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The Chirping Crickets guitar two?


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Here's a little Christmas teaser.

Whats the other guitar on the front of the famous Buddy Holly album 'The Chirping Crickets' The picture shows Buddy with his Fender Strat but on the right there is another guitar sunburst could it be a ES 330. Have a look on Amazon if you don't here a copy. Any ideas?

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StreamImage.aspx?Image_ID=2389&type=gear&Image_Type=full

 

The 225 is one of the least-recognized Gibsons of all time (threads like this are fairly common on guitar boards). It often gets mistaken for the ES175, as well as the ES125TC.

 

Here's the one-pickup version (the ES225T) in a natural finish (so it's actually an ES225TN):

 

Gibson%20ES-225T%201959%20Natural%2001.jpg

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Call me "old school", but I don't think the term "semi" is correct to refer to thinlines that are fully hollow. The term originally referred to the hybrid models (335/345/355) that were "semi" hollow. Some dealer websites now use the term "semi" to refer to all archtops. [confused]

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Call me "old school", but I don't think the term "semi" is correct to refer to thinlines that are fully hollow. The term originally referred to the hybrid models (335/345/355) that were "semi" hollow. Some dealer websites now use the term "semi" to refer to all archtops. [confused]

 

Well surely it depends on whether you mean semi-hollow or semi-acoustic? Certainly the latter was the term I first heard used by other guitarists as a lad, and that referred to any electric with magnetic pickups which had a significant proportion of hollowness to its body. Semi-hollow is a term that I came across much later, when I encountered people for whom it was more important to differentiate a 335 from a 175 than a 335 or 175 from a Les Paul. But maybe that's a British lexical distinction... Merry Christmas!

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Well surely it depends on whether you mean semi-hollow or semi-acoustic? Certainly the latter was the term I first heard used by other guitarists as a lad, and that referred to any electric with magnetic pickups which had a significant proportion of hollowness to its body.

I was thinking more in terms of semi-hollow vs hollow. I can't remember when I first became aware of the term "semi-acoustic", but I don't really remember hearing it 20 or 30 years ago, unless perhaps someone was talking about a flat-top acoustic that had been electrified. Archtop guitars with built-in pickups have always been "electric" guitars, but at some point after solidbodies became more popular, people seem to have reserved the use of the term "electric guitar" to solidbodies. At any rate, I've never thought of archtops with built-in pickups as "semi-acoustics", just as archtop electrics.

 

My original point had more to do with the "semi-hollow" vs "hollowbody" distinction. An ES330 (or a 225, or a 125T, or any thinline that's fully hollow) is not "semi-hollow", it's hollow. And thus it shouldn't be referred to as a "semi", in my opinion, just because it has a thinner body depth.

 

Semi-hollow is a term that I came across much later, when I encountered people for whom it was more important to differentiate a 335 from a 175 than a 335 or 175 from a Les Paul. But maybe that's a British lexical distinction... Merry Christmas!

The way I look at it (as I always have), these particular distinctions are simple. An ES175 is a (full depth) hollowbody electric (or archtop electric); an ES335 is a "semi-hollow" (the term "semi-solid" has also been used by some); and a Les Paul is a "solidbody". I would refer to an ES330, however, as a thinline hollowbody electric.

 

The term "semi" has been bastardized, in my opinion, to the point that there's often no logic involved in its application (such as those dealer websites I referred to where anything that isn't a solidbody or a flat-top acoustic is tossed into the "semis" category).

 

Enough ranting for now. Merry Christmas to you too! [smile]

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