The Different Types of Electric Guitar Bodies: Semi-Hollow, Hollow, and Solid

The electric guitar has gone through many changes since its creation in the early 1930s. The hollow-body electric guitar was the first model to exist. It was a hybrid instrument that combined an acoustic guitar with amplification. They weren’t perfect but they paved the way for semi-hollow-body guitars and then solid-body guitars.

The Hollow-Body Electric Guitar

Origins and History

Hollow-body electric guitars were born in the early 1930s with the invention of the first installable pickups for guitars. It’s impossible to name a single person or a specific date for the invention of the first electric guitar. Almost all the key players of the era were working on guitar amplification (Leo Fender, Gibson, Lloyd Loar, and Les Paul). They needed to find a way to amplify these instruments to increase their volume and make them viable for large stages. Many patents were filed by these different players to protect their inventions.

Hollow-body guitars were the first to be amplified and thus to become electric. All guitars were acoustic. The first idea was to create a hollow-body acoustic guitar equipped with one or more electromagnetic pickups.

It is said that Lloyd Loar was behind one of the first hollow-body guitars. He was one of the engineers at the Gibson firm in the early 20th century. In the early 1920s, he reportedly installed various pickup prototypes on acoustic guitars. However, his employer did not believe that these pickups would be widely adopted for guitar amplification. The first pickup was commercialized by Rowe DeArmond. About fifteen years later, Gibson finally began installing electromagnetic pickups on guitars.

Specifics of Hollow Bodies

Hollow-body electric guitars have an arched top and F-holes, which make them easily identifiable. This type of soundhole is directly inspired by the bowed string instrument family, which includes the violin and the cello. The body of these guitars is substantial, with an exaggerated shape compared to acoustic models. Like acoustics, hollow-body guitars have a hollow sound chamber. This hollow body is the source of their distinctive sound. They offer a soft and clear tone, which has won over jazz guitarists. Compared to later models, hollow-body guitars are lightweight because they use less material. Their main drawback is that they are prone to feedback. This very disadvantage is what led to the models we’ll detail further on.

Famous Brands and Models

The oldest brands all started with a hollow-body electric guitar model: the Gibson ES-350T, the Epiphone Casino, the Gibson L-5, Ibanez GB10 or the Gretsch G6120.

Gibson L5

Epiphone Casino

Gibson ES350T

Renowned Players

Hollow-body guitars have won the hearts of jazz and blues guitarists. Their warm sound and ability to resonate are ideal for these musical genres.

Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry is one of the famous guitarists who played hollow-body electric guitars. Known as the father of rock’n’ roll, he left his mark on the genre with his legendary riffs! His song “Johnny B. Goode” is the only rock song to have been placed on the Voyager space probe, launched into space in 1977. Chuck Berry was a fan of Gibson hollow-body and semi-hollow-body electric guitars. He notably owned a Gibson ES-350T.

John Lennon

If you don’t know the name John Lennon, you should quickly brush up on your 1960s classics. John Lennon was part of the famous British band The Beatles, one of the groups that notably defined rock. The Beatles made music history with over a billion albums sold worldwide. John Lennon played many guitars in the band, including a hollow-body Epiphone Casino.

Jack White

Jack White is one of the two founders of the band The White Stripes. He played many hollow-body guitar models, including an Airline JB Hutto. This was a low-end model released in the ’60s to allow as many guitarists as possible to access distortions and amplifications. He has often said that these cheap musical instruments are difficult to play. He chose this guitar to get a particular tone. The challenge of mastering the instrument allowed him to achieve a crunchy sound. You can see it in the video below. Later, he also played a “Gretsch G6118T-LTV Anniversary Junior,” customized for his needs by luthier Randy Parsons.

To complete this panel of famous guitarists who played hollow-body guitars, you should look at Lee Ritenour (Gibson Custom L-5), George Benson (Ibanez GB10), Chet Atkins (Gretsch G6120), George Harrison (Epiphone Casino), and Johnny Marr (Gretsch G6120).

The guitarists mentioned have played other guitar models and have never been limited to hollow-body electric guitars. They have all tried semi-hollow-body guitars, which we will now discover.

The Semi-Hollow-Body Electric Guitar

Semi-hollow-body guitars are very popular today. They represent a large market share alongside the solid-body guitars that we will discuss a little further down.

Specifics of Semi-Hollow Bodies

Semi-hollow-body guitars look a lot like hollow-body guitars. They have a similar design with a soundhole (F-shaped or any other shape), an enlarged rounded body, and a magnetic pickup. The real difference between the two models lies in the structure. These guitars have a central wooden block that allows for the installation of the pickups. This central solid wood part helps limit the feedback problems encountered with hollow-body guitars. The instrument’s resonance capacity is isolated from its amplification method. This structure is more suitable for modern amplified music that uses many saturation effects.

Popular Guitars and Brands

Gibson is the most important manufacturer of semi-hollow-body guitars with many models that have made history, including the unmissable Gibson ES-355. Another model was made famous by The Beatles’ George Harrison: the Rickenbacker 360/12, which has the particularity of having 12 strings.

Rickenbacker 360/12

Gibson ES-355

Epiphone Riviera

Renowned Semi-Hollow-Body Guitar Players

BB King

BB King, the king of blues, was one of the first to use these semi-hollow-body guitars. He started with acoustic models, then hollow-body electrics, before moving to a semi-hollow-body guitar. He played his mythical blues with a Gibson ES-355 guitar, named “Lucille.” This guitar has had reissues by Gibson.

Noel Gallagher

Noel Gallagher founded the British band Oasis with his brother Liam. Oasis had immediate success with many albums, including (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now. Noel Gallagher played many guitars, including the semi-hollow-body models Gibson ES-355 and the Epiphone Riviera.

Jimmy Page

Jimmy Page is the founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin. With their albums and extravagant stage performances, the band left a lasting impression! Jimmy Page played several guitars with a semi-hollow body, including at least two Gibson Les Pauls, a Standard version and a Custom version. In the following video, you can see Jimmy Page with two other rock legends, Jack White and The Edge, recreating the “Seven Nation Army” riff with semi-hollow-body electric guitars.

It’s impossible to list all the guitarists who have played “semi-hollow-body” electric guitars. Here are a few more names to perfect your knowledge: Dave Grohl (Gibson ES-335 and Gibson Trini Lopez), John Scofield (Ibanez JSM100), Eric Clapton (Gibson ES-335TDC), etc.

The Solid-Body Electric Guitar

History and Origins

Solid-body electric guitars experienced a spectacular rise in the ’50s. Leo Fender is the creator of the famous Fender Broadcaster, which later became the Fender Telecaster.

Specifics of Solid Bodies

The solid-body electric guitar is now considered the standard model of electric guitar. It is built from a single block of solid wood and has no sound chamber.

The production of sound depends on the pickups. Without electric amplification, the sound of these guitars is almost inaudible. The body’s role is to support the guitarist’s playing through the strings and the pickup, and an amplifier. The invention of solid-body guitars eliminated the problems of feedback!

Popular Guitars and Brands

Some “solid-body” electric guitars have made history! They have become true music icons, just like their players! Their names are iconic: Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, Fender Jaguar, Gibson Flying V, Fender Jag-Stang, etc.

Fender Stratocaster

Fender Telecaster

Gibson Flying V

Renowned Guitarists

There are so many guitarists who have made their mark on the history of solid-body guitars! All as famous as each other: Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Prince, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen, and Eddie Van Halen. Again, many of them have played all three types of electric guitars (hollow, semi-hollow, and solid-body), choosing a guitar based on the needs of a specific concert.

The hollow-body guitar revolutionized the world of guitars thanks to its amplification, which gave guitarists a chance to be heard on stage. Its main problem was feedback, which started a race for new inventions to fix it. From there, the semi-hollow-body electric guitar was born. This model won the hearts of many guitarists. Later, solid-body guitars brought their own set of innovations, and most importantly, a host of great guitarists and new musical genres.