Walter Broes
Enlightened Member
I have a '61 Starfire III too, and my main players are (larger/deeper) X175's.
feedback is an issue, but it's not nearly as bad as a lot of people seem to think it is. There's the obvious "horses for courses" thing of course - an archtop can't do what a Les Paul does. a fully hollow full size archtop can't do loud tight-sounding chunk-chunk power chords with a lot of distortion : it can't really get that sound (except maybe at non-drummer volumes), and from a certain volume and distortion level you'll be investing so much energy in fighting feedback that your playing will suffer.
I'm not nearly as loud as a 4X12-using loud rock player, but I've never been accused of playing quiet either - I typically play a twin-6L6 Fender or Fender-type amp into three or four 10" speakers, and turn the amp up to five or six.
What works for me is the vintage style light-ish magnet 10" speakers : they automatically don't have the bass and lower midrange content I don't need, and that makes the guitar want to feed back. Compared to the vintage style 10" speakers I use, a typical 12" Celestion is feedback hell.
I try to keep my body between my guitar and amp at all times - that takes care of more than 50% of potential feedback problems.
Also : keep the bass control on the amp as low as still sounds good. Keep a hand on the strings when you're not playing, or the guitar *will* howl eventually. a pedal tuner or other kind of mute button is extra-handy to have on stage in that respect. You can grab your beverage, capo or towel without your guitar going crazy.
There's another thing with fully hollow guitars in an amplified band setting people don't think/talk about as much - other amplified instruments on stage. If you're next to a bass player or drummer or even guitarist who's loud and has a lot of bass content in their sound, a hollowbody, from a certain volume on, won't work anymore. Once the guitar's body starts vibrating to the frequency of something else on stage, you're done. Nothing you can do about it - the guitar will barely register it's own strings, and a weird, strangled crappy sound will come out of your amp. Ask me how I know.....
feedback is an issue, but it's not nearly as bad as a lot of people seem to think it is. There's the obvious "horses for courses" thing of course - an archtop can't do what a Les Paul does. a fully hollow full size archtop can't do loud tight-sounding chunk-chunk power chords with a lot of distortion : it can't really get that sound (except maybe at non-drummer volumes), and from a certain volume and distortion level you'll be investing so much energy in fighting feedback that your playing will suffer.
I'm not nearly as loud as a 4X12-using loud rock player, but I've never been accused of playing quiet either - I typically play a twin-6L6 Fender or Fender-type amp into three or four 10" speakers, and turn the amp up to five or six.
What works for me is the vintage style light-ish magnet 10" speakers : they automatically don't have the bass and lower midrange content I don't need, and that makes the guitar want to feed back. Compared to the vintage style 10" speakers I use, a typical 12" Celestion is feedback hell.
I try to keep my body between my guitar and amp at all times - that takes care of more than 50% of potential feedback problems.
Also : keep the bass control on the amp as low as still sounds good. Keep a hand on the strings when you're not playing, or the guitar *will* howl eventually. a pedal tuner or other kind of mute button is extra-handy to have on stage in that respect. You can grab your beverage, capo or towel without your guitar going crazy.
There's another thing with fully hollow guitars in an amplified band setting people don't think/talk about as much - other amplified instruments on stage. If you're next to a bass player or drummer or even guitarist who's loud and has a lot of bass content in their sound, a hollowbody, from a certain volume on, won't work anymore. Once the guitar's body starts vibrating to the frequency of something else on stage, you're done. Nothing you can do about it - the guitar will barely register it's own strings, and a weird, strangled crappy sound will come out of your amp. Ask me how I know.....
