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First off, what kind of Gibson box does Jeff play? I know he has an Epiphone Sheraton with Gretsch pick ups on it (from the movie) but when he plays "Walken" he uses a different Gibson that isn't a thinline.

 

Secondly, how do you get a more "rockin" sound out of a hollowbody without getting feedback. I play an Ibanez Artcore and love it, but the issue of higher volume and distortion at the same time poses problems.

 

 

Answers and suggestions very appreciated.

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I'm not sure what Jeff is currently using, but in terms of your problems with feedback, the problem is typically cured by getting rid of (or slightly lowering) just the right frequencies... But since you probably don't have a rig which contains its own dedicated 31 band eq (which would be overkill anyway,) the solution is tweaking both the tone and gain settings on every piece of gear in your signal path until you get the right balance of tone and feedback supression. You can't expect to tweak your sound to just the way you want it and then crank it to stage volume and have the sound come out the same. There are many reasons feedback might occur, but there is only one real source: The guitar or mic is picking up a frequency, amplifying it and it is "feeding back" over itself through the amp or pa. In order for me to help, try to answer these questions:

 

1) Are you using a PA; if so, are you micing your amp or going direct?

 

2) What is in your signal chain? (FX, type of amp, etc.) compressors mixed with high-gain disto boxes are prime canditates for feedback.

 

3) What is the room/venue like? Reflective surfaces send frequencies all over the place and can cause feedback, and every room is different. A lot of people use this to their advantage. When bands are on tour and use feedback in their show, they'll walk around the stage durring sound check, playing until feedback occurs and mark that spot in tape with an X so they can get it when they need to

 

Hope any of this helps! I know I'm always long-winded in these posts-- I'll try to do better!

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I have to dampen the strings sometimes. It was a burden at first but I've grown accustomed to using my right forearm and the unused fingers in my left hand to mute unwanted strings. I also play steel so I was used to unwanted notes flying around. And EQ is huge. Have someone else play your guitar while you listen though. I've had to change my settings to stop some serious feedback but until I listened to a recording I didn't realize I had shat on my tone. Sounded fine on stage, though. I'd say there are tradeoffs. If you want it too sound real overdriven and you don't want feedback I would suggest not using a hollowbody. But if you learn to control it, there is nothing better than having feedback on your side.

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One thing I've heard of some guys doing is taking a little piece of balsa wood and cutting it to the depth of the hollow body and using it to connect the top and the bottom half. The guy I knew that did this did it on an es 330, he just took the front pickup out and put it right under the bridge.

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es 330 is a semi-hollow body. the center is solid and connects the top and bottom.

 

i play an es-330 primarily (well, acoustic mostly, then the electrics) and haven't had a problem with feedback (even when i played in a hardcore band).

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i thought 330s were full-hollow, but then again i could be wrong.

 

Tweedy got a fancy '66 Barney Kessel from hiw wife for Christmas, so he uses that now. he's also been known in the older days to play Casinos, but i haven't seen him use one since the YHF tours (correct me if i'm wrong).

 

i actually have a casino and am consistenly encountering these problems too, interestingly enough.

 

I'm not sure if it'll work with an artcore but Pete Townsend stuffed his Ric hollowbody with kleenex and got the sustained feedback one would expect from a Les Paul.

 

how full?

Edited by poortranslator
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i actually have a casino and am consistenly encountering these problems too, interestingly enough.

 

Also interestingly enough, I saw Jay Bennet on his solo tour and he was playing through a Casino into a Fender Bandmaster (I think 2x12", 40 watts) and his only effect was an MXR Microamp (clean boost) which he used to overdrive the amp. It was a medium sized club ~500 person capacity but there were far, far fewer there (sorry, Jay, I love you anyway) and he was only standing around 8-10 feet away from is amp. No feedback. I mean, he was able to get it to feedback when he wanted it to but it didn't seem like he was constantly feeding back or anything.

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