Tell me about hollow bodies

BEACHBUM said:
This is my first post so hello everyone. Glad to be here.

I guess I'm a bit of a minority since I started out on a Fender Coronado II in the 60's, moved on to an Ibanez Artist in the early 80's and pretty much played nothing but semis for many years before I took up with solid bodies as well. I have to agree that there isn't a huge difference between semi hollows and solid bodies and it's not a real big deal to transition from one to the other. When playing over drive Rock or Blues I really don't hear much difference if any at all. It's when I play clean that I hear subtle differences. Someone here said that the semis have a woody sound and I think that's an accurate description. Any way here are mine.

83 IBANEZ ARTIST AM 205
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YAMAHA SA 2200
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Yeah, Ibanez made the first 339-style guitars. I'd love to have the tremelo version.
 
Elias Graves said:
The difference between a semi hollow and a solid aren't that huge. Many will argue with me over that, but most semi hollows are only hollow on the outside wings. To me, you don't really start getting the truly fat tones until you have air under the pickups.
In fact, I think my hollow tele sounds more hollow than a 335 style.
But even a semi will get some of that fat sound going on. It really just comes down to whether you like it or not.
It's rock n roll. There are no rules.
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I'd only argue with you on the statement I bolded. To me, a semi-hollow is more like a solid body guitar with hollow body wings glued on, which adds some hollow-ish woody tones to the sound. A hollow body, especially something rather light like a Casino, sounds more to me like an amplified acoustic guitar. Chambered guitars can sound somewhere in between those or closer to a semi-hollow or even closer to a solid body depending upon the design and quality/hardness/thickness of the woods. And some semi-hollows, like the Hofner CT Club, do very much have more of that "hollow body" characteristic to them. I think the further you go towards hollow-body (if you're not going into jazz) the deeper you're going into Jack White territory :eek:. Not being that good at dirty slide blues, and not being too terribly interested or talented towards jazz, I tend to prefer semi-hollows not only tonally, but for what I'm capable of doing with a guitar. I do also have a Gretsch 6120 for the Rockabilly thing (don't want to forget that application of a hollow bodied guitar) :wink:. There, they are "hollow bodied" but they tend to be built like tanks (unlike the dainty little Casinos) so although they do still have some of that acoustic guitar quality, it's more of a stand-up bass thunky resonant quality that I think they add to that musical genre, and of course they double as excellent jazz guitars.

I have quite a few of the various gutted bodied instruments and I tend to ignore most of them fairly equally compared to their solid bodied brethren (generally I don't enjoy as much playing bulky guitars) but I think my favorite design might be the Gibson ES-339. Enough hollow body wings added on to add a touch of that resonance and woody tone, but not too much where it interferes with the harder rock side of the guitar or becomes too bulky or awkward to enjoy for my relaxed lounge chair performances.

my 2 c
 
Dogsinotpalc said:
Yeah, Ibanez made the first 339-style guitars. I'd love to have the tremelo version.
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It's really ironic. For years Ibanez copied Gibson models. I measured the dimensions on mine, lower bout, upper bout, length of body etc. and compared them to those of the 339. Turns out the 339 and the AM's are exactly the same size. Oh well, I guess turn around is fair play.
 
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