Enlarged soundhole

Feb 8, 2019 16:32:55 GMT -5 jamesM said:

Don't think we've had a thread about this... I've been doing some online reading about enlarging the soundhole on an acoustic. Some people claim it increases the mid and upper range of notes, or reduces the low end I guess, and some of them have actually done it. It seems to have started with Tony Rice on an old Martin. The reason he did it though was to repair some damage and he says he doesn't think it changed the sound. There's no way I would ever take the chance and do this with one of my guitars but I'm curious if anyone has any experience with this. I don't know, maybe someone with a houseful of yamahas that they like to work on.... 

Tony didn't actually enlarge the soundhole. It was enlarged when he got it. It was not a very good guitar when he got it, but it had belonged to one of his guitar heroes, Clarence White, so he wanted it. He put a lot of work and money into getting it where it is today and it's probably the world's most valuable dreadnought today.

The soundhole was already enlarged when Clarence's dad bought it and, though Clarence did use it for rhythm, he preferred an old D-18 for lead.
A bit of an interview with Tony:

Tony: Clarence's father bought that guitar from McCabe's in Los Angeles for
$35. That guitar did not have a fingerboard so his father asked McCabe to
put one on and that was the Gretsch fingerboard. It had the fret slots
already cut, so the scale is Gretsch's. It's a little bit shorter than
the standard Martin's scale length but it does not make too much of a
difference. The soundhole is larger. I hear so many opinions but I don't
think it makes any difference as far as the sound is concerned.

Q: The soundhole was already enlarged when his father bought it?

Tony: I think so. The guitar was brought to McCabe's by a woman with
disability. She was a student at UCLA and she had polio. I heard that the
guitar had been around her house for a long time and she wanted to trade
it in for a new guitar. I think it was about 1959.