Plenty of great jazz players still play planks.

Pat Martino started out using a Les Paul, made it sound like what people think an archtop brings to the game. There was even a stretch when Pat played a Steinberger and a few custom made planks as well.

Then there are all the semi-solidbody jazz players, the infamous ES-335 among them, it may have hollow side bouts but there is indeed a solid plank going underneath the top from neck to bridge. These designs are favored for their lack of feedback sensitivity when playing at higher volumes.

I used to put on recordings of jazz guitarists who used solidbody guitars of all types for my guitar playing friends, kind of like a doubleblind and then would ask them what type or kind of guitar they heard. As with all sorts of tests of this type, the responses were all over the place, each one depending upon the particular guitar player's perception of what a certain guitar type should sound like.

And in the end, it is really the particular player.

The one recording that none of 'em ever nailed, nobody even ever came close, was Jeff Skunk Baxter blowin' modern jazz and bebop lines on his clear acrylic plastic bodied strat copy. So much for hollow and even the so-called, "tonewoods"...


--Mac

Last edited by Mac; 11/01/13 02:42 PM.
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