D Holes are Warmer: Myth or Reality?

Heretic · May 2007

My subjective opinion is the exactly the same as Robert's. I felt as though I am surrounded by the sound of a D-hole more so than that of an oval-hole instrument. The most dramatic case that I've heard is with my fellow musician who has a WALNUT backed and sided Dell Arte. Playing it, it sounds very thick and warm, but being 7 feet away from it, it sounds far less so.
The D-hole guitar I owned projected much like my oval hole instrument, but I was bathed in it's sound when playing it.

Craig Bumgarner · May 2007

Lots of interesting ideas in this thread. One is how the player perceives the sound versus a listener. When I listen to recordings of my playing, the sound seems thinner than what I hear. I suppose this is a little like hearing your owner voice recorded, we all had this experience and usually the response is "that's not me!".

I don't know where to go with this, just an observation. For me, it kind of shakes my confidence. When I'm playing, I think I sound great, but the recordings say otherwise. Interestingly, this is only with tone. On the other elements of playing (right notes, timing, phrasing, etc.), I tend to be MORE critical of what I play while I'm playing it compared to recordings.

Craig

djadam · May 2007

From Martin's website about the Clarence White model:

Just 81 D-28s were built by Martin in 1935 and White's guitar had already received one modification before his family purchased it for the then-teenage Clarence in 1959. Apparently wood around the soundhole had been badly chipped from heavy picking, and someone simply cut away the damaged area and additional wood all the way around, resulting in an oversized soundhole. The fingerboard also had been cut into, and the White family replaced it, allowing the repair shop to use a bound fingerboard without position markers from another brand of guitar to save money. White used this D-28 primarily as a rhythm instrument during his years with the Kentucky Colonels - the influential bluegrass group he founded with his brother Roland - and sold it in 1966, but it remains the acoustic guitar most closely associated with him.

Apparently, the guitar also has a hole in it from a pellet gun, fired by Clarence White himself. I wonder how that changed the tone. Perhaps Martin and Santa Cruz should make this a finishing touch on their replica models!