Semi-acoustic guitar

Semi-acoustic guitars may have a fully hollow body, making them essentially archtop acoustics with the pickups permanently mounted into the sound board, such as the Gibson ES-175.

[11] Gibson based them on a standard production archtop, with F-holes on the face of the guitar's soundbox.

[11] The clear sound of the pickups made the ES series popular with jazz musicians.

The ES series was designed as an experiment for Gibson to test the potential success of electric guitars.

The guitar had a smaller resonant cavity inside, which makes less sound emit from the f holes.

[9] While Gibson provided many of the innovations in semi-acoustic guitars from the 1930s to the 1950s, there were also various makes by other companies including a hollow archtop by Gretsch.

Gibson, Gretsch, Rickenbacker, and other companies still make semi-acoustic and semi-hollow body guitars.

As rock became more experimental in the late 60s and 70s, the guitar became more popular because players learned to use its feedback issues creatively.

Examples include Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, renowned jazz guitarist George Benson, John Scofield, multi-instrumentalist Paul McCartney, former Guns N' Roses member Izzy Stradlin, John Lennon of the Beatles, and B.B.