Archtop guitar

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Epiphone Emperor, an archtop design.
Epiphone Emperor, an archtop design.

An archtop guitar is a steel-stringed acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with blues and jazz players.

Typically, an archtop has:

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[edit] History

The archtop guitar was invented in the 1890s 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, and in that same year the Gibson L5 was released to his design. The L5 introduced a number of innovations, the most striking being the violin-like f-holes. Although the new instrument 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 from this period is the F5 mandolin, but probably the more broadly influential was the L5 guitar, which remains in production to this day.

Archtop guitars were subsequently made by many top American luthiers, notably John D'Angelico of New York and his student Jimmy D'Aquisto, William Wilkanowski, Charles Stromberg and Son in Boston, and by other major manufacturers, notably Gretsch, Epiphone, and Selmer of Paris. Archtop guitars were particularly adopted by both jazz and country musicians, and in big bands and swing bands.

In 1951, Gibson released the L5CES, an L5 with a single cutaway body and two electric pickups, equally playable as either an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. This innovation was immediately popular, and while purely acoustic archtop guitars such as the Gibson L-7C remain available to this day, they have become the exception. In 1958, the L5CES was redesigned with humbucking pickups; Most but certainly not all subsequent archtop guitars conform loosely to the pattern set by this model.

Interest in archtops has been revived by luthiers such as Roger Borys and Bob Benedetto. Borys, the understudy of D'Aquisto, builds his guitars in a small shop in Vermont and authentically recreates the beautiful aesthetics and tonal qualities of his mentor's instruments. The Benedetto style of acoustic/electric archtop has been copied by luthiers such as Dale Unger, 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. The renewed interest in rockabilly music has led Guild to introduce a Rockabilly model electric archtop with single-coil DeArmond 2000 pickups.

[edit] Construction

The top or belly (and often the back) of the archtop guitar is either carved out of a block of solid wood, or heat-pressed using laminations, and the belly normally has two f-holes, the lower of these partly covered by a scratch plate raised above the belly so as not to damp its vibration. The arching of the top and the f-holes are similar to the violin family, on which they were originally based.

Archtops are generally fitted with thicker strings (higher gauged round wound and flat wound) than conventional acoustic guitars, and have extra strength to allow for this.

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. Since archtop guitars are prone to acoustic feedback when used with high-gain amplification, it may be problematic using them in certain types of performance situations.

Some archtop guitars have Bigsby vibrato tailpiece 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 long tailpiece versions of the Gibson Vibrola can both be fitted.

Although factory production of purely acoustic archtops has almost 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. See for example the Lee Ritenour L-5 Signature guitar.

[edit] Various use of the term archtop

Although archtop normally refers to a hollow-bodied instrument, some makers of solid-bodied guitars with carved bellies also refer to these as archtop to distinguish these from flat top guitars. For example, Gibson refer to the standard Gibson Les Paul as an arch top to distinguish it from flat top models such as the Les Paul Junior and Melody Maker.

A continuum exists from these solid body, purely electric instruments to purely acoustic instruments similar to the original Orville Gibson design, including:

  • Solid body instruments, such as the Les Paul standard, with a carved but non-sounding belly.
  • Instruments with a solid core but hollow wings, such as the Gibson ES-335. In these the bridge is fixed to a solid block of wood rather than to a sounding board, and the belly vibration is minimised much as in a solid body instrument.
  • Thin-bodied semi-acoustic instruments, such as the Gibson ES-355. These possess both a sounding board and sound box, but the function of these is purely to modify the sound transmitted to the pickups. Such guitars are still intended purely as electric instruments, and while they do make some sound when the pickups are not used, the tone is weak and not normally considered musically useful.
  • The prototypical archtop, which although most often fitted with one or more pickups and normally amplified if pickups are fitted, also retains a full-size body and a powerful acoustic tone suitable both for chords and for melody work.

All of these types may be loosely described as archtop, but only the last possesses the characteristics most often associated with the type.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


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