Talk:Solid body

My, my, my, but there's a lot of misinformation out there!

My favourite so far is http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/electricguitar/ and I quote:

Aug. 12, 2002 -- Until about 70 years ago, musical instruments remained pretty much the same as they were for centuries. Then a new invention changed modern music and popular culture as well -- the electric guitar.

While I'm not doubting the electric guitar is every bit as significant as this says, that first statement is just plain false. For example, the saxophone didn't even exist before the 19th century. Neither did the piston valve for brass instruments such as the trumpet. And the only component of the drum kit that was in anything like its current form in 1920 was the drumsticks - and even these now have optional nylon tips, some drummers don't ever use wood tips nowadays.

I guess it depends on what you mean by pretty much. But I hope we can do a bit better than the (shallow IMO) insight shown by this writer (or perhaps their editor(s)). This is a job for... wikiman! Andrewa 18:58, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Lots of good stuff too.

The Smithsonian looks particularly promising. Andrewa 19:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Andrewa, you certainly have got that right! One might only hope that all Wikipedia editors would recognize the difference between the enthusiastic fluff that decorates popular media magazine reporting and solid information based on reliable research. This is as true today as it was 6 years ago when you made your observation. BellwetherToday (talk) 15:24, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

First Solid Body

Claims of prior art are the sort of thing that is bound to happen and the reasons for its abuse are legion. The Wikipedia article on the subject does a passable job in presenting a working description. A few requirements for claiming prior art:

it is generally expected to provide a description sufficient to inform an average worker in the field that the invention is within the scope of what is claimed

it must be available in some way to the public in a fixed form

it must be publicly knowable, i.e. it cannot be kept for merely personal use

In regard to this article, I notice that relatively recently here and elsewhere on the web a claim has been floated about that one Valentino Airoldi of Galliate, Novara, Italy invented the first sold body electric guitar in 1937. That would be wonderful and enlightening news except for this: there appear to be no reliable sources of information for this claim.

While the early history of the the development of the the electric guitar is one that lay in muddy waters, there has been considerable and solid scholarship devoted to research of the topic. Not so in the case of Mr Airoldi. Further, it is clear from the story told about him, even were it proven to be factual, that this claim does not meet the criteria for prior art. A similar claim has been made on behalf of Bill Wilson from the University of North Carolina, it too fails to be backed up by scholarship and remains as fondly embraced folklore. In either case, beyond a small group of enthusiasts, there is no recognized body of scholarship that examines the scant documentation. Even among the enthusiasts, there is much contention about the facts and the interpretation of them contained in the narratives now being repeated. All that we can be certain of here is that this material, at this time, constitutes original research.

A key element not to be overlooked is history. What specific influence did either of these individuals have on the subsequent development of the instrument? An encyclopedia article is not a mere collection of anecdotal remarks. As editors, we must respect the importance of notability. BellwetherToday (talk) 17:18, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Why is Solid body an article?

Somebody at one time thought this article was a good idea. For the life of me I have not been able to unravel that thought. If anything this should be a redirect to electronic instruments and/or to disambiguation for specific instruments.

Left out are obvious things like pianos, flutes and other winds, drums, etc which is to say that the notion that it is somehow related to strings is patently false, and many instruments eliminate the so-called sound box, i.e. acoustic amplification, in favor of transducers (aka pickups to the guitar oriented) and electric amplifiers. None of this is covered seriously in this article so lacking in substance and clarity of conception. It appears to be an obscure place to put random information about guitars and bass guitars, most of which has from the beginning existed in the instrument-specific articles.

Is it any wonder this article has remained the pathetic stub that it is for over eight years? If it remains another eight what kind of an article would it be? Please tell me if I am mistaken. Otherwise, I'll propose it be gotten rid of as soon as I get a bit of time to accomplish it. BellwetherToday (talk) 17:49, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

That somebody was me! [1]

Agree it's now [2] a terrible article. I'm afraid I wasn't very good at citing my sources in those days, and so I set a very bad example.

But the topic is encyclopedic and even important IMO, and the title correct.

I'm afraid I think some of your statements above are mistaken, to the point of wild speculation. The term solid body is AFAIK never applied to obvious things like pianos, flutes and other winds, drums, etc.. I appreciate that you think it should be, and from the point of view of semantics I agree completely, but it isn't, and it's not Wikipedia's mission to correct this, just the opposite in fact. It's a technical term, not so much used these days but very well established historically. Obviously we need some refs to back this up.

I could be wrong in this, perhaps the term solid body has more recently been applied to flutes and other instruments without soundboards, or even to all idiophones for example. But its historical use is very much restricted to stringed instruments. I have many primary sources to back this up, vintage catalogs and the like. I'll see what I can find in the way of secondary sources.

Another consideration is that perhaps the topic needs to be disambiguated. This is about the musical use of the term solid body. I'm sure that the term is also used by physicists, and perhaps by engineers and people in other fields. But until and unless we get an article in one of these fields that's not urgent. The current lede seems to make the topic clear. Andrewa (talk) 22:15, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I believe you are correct. Solid body is descriptively applied to guitars, bass guitars, and mandolins. Perhaps violin family instruments may be referred to this way, although I don't recall encountering it. I do appreciate there are broad differences in both custom and experience around the globe. That coupled with my general inexperience should explain why I ask the question as I did rather than directly post a proposal.

See our electric violin article, which I've just wikified to link here, [3] or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJlb7z8CCGI for someone testing what they describe (both in the abstract text and in the introduction on the video) as a solid body violin. It's the standard term, I've done PA for several bands that use a solid-body electric violin. Sydney group Vamp currently use three! (But we don't seem to have an article on them.)

Will not all WikiProject Musical Instruments articles linked via disambiguation contain identical pertinent information to the current "Solid body", as well as benefit from broader, more frequently updated discussion? Won't it expedite readers in satisfying their query? Will disambiguation not redirect editors down a more fruitful path for their contributions? After all, unless I'm mistaken, your initial page was fundamentally a disambiguation page in the style of an article. If memory serves don't some disambiguation pages feature a defining scope at the beginning? I am not stuck on the idea one way or the other. These simply seem like logical questions to ask from a newbie perspective. Engineers, physicists, et al can surely take care of themselves should the need become manifest. BellwetherToday (talk) 02:42, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Not sure I understand any of these questions. No, this was never a disambiguation page, and no, DABs don't feature a defining scope at the beginning. That would be a broad concept article. Andrewa (talk) 01:07, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Really, it's NOT "a topic," important or otherwise. A "solid-body" instrument almost always refers to the fretted instrument family, and at that almost exclusively to the electric guitar (apparently the electric bass is generally assumed to be solid-bodied, and exceptions unusual). There are rare outliers such as the solid-body electric violin and solid-body electric mandolin. In ALL cases, the solid-bodiness is more than adequately addressed IN CONTEXT. It'd make MUCH more sense to have an article Non-wood fretted instruments; until such exists with encyclopedic quality, I'd contend that Solid body should go away.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 19:37, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion: more info as to the design considerations that go into creation of the solid-wood body. This would solidify the article around its purported topic.

For example, it's relatively easy to take an acoustic guitar and wire it up, but a slab of wood requires all sorts of routing and drilling to install the pickup(s) and the wiring and the controls and whatever electronics.

It is that sort of info that would possibly justify this article's survival. Then again, that would clearly be redundant with Electric guitar design (which certainly needs help).
Weeb Dingle (talk) 23:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)