kidblast Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 You get the same body as the Joe Pass Emperor, but it's said to sound very Gretchy when the pups are in parallel mode (and more humbucker-like when not). Two push/pull Tone controls allow you to change each pickup's output individually from parallel to series wiring. I wouldn't say they NAIL the Gretch vibe with the "in" postion, but they do "get you in the neighborhood" the humbucker setting (pull out tone pots) goes right to PAF ville. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmendoza Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Many people have trouble with full depth hollow bodies, especially ones with solid sruce tops and a floating pickup, like the Emperor Regent, feeding back. If the problem cannot be cured by lowering the volume and repositioning yourself relative to the amp/speaker, then there are several remedies: 1. tape over the F holes 2. stuff rags, cloth or fiberglass insulation inside the guitar body 3. put in a sound post under the bridge. Guitars with laminated tops, especially the ones with thicker maple laminate like the ES-175, have less feedback issues. Thin line guitars like the Casino can handle even more volume before feeding back due to the smaller voulume of the body. Hollow body guitars like the Sheraton and ES335 series have such a huge block inside joining the top to bottom that they can handle much more volume without having uncontrollable feedback issues. It is sort of waste of time and materials in my opinion to have beautiful fully carved spruce top hollow body archtops instruments like an L5, or Super 400 CES with huge humbucker holes routed into the face and top braces, which just kills off any good acoustic properties the top may have had. By contrast, the laminated top Joe Pass Emperor, Swingster, and Broadway actaully are very good sounding and relatively good at not feeding back when playing the type of music they were designed for. It is interesting to note that even the best Gibson archtop electrics like a Johhny Smith and the Le Grand (both have floating mini humbuckers) have solid carved spruce tops that are much thicker than a purely acoustic L-5 or Super 400, to reduce feedback!! Look at the ES350, Birdland, and the Howard Roberts fusion models which all use a very thick and hard carved maple top instead of spruce, this is to get sustain and control feedback at higher volumes. What seperates fully hollow bodies from semi-hollow bodies if if the top is connected to the back with a large block of wood which is typically in the bridge area. The sound post does not convert a full hollow body to a semi-hollow body, but it does help reduce feedback. A sound post will also kill off alot of acoustic sustain as they are designed to dissapate the string energy rapidy into the body top and back. You see a sound post is really for violins, as they don't need sustain, because you have bow to keep the string vibrating. A sound post is designed to give the most power and volume to the instrument, at the cost of killing off sustain. Notice that a violin dies instantly the second you stop bowing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red 333 Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 A sound post will also kill off alot of acoustic sustain as they are designed to dissapate the string energy rapidy into the body top and back. You see a sound post is really for violins, as they don't need sustain, because you have bow to keep the string vibrating. A sound post is designed to give the most power and volume to the instrument, at the cost of killing off sustain. Notice that a violin dies instantly the second you stop bowing. A violin looses volume immediately when the player stops bowing because because there is not enough mechanical energy to motivate the strings enough to cause the top and back sounding boards to produce audible sound at a distance. That's just the physics of the instrumnet. As you noted, that is what the bow is for. Removing the soundpost from a violin does not change this. Sound posts are essential to the tone of a violin, though. If you remove one, the fall off in the bass register is immediate, and other tonal aspects change as well. Scientific studies have shown that this is because the loction of the post both changes the stiffness of the left bridge foot as it sits on the top (changing its effeciency conducting certain resonant frequencies to the top and througout the instrument), and because the post conducts other specific frequencies to the guitars back, which helps to increase volume, especialy the lower tones. The post also serves to attenuate "wolf" tones, making the overall tone more pleasant. I woud not say soundposts are only for violins. All bowed instruments have sound posts, and the post makes an essential contribution to these instruments' sound. I can't speculate about the motivation of all manufacturers, but in Epiphones, we see soundposts most commonly present in hollowbody guitars when they are budget-priced instruments. A Pac-rim Casino may have one, while the far more costly Japanese Elitist, vintage Kalamazoo-made example, or vintage/current Gibson ES-330 do not. I doubt it has anything to do with improving any acoustic properties, but more out of a concern that the top arch could eventially collapse. Or it may be that the Pac-rim manufacturers have more experience building violins and other bowed instruments than guitars, so they applied those traditional techniques to hollow body guitars. In either case, no one was sitting around measuring the soundpost's effect on modal shapes before making the decision to include it or not. Red 333 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmendoza Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Applying violin theory to archtop guitars is apples and oranges at best because they may look similar but operate quite differently. One big thing is that a violin has a free and undamped back, but the guitar back is damped by the players body...this is a huge diference. The net affect is that a soundpost in a guitar adds damping due to it transfering more string energy to the back where it's absorbed by the players belly. This does not enhance tone or sustain, but does a great job of controlling feeback when playing with an amplifier at high sound levels. As far as imported guitars with sound posts go, it's a gimmick/bandaid. It is emtirely possible to make an excellent sounding guitar without a soundpost, in fact a properly designed and constructed guitar should not need one. If soundpost is needed to support an archtop guitar top from collapsing, then the top is not stiff enough, or the top's bracing is inadequate. Using a soundpost to correct this situation is an afterthought. The fundemental violin design (viola da gamba) uses longitudinal bracing, and an arched top with f holes that also run parallel to the brace to get the most volume, as sustain is a function of the bow and therefore not designed into the corpus of the violin. Archtop guitars share some similar construction features with violins, but operate with only one sound plate (the top) as opposed to two plates (top and back) being mechanically linked together via a soundpost as found in the violin family. Since the guitar is primarily a plectrum instrument, even archtops are designed with some sustain in mind, which a soundpost will not enhance. This is why archtops use either two longitudinal braces, or X bracing. In either case, the bracing supports both the bass and treble side of the guitars top, so a soundpost is not needed or of any benefit. The reason any violin looses it's tone with the soundpost removed is because the treble side of the top is now unbraced and it collapses, therefore it is no longer able to vibrate as freely. Take a look at the F holes edges when the soundpost is removed or improperly positioned and notice that they are no longer in line with each other like the bass side. One big clue a violin maker looks for when evaluating an instrument is to make note of how well the edges of the treble side F hole are aligned, as this is a good indication of weather the top is collapsed and the soundpost is of the correct length and properly positioned. The edges of the bass side F hole being miss aligned is an indication of a broken bass bar or cracked top. The lack of a soundpost also will not transfer the energy to the back so it will not resonate in unison with the top like it is supposed to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red 333 Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Applying violin theory to archtop guitars is apples and oranges at best because they may look similar but operate quite differently. One big thing is that a violin has a free and undamped back, but the guitar back is damped by the players body...this is a huge diference. The net affect is that a soundpost in a guitar adds damping due to it transfering more string energy to the back where it's absorbed by the players belly. This does not enhance tone or sustain, but does a great job of controlling feeback when playing with an amplifier at high sound levels. As far as imported guitars with sound posts go, it's a gimmick/bandaid. It is emtirely possible to make an excellent sounding guitar without a soundpost, in fact a properly designed and constructed guitar should not need one. If soundpost is needed to support an archtop guitar top from collapsing, then the top is not stiff enough, or the top's bracing is inadequate. Using a soundpost to correct this situation is an afterthought. The fundemental violin design (viola da gamba) uses longitudinal bracing, and an arched top with f holes that also run parallel to the brace to get the most volume, as sustain is a function of the bow and therefore not designed into the corpus of the violin. Archtop guitars share some similar construction features with violins, but operate with only one sound plate (the top) as opposed to two plates (top and back) being mechanically linked together via a soundpost as found in the violin family. Since the guitar is primarily a plectrum instrument, even archtops are designed with some sustain in mind, which a soundpost will not enhance. This is why archtops use either two longitudinal braces, or X bracing. In either case, the bracing supports both the bass and treble side of the guitars top, so a soundpost is not needed or of any benefit. The reason any violin looses it's tone with the soundpost removed is because the treble side of the top is now unbraced and it collapses, therefore it is no longer able to vibrate as freely. Take a look at the F holes edges when the soundpost is removed or improperly positioned and notice that they are no longer in line with each other like the bass side. One big clue a violin maker looks for when evaluating an instrument is to make note of how well the edges of the treble side F hole are aligned, as this is a good indication of weather the top is collapsed and the soundpost is of the correct length and properly positioned. The edges of the bass side F hole being miss aligned is an indication of a broken bass bar or cracked top. The lack of a soundpost also will not transfer the energy to the back so it will not resonate in unison with the top like it is supposed to. Agreed. Very nice couple of posts. Red 333 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmendoza Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Thanks Red, very kind words indeed. I was given a pre-war Epiphone stand up 3/4 bass that had about 2 inches of the neck missing where it had been broken off at the heel and had to figure out how to save it withour replacing the entire neck. In so doing, it became a sort of self educating lesson in the art of violin making and repair. I read books, met and talked with many violin luthiers in the process, including Dr John from World of Strings in Long Beach Ca. This was decades before the internet, but I had the good fortune to get to know Dee, the owner of OMI (resonater guitars) in Huntington beach and Doc Pitello, who worked at Fender for many years. These wonderful people educated me and I fell in love with the Epiphone story and their fierce competiton with Gibson, and all archtop lore (Loar?) in general (pun intended). My cousin worked for Leo at G&L, and he also worked at Carvin, plus many musicians here in Orange county have worked for Fender, so I guess I'm very lucky. In addition, I worked right next door to the Rickenbacher factory in Santa Ana for 2 years and got to know their production manager and Mr Hall pretty well, they showed me around the factory many times. I owe everything I know about musical instruments to these fine people. My only regret was I didn't ever think to bring a camera to the Ricky or Dobro factory and take pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red 333 Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 Thanks Red, very kind words indeed. I was given a pre-war Epiphone stand up 3/4 bass that had about 2 inches of the neck missing where it had been broken off at the heel and had to figure out how to save it withour replacing the entire neck. In so doing, it became a sort of self educating lesson in the art of violin making and repair. I read books, met and talked with many violin luthiers in the process, including Dr John from World of Strings in Long Beach Ca. This was decades before the internet, but I had the good fortune to get to know Dee, the owner of OMI (resonater guitars) in Huntington beach and Doc Pitello, who worked at Fender for many years. These wonderful people educated me and I fell in love with the Epiphone story and their fierce competiton with Gibson, and all archtop lore (Loar?) in general (pun intended). My cousin worked for Leo at G&L, and he also worked at Carvin, plus many musicians here in Orange county have worked for Fender, so I guess I'm very lucky. In addition, I worked right next door to the Rickenbacher factory in Santa Ana for 2 years and got to know their production manager and Mr Hall pretty well, they showed me around the factory many times. I owe everything I know about musical instruments to these fine people. My only regret was I didn't ever think to bring a camera to the Ricky or Dobro factory and take pictures. Wow, you must have some great stories and experiences to share. Glad you are posting here. If you're curious about scientific research into why violins sound as they do, and how the various components interact (some of which supports conventional wisdom and ages-old tradition, and some that doesn't!), look into a gentleman named J. E. McLennan. Someone like you might be very interested. Some of his papers are here: J.E. McLennan Red 333 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 Great exchange there, guys. That's good stuff. I think one thing I learned here, a soundpost can help feedback issues. Wouldn't have thought that, but it makes sense. Which also makes sense why Gretsch was so popular in early Rock in proportion to the Gibson. Still, I think a lot of it is due to the frequency. Feedback is often low frequency based, even as it's super-high pitched. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slk Posted March 3, 2016 Author Share Posted March 3, 2016 Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimR56 Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 jmendoza, I think you made a lot of good points in your posts above, but I just wanted to clarify a couple of things... It is sort of waste of time and materials in my opinion to have beautiful fully carved spruce top hollow body archtops instruments like an L5, or Super 400 CES with huge humbucker holes routed into the face and top braces, which just kills off any good acoustic properties the top may have had. Of course, the CES versions are braced differently than the acoustic versions of the Super 400 and L5. Two different animals, and I for one am very thankful that the CES models were conceived, designed, produced, and used by so many great players over the years. Their sound can be unique and beautiful in their own way, just as a Super 400C or L5C with floating pickups can sound great in their own way. Kenny Burrell used both, and I'm glad he did. So I must disagree with the "waste of time" comment. It is interesting to note that even the best Gibson archtop electrics like a Johnny Smith and the Le Grand (both have floating mini humbuckers) have solid carved spruce tops that are much thicker than a purely acoustic L-5 or Super 400, to reduce feedback!! Look at the ES350, Birdland, and the Howard Roberts fusion models which all use a very thick and hard carved maple top instead of spruce, this is to get sustain and control feedback at higher volumes. The Byrdland model featured a spruce top. Its "sister" short-scale model (with maple top) was the ES350T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmendoza Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 You are correct, I meant the 350T. At the end of the day, nothing matters as much to a player as the actual tonal character and playability of the guitar. Collectors and afficianados tend to get caught up in the tradition and minutia that often have nothing to do with sound. Herin lies a ton of myths and missinformation, which is mainly subjective in nature, as everyone has a favorite color and flavor. If you have to tone down the acoustic qualities of an instrument to get it under control when amplified, then it's acoustic capabilites are diminished and the premium materials the lutheir used would have been better utilized on instrument that requires them. Think of it this way: Why gold plate something and then decide it's too shiny and put paint over it to tone it down? Why pay for the gold if you are not going to need it? Save the gold for what it's best suited for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sleeko Posted March 5, 2016 Share Posted March 5, 2016 Since I play both guitar and violin I find this very informative. Good convo and bravo! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerseyRay Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 I seam to be torn between the Epiphone "Joe Pass Emperor II Pro" and the Gretsch G5420T. I watched a video comparison on youtube and the Epi seamed to have a much richer tonal quality than the Gretsch, but the Gretsch did sound very good. The Gretsch seamed to be a little more twang-yer. This is a hard decision. I have always owned Gibsons and Epiphones, and love the tone of them. Or do I need something to mix things up a little. Steve So, why don't you just get a swingster? It's a Joe pass emporer II with hotter pickups, (also get series / parallel pickup choice) and a really cool bigsby... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slk Posted March 8, 2016 Author Share Posted March 8, 2016 The ES-175 Premium looks really nice.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merciful-evans Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Always wondered about the differences, in tone/sound, between the ES-330 with stock P-90's, vs. the same guitar(s) with Humbuckers, that you sometimes see. Ether modded that way, or special ordered. Never had a chance to play them, side by side...in fact, I've only seen the Humbucker versions, on occasion. Anyone here, had the pleasure of playing both versions, and if so, what ARE the differences, in tone, with both being "true hollowbody," etc. Aside from the normal differences, between humbuckers, and P-90's, that is. CB Sorry if I'm too late chiming in here, but jmendoza has pretty much answered this describing other models. I dont think its possible to mod a ES-330 (replacing P90s with HBs) without sinking the pups through the body of the guitar. This will affect the acoustic sound I am certain. Its not just a case of the difference between pups. Mini-humbuckers would be different. They can be installed on top without compromising the sound box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobouz Posted March 12, 2016 Share Posted March 12, 2016 Just for the sake of sharing info: My previously owned & sold '04 Peerless Casino & '11 50th Anniversary 1961 Casino both had soundposts. My '09 Elitist Casino, '10 ES-330L, '12 ES-330 VOS, & '66 ES-125T do not have soundposts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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