More core semi-hollows

[Screamingdaisy]

Oh it is. This sounds funny, and you may not believe it but I swear it's true and not exaggerated. A few weeks before I got my Archon, I had the pictured C22 Semi Hollow out and played it through the Custom 50. Had the gain channel gain on about noon and a decent volume. Wife was home, so not really loud, but fairly for home.

I was holding a chord and felt wind blowing on the hairs on my right arm.... where it was in front of the F hole! I am not kidding. There was freaking wind blowing out of it while sustaining a chord! I couldn't believe it. I've said before here, that guitar is alive. That night, it was BREATHING! A couple days later, I thought it couldn't be true, and that I was imagining it or something. I got it out again and this time had the volume lower. Nothing. Oh, it was alive, sustain forever, etc. But not that wind on the arm hairs stuff. Turned it up a little more, played for a few minutes, got my arm in the right spot and... there it was again. That thing is breathing on me. So again, that guitar is ALIVE!

Awhile ago I had an argument with someone over whether the acoustic sound of an electric mattered.

I wound up mic'ing the strings of my electrics with an SM57 and recording them, then mic'ing the speaker of my cab and recording them again. I had to put tape over the sound hole on my PRS semi-hollow because it kept messing up the recording.

And for those who're curious... yes, the acoustic sound of an electric is a pretty good indicator of what it's going to sound like when amplified.

 

[bodia]

Don't get between Jim and his tacos

Damn straight!

 

[bodia]

Oh it is. This sounds funny, and you may not believe it but I swear it's true and not exaggerated. A few weeks before I got my Archon, I had the pictured C22 Semi Hollow out and played it through the Custom 50. Had the gain channel gain on about noon and a decent volume. Wife was home, so not really loud, but fairly for home.

I was holding a chord and felt wind blowing on the hairs on my right arm.... where it was in front of the F hole! I am not kidding. There was freaking wind blowing out of it while sustaining a chord! I couldn't believe it. I've said before here, that guitar is alive. That night, it was BREATHING! A couple days later, I thought it couldn't be true, and that I was imagining it or something. I got it out again and this time had the volume lower. Nothing. Oh, it was alive, sustain forever, etc. But not that wind on the arm hairs stuff. Turned it up a little more, played for a few minutes, got my arm in the right spot and... there it was again. That thing is breathing on me. So again, that guitar is ALIVE!

Ohhhhhh......I'm gonna haveta try this!

 

[dkilpatrick]

Oh it is. This sounds funny, and you may not believe it but I swear it's true and not exaggerated. A few weeks before I got my Archon, I had the pictured C22 Semi Hollow out and played it through the Custom 50. Had the gain channel gain on about noon and a decent volume. Wife was home, so not really loud, but fairly for home.

I was holding a chord and felt wind blowing on the hairs on my right arm.... where it was in front of the F hole! I am not kidding. There was freaking wind blowing out of it while sustaining a chord! I couldn't believe it. I've said before here, that guitar is alive. That night, it was BREATHING! A couple days later, I thought it couldn't be true, and that I was imagining it or something. I got it out again and this time had the volume lower. Nothing. Oh, it was alive, sustain forever, etc. But not that wind on the arm hairs stuff. Turned it up a little more, played for a few minutes, got my arm in the right spot and... there it was again. That thing is breathing on me. So again, that guitar is ALIVE!

This is totally true,
It's all about frequency, vibration, and air displacement.

 

[László]

This is totally true,
It's all about frequency, vibration, and air displacement.

Actually, it's my thinking that a semi-hollow or hollow body behaves as a resonant filter, similar to the way an emphasis control acts on the lowpass filter on a Moog synth.

There is a resonant peak just before the filter cuts off the extension of frequencies above the cutoff point of the filter.

This creates the familiar tones we hear as hollow, and while it doesn't affect the speed of the note attack, the resonance follows the initial attack quickly, and masks it to a degree.

Next time you're at the music store, fool around with the filter cutoff on a synth and turn the emphasis (also called resonance on many synths), and see if you don't agree. In my experience, as the filter starts to cut off higher frequencies and the resonance knob is increased, there is a point where a more hollow sound is reached. It's also how vocal sounds are traditionally created (though there are dormant filters on more recent synths that do even more in that regard).

Paul Smith has stated that he believes that guitar design is a subtractive process. The idea of a resonant filter is classic subtractive synthesis. I think this is evidence that he's right.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Interesting. And no questions there is a resonance in a semi or hollow body. I had a friend with an old 335 that I LOVED! (this was 35 years ago when I first started playing and the guitar was at least 10-15 years old then so probably sometime in the 60s model). Even at low volume, with some gain on the amp, that thing would just HOWL if you walked in front of the amp. Walk away from the amp and it would find that one note and just start sustaining it forever unless you muted the strings.