Chambered body?

[FFTT]

Chambering is more about weight reduction than tonal improvement.

Sure you can chamber the guitar until it becomes essentially a hollow body
and you may get that hollow body resonance, but you may miss the depth of tone
from the denser wood.

[Given To Fly]

A chambered body guitar basically has hollowed out "chambers" in the body where the vibrations from the strings resonate freely. There are no f-holes for the sound to to escape though so the result is a dramatic increase resonance and note clarity. Compared to a solid body guitar, chamber bodied guitars sound amplified when unplugged! These are my favorite types of guitars.

A semi hollow body guitar will have f-holes which allow the sound to escape giving the guitar an acoustic quality. I believe feedback is more of a problem on full hollow body guitars (arch tops). Semi hollow bodies can still suffer from feedback but it really depends on how hollow the guitar actually is. Some designs can be played with distortion all the time with no problems.

[godotzilla]

The main difference I've found with chambered vs. f-holes is the ability to control said feedback. With f-holes and other ports, it seems that gain above a certain threshold results in squalling, atonal feedback (had a Casino that did this unless I stood in a precise position with my back to the amp).

With a chambered guitar, it's much easier to guide that feedback into tuneful tails that play with the notes or chords.

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by godotzilla

The main difference I've found with chambered vs. f-holes is the ability to control said feedback. With f-holes and other ports, it seems that gain above a certain threshold results in squalling, atonal feedback (had a Casino that did this unless I stood in a precise position with my back to the amp).

With a chambered guitar, it's much easier to guide that feedback into tuneful tails that play with the notes or chords.

It's not a matter of f-holes at all, it's a matter of the center block or lack of one. The Gibson ES-330/Epiphone Casino has no center block and does have a feedback problem. The Gibson ES-335/345/355 and its variants (Dot, etc.) does have a center block and has no feedback problem.

The 330 is techically a thinline hollowbody. The 335 is a semi-hollowbody. Both have F-holes.

Chambered guitars are more similar to the semi-hollowbody in playing characteristics. Neither one is particularly resonant compared to a real hollowbody. The chambered guitar lacks a bit of natural (non-feedback) sustain compared to a full solidbody of the same materials due to a lack of body density. This may or may not be noticeable depending on your style of playing and the volume of your amp.

[FFTT]

The Chambered, Weight Relieved Gibsons will not have the same rich depth of tone
as the true solid body builds.

That does not mean you can't get great tone, it will just be thinner.

For some, the standard weight is a non issue, while some players like having the option of a 7 pound LP.

[indravayu]

Originally Posted by FFTT

The Chambered, Weight Relieved Gibsons will not have the same rich depth of tone
as the true solid body builds.

That does not mean you can't get great tone, it will just be thinner.

For some, the standard weight is a non issue, while some players like having the option of a 7 pound LP.

That is not true at all - the tone of my Chambered R8 is anything but thin (in fact, I dial the bass and low mids way down when I play it through my main amp, a Marshall JTM45 clone). It's as thick as any other solidbody Gibsons and Gibson clones that I have owned in my 27 years of playing guitar (and I have owned a lot).

[FFTT]

It's hard to say if that is a result of difference in pickup sensitivity or the added resonance of the hollow body & the amp's gain settings, but you make a good point.

It all depends on the merits of each individual guitar.

[MonikerGuitars]

Wondering if anyone has experienced noticeable differences in tone when changing the shape of the f-hole while keeping the hole approximately the same size. I imagine there wouldn't be a noticeable difference, right? You'd probably have to build two of the same guitar with two different shaped holes to really know the answer to this.

[Given To Fly]

Originally Posted by MonikerGuitars

Wondering if anyone has experienced noticeable differences in tone when changing the shape of the f-hole while keeping the hole approximately the same size. I imagine there wouldn't be a noticeable difference, right? You'd probably have to build two of the same guitar with two different shaped holes to really know the answer to this.

I think the answers are yes. Classical and steel string guitar builders have moved the sound hole around and historically f - holes have been around much longer (violins, cellos,etc.). However, if may be hard to tell the difference unless you did an A/B comparison.

[Granny Gremlin]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

It's not a matter of f-holes at all, it's a matter of the center block or lack of one. The Gibson ES-330/Epiphone Casino has no center block and does have a feedback problem. The Gibson ES-335/345/355 and its variants (Dot, etc.) does have a center block and has no feedback problem.

The 330 is techically a thinline hollowbody. The 335 is a semi-hollowbody. Both have F-holes.

Chambered guitars are more similar to the semi-hollowbody in playing characteristics. Neither one is particularly resonant compared to a real hollowbody. The chambered guitar lacks a bit of natural (non-feedback) sustain compared to a full solidbody of the same materials due to a lack of body density. This may or may not be noticeable depending on your style of playing and the volume of your amp.

Exactly this. One addition is that chambering a body will affect bass response due to shifting the resonant frequency of the body.

[MonikerGuitars]

You can check out how I cut chambered bodies on the CNC machine here. Might help explain the difference.

[Hot Vibrato]

Originally Posted by MonikerGuitars

You can check out how I cut chambered bodies on the CNC machine here. Might help explain the difference.

Love the Benny Hill theme music! I once toured the Gibson custom shop, and they took a rough-sawn SG body (Tony Iommi model) to its completely routed and shaped stage in a matter of a couple minutes or less, in much the same fashion. Quite an amazing thing to behold.

[noah330]

Originally Posted by FFTT

The Chambered, Weight Relieved Gibsons will not have the same rich depth of tone
as the true solid body builds.

That does not mean you can't get great tone, it will just be thinner.

For some, the standard weight is a non issue, while some players like having the option of a 7 pound LP.

I have some original Bursts from the late 50s. The most accurate sounding Historic I ever heard was a Cloud 9.

[Tag101]

Originally Posted by FFTT

The Chambered, Weight Relieved Gibsons will not have the same rich depth of tone
as the true solid body builds.

I disagree. And not with just Gibsons. I prefer the sound of chambered or semi hollow guitars when compared to the same solid guitar in almost every instance.
They have a more resonant tone and feel and sound more alive to me. I would agree for massive amounts of gain, a solid guitar is usually the best, but for clean to mid gain tones, chambered and or semi hollow sound much better to me.

[drbob1]

I think the only thing you can say for sure is that you can't generalize... I've owned really similar semi-hollowbody PRS Custom 24s and regular Custom 24s and I couldn't hear or feel a difference, they sounded like PRSi. I've got a 73 Tele Thinline (semi-hollow) that sounds really resonant and almost ES335 like, I"ve got a 1975 Cort copy of the Thinline with Fender pickups that sounds much more inert despite the same chambering.

I think you can say that a fully hollow guitar will feedback more, couple more easily with the amp for sustain but likely have less natural sustain unplugged. A carved top guitar will be even less likely to sustain unplugged since it has a thicker top generally than the ply top on a 330 for example.

The center block, big body guitars like the 335 are a really nice compromise as are the thin top, nearly hollow carved "Jet" guitars from Gretsch.

[John Eppstein]

A full hollowbody will tend to feed back easily at specific frequencies rather than through the full range. It will also tend to feed back on certain notes at a specific distance from the amp and other notes at other distances. Feedback can become quite uncontrollable above a certain volume, which is why very few loud players use a full hollowbody guitar.

[pultech]

A chambered body IS a semi hollow bodied guitar!

Whether youmopen the chamber with an air ("F") hole is yet another matter.

Opening the chamber will cause the vibrating air within the chamber to have less of an effect on resonating the body wood as well as make a change to the bodies timbre.

I find chambering to somewhat soften the initial percussive attack of a picked/plucked note due to the air "eating" some of the energy from said initial attack.

As for guitars being thinner or richer than one another, wood density and resonant characterisics of individual pieces of lumber will have the most audible effect.

I absolutely LOVE tapping on a piece of stock and hearing it "talk" to me.

My wood collection contains stock that vibrates like a rich woodwind, to pieces that ring like a sheet of tempered glass or a metal xylophone key.

A closed chambered body will typically take more amp volume before going into resonant feedback because the vibrating surrounding air does not directly couple to the air in the chamber.

Every instrument has one to several resonant frequencies due to the materials they are made from.

Squaling atonal feedback is usually due to undamped coils in the pickup windings or the pickup cover.