Archtop guitar

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Archtop guitar

The Gibson Super 400 CES, an electric archtop
String instrument
Classification	String
Inventor(s)	Orville Gibson
Related instruments
Acoustic guitar Electric guitar
Builders
Gibson, Gretsch, Epiphone

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

Typically, an archtop guitar has:

• Six strings
• An arched top and back, not a flat top and back
• A hollow body
• Moveable adjustable bridge
• F-holes
  similar to members of the violin family
• Rear mounted tailpiece, stoptail bridge, or Bigsby vibrato tailpiece
• 14th-fret neck join

History

The archtop guitar is often credited to Orville Gibson,^[1] whose innovative designs led to the formation of the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co, Ltd in 1902. His 1898 patent for a mandolin, which was also applicable to guitars according to the specifications, was intended to enhance "power and quality of tone." Among the features of this instrument were a violin-style arched top and back, each carved from a single piece of wood, and thicker in the middle than at the sides; sides carved to shape from a single block of wood; and a lack of internal "braces, splices, blocks, or bridges . . . which, if employed, would rob the instrument of much of its volume of tone."^[2][3] But Gibson was not the first to apply violin design principles to the guitar. Guitar maker A. H. Merrill, for example, patented in 1896 a very modern looking instrument "of the guitar and mandolin type . . . with egg-shaped hoop or sides and a graduated convex back and top." The instrument featured a metal tailpiece and teardrop shaped "f-holes," and strongly resembled the archtop guitars of the 1930s. James S. Back obtained patent #508,858 in 1893 for a guitar (which also mentions applicability to mandolins) that among other features included an arched top, which were produced under the Howe Orme name. Another transitional design is the parlor guitar fitted with a floating bridge and tailpiece. These inexpensive instruments, manufactured by companies such as Stella and Harmony, are associated with early blues musicians. The earliest Gibson designs (L1 to L3) introduced the arched top and increasing body sizes, but still had round or oval sound holes.

In 1922,

Gibson's ES-150 guitar is generally recognized as the world's first commercially successful Spanish-style electric guitar. The ES stands for Electric Spanish, and it was designated 150 because it cost $150, along with an EH-150 amplifier and a cable. After its introduction in 1936, it immediately became popular in jazz orchestras of the period. Unlike the usual acoustic guitars utilized in jazz, it was loud enough to take a more prominent position in ensembles. Jazz guitarist Eddie Durham is usually credited with making the first electric guitar solo, but it was ES-150 player Charlie Christian who popularized the jazz guitar as a solo, not just a rhythm, instrument. The ES-150's top was not carved on the underside, making it unsuitable for acoustic use.

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.^{[citation needed]} The electric archtop was particularly popular with jazz musicians Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel and Johnny Smith.

Other manufacturers introduced electric archtop guitars, notable examples including the Gretsch White Falcon and various Chet Atkins models. Some of these instruments have a distinctive "twangy" sound and were taken up by country music and early rock and roll artists such as Duane Eddy and Eddie Cochran. Similar models remain popular in rockabilly.

Gibson's last innovation in archtop design was the creation, in 1955, of "thinline" models with a reduced body depth.

The 1970s and 1980s were a low point of interest in archtops, with many rock and pop (and some jazz and blues) players switching to

Interest in archtops was revived in the 1990s. Archtops had long been expensive instruments, with a level of finish and ornament to match. Boutique luthiers such as Roger Borys and Bob Benedetto brought the aesthetics of the instrument to even greater heights, making them attractive to collectors, and also continuing to innovate in technical design. The Benedetto style of acoustic/electric archtop has itself been copied by luthiers such as Dale Unger and Dana Bourgeois. 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. It is estimated there are nearly 100 archtop guitar luthiers in North America alone.^[6]

Contrastingly, mass-market archtop guitars became more affordable in the late 20th century, due to a combination of low labor costs in Asian countries and

Renewed interest in acoustic music has also led to the revival of purely acoustic archtops, such as the Gibson L-7C, The Loar Lh-600, Godin 5th Avenue and the Epiphone Century Series.

Recent technical innovations include Ken Parker's use of carbon fibre in high-end acoustic archtops, and the Godin Montreal hybrid guitar.

Construction

Archtops usually have three-a-side

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 either a solid top or laminations, the latter being a less expensive construction method. The belly normally has two

The original acoustic archtop guitars were designed to enhance volume, so they were constructed for use with relatively heavy strings. Even after electrification became the norm, jazz guitarists have continued to fit strings of 0.012" gauge or heavier for reasons of tone, and also prefer

• Fully acoustic instruments with either a pressed laminate wood or hand carved top. One example in the latter category, almost cello-like in construction, is the Gibson L-5. The sound board (music) is left to vibrate freely as no hardware other than the bridge posts come into contact with it. These instruments have a full-size body and a powerful acoustic tone suitable both for chords and for melody work. For amplified use, these guitars may be fitted with floating pickups in the neck position attached either to the base of the fingerboard or the edge of the pickguard. Today's "carved tops" may also incorporate piezo electric pickups to amplify the sound without changing the tone, as in other acoustic-electric guitars.
• Hollow-bodied
  semiacoustic guitars such as the Gibson ES-175, which have a sound box similar to fully acoustic guitars, but also have permanent pickups built into the sound board and are intended to be played through an amplifier. In some thin-bodied models, such as the Epiphone Casino, the function of the sound box is purely to modify the sound transmitted to the pickups, as the un-amplified sound is weak and not normally considered musically useful.^[5]
• Semi-hollow guitars with a solid core but hollow bouts. In these, the bridge is fixed to a solid block of wood rather than to a sound board, and the belly vibration is minimized much as in a solid body instrument. While most such instruments feature
  Gibson Lucille
  , have no sound holes to reduce the possibility of feedback.
• Solid body instruments, such as the Les Paul Standard, with a carved but non-sounding belly.

4-string (tenor), 7-string, 9-string, and 12-string archtops have been manufactured.

A few luthiers

The Mohan veena is a cross between an archtop and an Indian veena.

Some electric archtops also have

Bibliography

• Robert Benedetto: Making an Archtop Guitar

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Archtop guitars.

• Girasoli Parlor Jazz Guitar – Downloadable plans for a small-bodied archtop guitar designed by R. M. Mottola, on the Liutaio Mottola Lutherie Information Website.
• Specialist archtop dealer
• The Archtop Jazz Guitar by Fernando Alonso Jaén
• Archtop Guitars in Jazz