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10-27-2011, 03:01 PM
| | | | Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 86
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I play most of my music in small combos with a drummer, pianist, bassist, and usually a horn. A buddy of mine brought in a carved spruce archtop once, an Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor, and the feedback was terrible! I went to check it out later. Guitar played great, sounded great acoustically, all the electronics worked fine, good cable, good amp. I couldn't figure out how my guitar wouldn't feed back even at a high volume, while his guitar threatened to feed back even at medium-low volumes.
I guess that might have been the difference.
Another thing, I like how my laminate archtop sounds acoustically. It could be louder, yeah, but it has plenty of richness to it. I've even recorded on it acoustically with a microphone. |
10-27-2011, 03:18 PM
| | | | Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 13
| |  joe pass epi feeds back
Hi DK, that is crazy, I just got an email from HELLO MUCIC selling that exact guitar for $500.oo. I thought that was very reasonable and I was going to check one out at Guitar Center. After your experience now I'm not sure if I should bother! Thank's  |
10-27-2011, 03:26 PM
| | | | Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 514
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Quote:
Originally Posted by =DK=  I play most of my music in small combos with a drummer, pianist, bassist, and usually a horn. A buddy of mine brought in a carved spruce archtop once, an Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor, and the feedback was terrible! I went to check it out later. Guitar played great, sounded great acoustically, all the electronics worked fine, good cable, good amp. I couldn't figure out how my guitar wouldn't feed back even at a high volume, while his guitar threatened to feed back even at medium-low volumes.
I guess that might have been the difference.
Another thing, I like how my laminate archtop sounds acoustically. It could be louder, yeah, but it has plenty of richness to it. I've even recorded on it acoustically with a microphone. | I believe you will find the Joe Pass Emperor is plywood. The original Emperor, made back before Gibson gobbled up Epiphone, was carved spruce. But that was a long time ago and a very different guitar.
Plywood is noted for its resistance to feedback, but that doesn't mean some models aren't susceptible to the problem.  |
10-27-2011, 03:40 PM
| | | | Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 86
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cjm I believe you will find the Joe Pass Emperor is plywood. The original Emperor, made back before Gibson gobbled up Epiphone, was carved spruce. But that was a long time ago and a very different guitar.
Plywood is noted for its resistance to feedback, but that doesn't mean some models aren't susceptible to the problem. |
Maybe I'm remembering the model wrong? Huh, I dunno.  |
10-27-2011, 03:42 PM
| | | | Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 31
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cjm One way of looking at it is that the solid wood carved archtop as we know it today, was not really designed to sound good. It was designed to be loud as an unamplified rhythm instrument played in bands dominated by horns.
As to it needing to sound good, let's not forget that it replaced the banjo. It didn't need to sound good to sound better than the banjo it replaced. It just needed to be loud enough for the brass section to hear, and to be less objectionable than a banjo.
The first electric archtops weren't much different than the acoustic archtops they were derived from and a huge number of them were simply acoustic archtops with a variety of pickups added after the fact and after market...Acoustic guitars designed to be loud and somewhat haphazardly repurposed as electric guitars.
Plywood guitars were sort of the first "clean sheet" archtop electric designs. Acoustic volume was never a design consideration. Acoustic tone was no particular concern either.
So perhaps it should come as no surprize that the post WWII plywood guitars sounded better than carved wood to many ears when played as they were intended -- as electrics...and that builders like Sadowsky prefer plywood, and that even the iconic archtop builder Bob Benedetto recommends plywood as offering the best performance in an electric. | Great post. Especially the part about banjos!  |
10-27-2011, 03:46 PM
| | | | Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 514
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Quote:
Originally Posted by =DK= Maybe I'm remembering the model wrong? Huh, I dunno. | Possibly. The original Epiphone Emperor was a direct competitor to Gibson's Super 400. 18 inches wide, long scale. All carved woods.
The Joe Pass Emperor is basically an Asian built ES-175 clone. |
10-27-2011, 03:47 PM
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Posts: 86
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Quote:
Originally Posted by twilightblue100 Hi DK, that is crazy, I just got an email from HELLO MUCIC selling that exact guitar for $500.oo. I thought that was very reasonable and I was going to check one out at Guitar Center. After your experience now I'm not sure if I should bother! Thank's | Definitely check it out. Don't let what strangers on the internet say affect you too much  | | Thread Tools | | | | Display Modes |  Linear Mode | 
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