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I have a lot of hearing damage from various jobs and playing loud music so I don't fully trust my ears.
That being said, I don't think I can tell the difference between solidbody, semi-hollow, and hollow guitars. If you set the amp and guitar up correctly, I just cannot tell the difference.
Can you readily discern when you hear a semi-hollow or hollow guitar? How about a solid body?Last edited by AlsoRan; 04-04-2018 at 12:08 PM.
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04-03-2018 03:09 PM
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Acoustically (unplugged or microphone) pretty easily discernible, with a piezo pickup or a microphonic magnetic pickup it gets harder (especially if you are blind and the presenter plays with the amp and reverb settings). It is very hard (impossible for me) if the listener is blinded and the guitar has wax potted magnetic pickups and the player adjusts playing style and the amp to make the guitars sound similar. There are many you tube clips (a famous one from Tim Lerch doing Teles vs archtops) where this is very nicely demonstrated.
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Lets say you've got a Les Paul, an ES-335, and an ES-175, all equipped with, say, classic '57s set at similar heights, neck pup, amplifier tone settings the same. IMHO, at low volumes and low-to-moderate picking force, they will sound highly similar on, say, quarter notes. As the volume is turned up, and note length increases, differences in sustain characteristics will begin to manifest, as will tonal effects. The louder/longer the notes, the greater the differences, with the 175 being the first to show manageability problems, followed by the 335 and finally, at very loud levels, the Les Paul proudly, loudly proclaims its Lord of Loudness-ness.
That said, I am presently LP-less and have no 335s. If anyone cares to ship me theirs, I will gladly perform this thought experiment for !SCIENCE!
I have a 175, and a Plexi half-stack, so - no worries.
Offer not valid where prohibited by law. Or common sense.
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I wouldn't bet a dime on my ability to pass a blindfold test.
If it's loud and not starting to feedback, I might think non-archtop.
If it's sustaining really well in the upper register, I might think non-archtop, but I've heard exceptions.
If' it's howling with feedback, I think archtop
A woody resonant sound? Archtop, but I could probably only hear it played quietly and solo. Put it in a combo and I couldn't tell.
I wouldn't bet a nickel on my ability to tell a 335 from a Les Paul in a band context.
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I have pretty much the same answer for all of these comparison questions. I don’t care if I can HEAR the difference when others play these instruments. In fact many times, I probably can’t. But I can discern huge differences when I PLAY the different instruments. And that is all that matters to me, and why I make the choices I make when I decide what guitar to play in a particular situation.
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Hearing it played, versus hearing yourself playing it may have two different results (for discerning full/semi/solid)
I'd not expect to always pass a blindfold test just listening, but in my hands playing there's more awareness of how each sounds.
At least for myself, there's quite a difference in response speed similar to the differences between a 10" and a 12" speaker.
And naturally the full hollow sounds, well, deeper & fuller ! Of course I fail at describing it beyond that most obvious way.
But the point I had here was that hearing it while YOU are playing gives you much more detail, that is still about sound, but also considers how that sound is getting produced. Touch and dynamics, feel from a note's attack/decay, these are aspects of producing sound that can be heard but are much more obvious when you are doing the playing.
John
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Hah, rp you beat me to the same idea, and had it posted while i was distractly typing away a version of saying that same sort of thing !
Originally Posted by rpguitar
John
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I think it depends on the situation. Certainly at low amp volume I can hear the acoustical characteristics of a hollow body guitar, and to a much lesser extent with a semi-hollow. When the music is loud enough that I can't hear the guitar acoustically it's closer than a lot of archtop players would care to admit.
If you take the acoustic archtop, semi-hollow and solid body guitar in a louder situation and set them all up the same way -- lighter strings, lower action, same pickups -- the difference is negligible. You feel the difference much more than you hear it. The setup does matter, though, and my archtop and tele (set up as they are) do sound a little different, at least to my ears. But I think it's mostly string gauge and string height.
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I can hear the difference, when gain is used the difference becomes more apparent , or amplified? Besides sustain/note decay characteristics the mid frequency tends to change with body density and material. hen there are the highs and lows.... Even in solids most can tell a maple cap on a Paul versus a thin, all mahogany SG.
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In amplified group performance situations, I've always been able to get the clean jazz sound I wanted out of a semi or solid, and it's been my choice for decades. A stock telecaster eventually became my axe of choice, even big band.
Early 2017 I picked up a thin fully hollow 16" archtop because I finally wanted to give it a try, plus, the thing was so darn light, and being thin, it was supremely comfortable to play and lug around.
Now that I've had time to apply and compare hollow, semi-hollow, and solid, I'll say this, the clean, long sustained notes I took for granted w/semi and solid guitars do not happen on a hollow, because sound decays so much quicker, I definitely had to change my line phrasing to compensate for that. Also, feedback is something you need to address to avoid w/hollow.
All in all, used as an amplified electric guitar, it's easier to make a solid or semi sound like a hollow, than vice versa, IMO.
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Not to throw a grenade here...but I defy anyone to listen to "Round Midnight" on Wes Montgomery Trio's "Dynamic New Sound" and duplicate that guitar sound with a solidbody or Semihollow.
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Between full hollowbody (including thinline) guitars and solid body - yes.
Semi hollow and solid - not really.
Typical semi hollow guitars (ES-335 for example) sound to my ears far closer to a solid body than an archtop. I find my solid body guitars (Les Paul Recording and Telecaster) make a semi hollow redundant for my purposes.
For most jazz gigs I still prefer a full hollow archtop, lately I've been favouring my early 80's Matsumoku Epiphone Emperor. In loud scenarios though I reach for the Les Paul Recording or Tele.
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I must have great ears. A tele, semi-hollow w/block, and carved archtop all sound quite different to me.
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I'm with Spook410. Last night I was playing my Telecaster, my semi-acoustic, and a carved-body archtop. All three get good, valid jazz sounds. All three sound quite different through the same amp.
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I'm sure that Wes would send the same playing a Les Paul with heavy strings as he does on a 175 or L5.
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Excellent playing by mr. Lerch - love his style.
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I don't 100% buy in to comparisons with same string gauge, same settings in chain, etc.. because each guitar really has inherent qualities that really suits it to a purpose, and usually that is with distinctly different conditions. Sure, you can put flatwound heavy strings on a solid body, and it gets a lot less like a jangly rock guitar and more "jazz toned" to a large extent. But Ed Bickert (and others) aside, you can get a resonant "log" to mimic the timbre, but it is not ever going to make archtops obsolete. It's a Jazz Tele, that's great on it's own, but it is not ES-350 or an L5/L7. And conversely, using an carved archtop with an extensive pedalboard and hi-gain amps seems less than ideal. While there's a lot of overlap in what hollow / semi / solid can do, there's enough distinct difference in what each does "best".
Oddly enough, there is a type of solid body usage that does employ feedback from body resonance for sustaining notes that is more like an archtop's reaction than a 9 pound Les Paul.
That Les Paul has the body taking less energy from the string, so the string rings longer.
A lightweight basswood strat played at adequate volume gets the speaker to excite the body resonance (like a hollowbody does) and that becomes part of what keeps the string sustaining. This effect is actually quite useable, as it is a lot less "peaky" than when my archtop goes nuts when I play an G# at hall volume. IIRC, Holdsworth reported a preference for .009 (or .008?) strings for their ability to produce the sustaining sound (which I'd have to attribute to that path of the 'speaker>excites lighweight body>excites string' being more a factor than the traditional 'dense mass of body not absoring string energy' approach.)
My take is that if you optimize each type to do what it does best, you have the distinct voices.
And if you instead attempt to make one type replicate the other's sound, there's likely been a compromise.
At least this thinking lets me rationalize a growing collection of guitars of each type.
Though is does not explain why I also want one of each color !
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yes. Originally Posted by john_a
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Guys, listen to the timbre of the guitar on the Wes Montgomery clip above. That's a big-body archtop guitar at its best. Absent that sound, I'd probably play a Telecaster all the time. However, I simply cannot get "that sound" out of my heart and head.
It's as simple as that.
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The higher the treble content of the amplified tone (before becoming an ice pick), the more distinctive each instrument becomes.
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Solidbody, semi-hollow, or hollow - once you add chorus, you are out of the club.
I kid, I kid.
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Thanks for this video! Originally Posted by Brubra
I couldn't guess any of them. Several sounded pretty much the same to me. The one I found most different was the low tuned one. But, I listened on computer speakers. Maybe better speakers would make a difference, but I kind of doubt it.
In contrast, when I'm playing, I can hear differences. But, those differences aren't typically in the midrange of the instrument where Mr. Lerch was focusing. I hear them in the upper frets -- do the very highest notes sing out clearly? Are the notes above the 12th fret on the other strings dull?
I've never gotten the "thickness" in the high notes from a single coil and I've never gotten the sustain I want from a hollow guitar. Not that it's impossible. I've heard some other players seem to do it with their hollow guitars.
And, although I am sort of speaking against much individual difference in basic sound, I just bought a guitar because of it. The Comins GCS-1 has a dark, thick sound. It arrives monday, at which point I'll see if it continues to sound like that with my gear.
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Never owned an LP. Used to have a 335. With the 2016 175 and a modeling amp I don’t hear a need to get either one. Don’t play loud enough that feedback is an issue. The Strat stands alone in its sonic territory.
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But does a Les Paul and an ES335 sound different to you? Originally Posted by Spook410
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Owned 'em both, and a Les Paul and an ES-335 do sound different, to me. It's subtler than the difference between a 335 and a L-5CES, but the difference is there.
To me, the Les Paul sounds like a string being vibrated over a transducer. There is sufficient mass and stiffness present in the guitar itself that it sort of falls away from the equation, as it were. AND, that string just keeps on vibrating--i.e., it sustains and sustains. (I can still hear Nigel Tufnel's Les Paul that he was holding up to Marty DiBergi in the film.) The 335 exhibits _some_ perturbation of the string vibration, owing to the less stiff/less massive guitar body.
Between the two, I preferred the 335. I kept it for years and sold the Les Paul. The 335 could cover the Les Paul scene, but the Les Paul couldn't as convincingly cover the jazzier things that the 335 could do.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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