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F Hole Plugs for Hollow Body Basses
- Thread starter cuth
- Start date
This needs more likes that was hilarious. Read it at work, waited til I got home to like
That depends on what you mean by “problem”. When I was a stoned and crazy teenager, I only had to turn the volume on my Bassman to about three o’clock to get endlessly sustaining Hendrix tones from my Coronado II (standing directly in front of, and facing the stack). I’ve never experienced this with another bass, and while any hollow body bass can feed back, Coronados are in a league of their own. Might have something to do with no center block, a metal bridge, and pickups you could announce a hockey game through. Having thrown mine in the trash forty years ago, I’m surprised that anyone buys them for any reason EXCEPT to get endless, Hendrix type feedback from them.
It seems to me that the idea or possibility of playing "unplugged" for practice is not only quite incidental to the the use of a semi-hollow or hollow-body electric bass guitar with F holes, but at best, quite unideal and unsuited for it in fact terms of physics and design, relative to using the instrument plugged-in. I know this from having played one in a jam/casual strummy acoustic front porch thing while there were two acoustics and a singer or two, the semi-hollow/hollow-body really had to be plugged in the be heard at all without beating it to death with super heavy plectrum picking just to be heard by everyone on solely an acoustic basis.
I do think a semi-hollow or hollow-body electric bass guitar CAN be something you can enjoy sitting unplugged on the couch playing by yourself sans amplifier and perhaps along with some tunes on an audio device, but really, it's NOT the purpose of such instruments.
I started out in the early 70's with a Hofner Beatle Bass and a Fender Bassman. They were a great match, except when placed into the hands of an inexperienced idiot.
I eventually got a big Acoustic amp with a 6x12 bottom. The Hofner fed back all the time, because it was still in the hands of an inexperienced idiot. Eventually got a Les Paul Triumph Bass. No more feedback, but it was still operated by an inexperienced idiot.
I've had a few semi-hollow bodies since then. They all had center blocks and didn't feedback.
Wish I'd been able to keep the Hofner and Fender.
I'm still an idiot.
As with other acoustic instruments with pickups in them, you can substantially reduce feedback using a phase switch to invert the pickup signal and a notch filter to suppress the feedback frequency. Double bass players know these bits of witchcraft—and I use them with my hollowbody electric basses too.
I have experienced another type of "feedback" on acoustic electric basses. It is not the Hendrix type but the sympathetic vibration of non muted open strings. Thus also occurs on solid body basses but seems to be exaggerated by the nature of the acoustic instrument. The better an instrument sounds unplugged the more this shows up when amplified. And if played in a fairly loud band I have found that a bass drum can really affect this condition. Learning to mute every string not being played can help a lot.
I guess I’m one step ahead by using my solid-body basses unplugged for practice.
I have an SA-70 too (with the F Hole plastic) and a later SA-75 which didn’t come with the plastic. They sound really different, but I don’t think it’s down to the plastic I have no issue with feedback on either, the 75 it just has a lot more growl and much hotter pick ups…
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Does the 75 have a centre block or is it fully hollow as well? Looks hollow with a floating bridge in the photo.
Hereis my(with extras) Godin Acoustibass, so it is true if the bass was designed that way no fF holes are necessary.
Ha! Thanks for asking… I had assumed they were the same construction but I just checked, poked a pipe cleaner in the f hole and it does indeed have a centre block
(also gave it a tap and it sounds solid too)… that explains a lot, much more sustain than the SA-70. The bridge looks the same as the SA-70, but may be fixed down, I have changed the strings but it didn’t move so I left it where it was.I now have flats on the SA-70 and rounds on the 75 I really like them both and between them there’s a lot of tones available.
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I suspected as much given what you’ve heard—and now begins my hunt for an SA-75! When I got my SA-70 it had the mute assembly but the foaam was DOA so I replaced that. I also extracted the tone control through the opening for the large jack plate on the side of the instrument and replaced the old 250k audio pot with a new 250k linear pot and upped the capacitor to 100 pF (from 47). The result is a really useable tone control, not what I experienced on delivery. BTW, I’ve had no feedback issues with the fully hollow body, but then I’m not playing at stadium volume.Ha! Thanks for asking… I had assumed they were the same construction but I just checked, poked a pipe cleaner in the f hole and it does indeed have a centre block
I now have flats on the SA-70 and rounds on the 75 I really like them both and between them there’s a lot of tones available.
I took the SA-70 to a luthier when I got it, he reckoned the tone pot should’ve had a much larger range than it does, so changing that makes sense. I have it set to zero 90% of the time for that dead plonky Hofner kind of sound so it didn’t really bother me especially once I got the 75 which covers more ground, although, thinking about it, it’d probably benefit from an upgrade there tooI suspected as much given what you’ve heard—and now begins my hunt for an SA-75! When I got my SA-70 it had the mute assembly but the foaam was DOA so I replaced that. I also extracted the tone control through the opening for the large jack plate on the side of the instrument and replaced the old 250k audio pot with a new 250k linear pot and upped the capacitor to 100 pF (from 47). The result is a really useable tone control, not what I experienced on delivery. BTW, I’ve had no feedback issues with the fully hollow body, but then I’m not playing at stadium volume.
