed at each end. If the string fixing points (nut and bridge) are connected by anything (eg a neck and body of any materials) they will move relative to eachother and affect the harmonics of the string. The only fixing points that do not move are theoretical math models used for analysis. The real world moves. The pickups also move relative to the strings since they are mounted on the moving body. The pickup senses the disturbance of its magnetic field caused by the movement of the string relative to the pickup. That disturbance in simple terms is an electric signal which is then amplified. All of this is why some luthiers will select woods by tapping them. And why hollowbodies and semis have different qualities from solids and why they make solids out of mahogany, alder, basswood, etc etc. This is also part of the reason why you may get a "good" guitar and a "bad" one with adjacent serial numbers. The effects of these movements can be subtle and hence there are many discussion about what is actually heard. "what is tone" etc. Anyway, play a lot of solids and hollows/semis if you can and you will start to hear differences. I have a mahogany solid with a maple cap (resonant dark LP-ish), a maple semi hollow (bright and clear), a 335 (complex) and a basswood solid (??). It's like my wife and her sisters....can tell 'em apart by their voices with my eyes closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members twotimingpete Posted April 18, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 18, 2009 sorry I forgot about my own thread until now. great explanations guys. good food for thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members twotimingpete Posted April 24, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 24, 2009 wait, so taking your explanations into account, how do SOUND HOLES possibly matter? or are they purely for asthetics? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Caleb B Posted April 24, 2009 Members Share Posted April 24, 2009 wait, so taking your explanations into account, how do SOUND HOLES possibly matter? or are they purely for asthetics?Off the top of my head I can think of these reason: When you're not plugged into an amp, it reflects the sound so you can hear it better maybe. That reflecting also causes a distinctive sound with the pups and strings you won't get w/o the sound hole. Better for percussion because I see a lot more percussion done on acoustics than electrics. Just wiki'd it and I was close: "The body of an acoustic guitar has a sound hole through which sound is projected. The sound hole is usually a round hole in the top of the guitar under the strings. Air inside the body vibrates as the guitar top and body is vibrated by the strings, and the response of the air cavity at different frequencies is characterised, like the rest of the guitar body, by a number of resonance modes at which it responds more strongly." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members docjeffrey Posted April 24, 2009 Members Share Posted April 24, 2009 A lot of it has to do with the evolution of the electric guitar from the 1930's to the present. Gibson kept making their arch tops bigger and bigger so that guitarists could be heard over the other instruments in the bands. This led to the development of the pickup which was basically an add-on to the existing jazz guitars. Shortly after WWII, Gibson invented the P90 pickup which made all of their earlier attempts such as the Charlie Christian model obsolete. Amplification improved by leaps and bounds, but guitarists still preferred the traditional shapes of the classic 16--18" wide jazzers. Guitars like the ES175 (the number indicated its original sales price of $175) were built around the new P90's. As guitarists adopted those big jazz boxes as electric instruments rather than acoustic instruments, Gibson went from solid carved spruce tops and maple bodies to laminated (3 and 5 ply) woods which helped create the mellow jazz tones and fought feedback. So what we are left with today is the current state of evolution from fully acoustic to fully amplified guitars that started way back in the 30's and reached its evolutionary peak in the late 1950's. During that time, the solid body electric was developed--most of us are familiar with that process so no need to explain here. The move towards thinner jazz guitars, which was no doubt driven by the comfort of the solid body electric, changed the voicing of the instrument making it perfect for the new "rhythm and blues" music that guys like Chuck Berry were making popular. Adding a solid block to the center of the otherwise hollow box on which Gibson's Tuneomatic Bridge and Stop Tail piece could be mounted created a sweet rock instrument that could withstand even higher volume levels and sounded like a solid body with a darker, moodier timbre. The ES335 also appealed to more traditional jazz players who eschewed the newfangled solid bodies for street cred purposes. Anyway, you can't remove guitars from their evolutionary history and fully understand why they are the way they are. Not all design features were developed to enhance tone. Some of them are based on tradition; some of them were an attempt to fix a problem (humbucking pickups, semi-hollow bodies). It didn't happen overnight, so you are left with vestiges of the past (f-holes) on a lot of instruments. The bonus for us is that they all sound a little different so we have choices of tones. Hooray for choices! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members twotimingpete Posted April 24, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 24, 2009 well, obviously a lot of heritage is involved in why guitars are the way they are. nonetheless, do soundholes on a semihollow electric actually matter? typically they're "f" holes. that's what I'm talking about. I'm trying to figure out how they could matter, since, as stated, the pickups only pick up various vibrations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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