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F Hole Plugs for Archtop
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F Hole Plugs for Archtop
I drew up and printed these F hole plugs for a customer a little while back, felt like showing them off here. The bottom diamond shaped piece has a M4 nut in it, and is super glued to the body of the plug at its two tips. An M4 screw threads into the nut through the counter-sunk hole in the top of the plug. The entire plug drops into the F hole, and then you can tighten the screw slightly to expand the plug so it clamps itself into place. These were made for a friends 1960s ES-175. Unfortunately, there’s way too much variance in F hole shapes and sizes, even among Gibson guitars of the same period, so if you wanted to print this for a different guitar, you’d probably have to modify it some; I tried this plug in a couple of other customer and store stock Gibson archtop that we had on hand, including an ES-150 of similar vintage, but the only other guitar that it would fit was my relatively new Chinese made Epiphone Casino.
After printing these, I hit them with the heat gun slightly so I could bend them to conform to the arch of the top. I also added some felt to the bottom side of the lip on the top of the plug, to prevent the finish from being marred up.
Couldn’t figure out how to attach the STL here, but I’d be happy to share it if anyone is interested. I’d also like to hear if anyone had any ideas for how to easily tweak this to fit other F hole shapes (as it is now, I had to print slightly oversized w/ extra wall thickness so I could hand fit the plugs to the guitar).
I wouldn’t recommend using these on a solid topped archtop, as I’d be worried about causing a crack with the way they clamp in, but the ES-175 is a laminate top, and I’m fairly confident that the plugs would crack well before the guitar would see any damage, if one were to overtighten them. The plugs do a great of cutting down on the feedback that the customer had been complaining about, although from a distance they do make the guitar look like it has comically oversized F holes.
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2 Replies
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Soon. Loothprints will be easier to add files to. When it is I’ll reach out. This is really cool Ian!
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Great idea, and I love the idea of comically oversized F holes.
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