Archtop guitar

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An archtop guitar is a steel-stringed guitar with a distinctive "arched" belly and a sound particularly suited to blues and jazz. For this reason, archtops have a reputation as jazz boxes. The term archtop usually connotes a hollow-bodied instrument, although in specific reference to the solid-bodied Gibson Les Paul it may be used to distinguish the standard models from the flat-topped Special and Melody Maker.

The top (and often the back) of the archtop guitar are either carved out of a block of solid wood or heat-pressed using laminations, and it normally has f-holes. The arching of the top and the f-holes are both similar to the violin family, on which they were originally based. Although any true archtop has a rich tone unamplified, most archtop guitars have some sort of pickup/microphone system, and many are intended primarily for this purpose and so are semi-acoustic electric guitars. Most pickups on modern archtops are humbuckers placed in bridge and/or neck positions.

The archtop guitar was invented in the 1890's by Orville Gibson, founder of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, who was primarily a mandolin builder and had previously built archtop mandolins. In 1922, Lloyd Loar was hired by the Gibson Company to redesign their instrument line in an effort to counter flagging sales. Although the new intrument models flopped commercially and Loar left Gibson after only a couple of years, Gibson instruments signed by Loar now are among the most prized and celebrated in stringed-instrument history. Perhaps the most revered instrument is the F5 mandolin, but probably the more broadly influential was the Gibson L5 guitar which since the 1930's has been the standard against which all other archtop guitars are measured. For instance,the first archtop guitars made by John D'Angelico, the New York luthier regarded by some as the Stradivari of the guitar, were L-5 copies, and the Epiphone Emperor shown at the right is in essence a less-expensive copy of the electric version of the L-5, the L-5CES.

Archtop guitars were immediately adopted upon their release by both jazz and country musicians and have remained particularly popular in jazz music, usually using thicker strings (higher gauged round wound and flat wound) than conventional acoustic guitars. The electric hollow body archtop guitar has a distinct sound among electric guitars and is consequently appropriate for many styles of rock and roll. Many electric archtop guitars intended for use in rock and roll are equipped with a tremolo arm, most often of the Bigsby type.

The most famous archtop guitars were the factory-made instruments by Gibson, Epiphone, Gretsch and the highly prized handmade creations of luthiers such as D'Angelico, Stromberg, Wilkanowski, and D'Aquisto. More recently, interest in archtops has been revived by luthiers such as Bob Benedetto. The Benedetto style of acoustic/electric archtop has been copied by luthiers such as Dale Unger, John R. Zeidler**, Dana Bourgeois and others. Most of the accessories (pickguard, bridge, tuner buttons, knobs, etc.) are made of wood (ebony or rosewood) instead of metal and have a clean acoustic look. Currently, many brands, such as Yamaha, Epiphone (owned by Gibson), Eagle, and Jay Turser produce affordable archtop guitars.

Some archtop guitars have Bigsby or other tremolo arm systems. Most tremolo systems cannot be fitted to an archtop owing to the need to cut large holes in the belly to accommodate the mechanism, but the Bigsby and the Gibson Vibrola can both be fitted.

The renewed interest in rockabilly music has led Guild to introduce a Rockabilly model electric archtop with humbucking pickups. Although factory production of acoustic archtops has died out, the L-7C acoustic archtop is still available from the Gibson custom shop. Archtop guitars are likely to remain in production in some form as long as interest in jazz guitar and early rock and roll music persists.

Two electric guitars. On the right is a Maton Freshman, an archtop guitar most often used for jazz.

[edit] External links

• American Archtops, Dale Unger's site.
• Rizzolo Guitars, archtop luthier in Australia
• Gagnon Guitars, archtop luthier in Portland, Oregon.
• Patrice Blanc, archtop luthier in Grenoble, France.