User:Andrewa/Archtop guitar

This is a copy I'm working on to refactor the large first section of the archtop guitar article. Probably best for others not to work on it, as that will make it a bit hard to preserve the history and give you credit for your edits here. I'll try to incorporate any improvements made in the meantime when I copy this page to the article. Andrewa

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 belly, whose sound is particularly popular with blues and jazz players.

The full body of an archtop makes it prone to acoustic feedback when used with high-gain amplification, which makes it an unsuitable design for many music styles and particularly for most styles of rock music. Some rock players refer disparagingly to archtop guitars as jazz boxes, reflecting this.

Typically, an archtop has:

• F-holes similar to members of the violin family.
• A single cutaway to allow access to the upper frets.
• Humbucker pickups.

However, exceptions exist in each case.

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.

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 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 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 have remained popular for jazz music.

In 1951, Gibson released an L5 with 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; Most archtop guitars conform loosely to the pattern set by the electrified L5.

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, 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. The renewed interest in rockabilly music has led Guild to introduce a Rockabilly model electric archtop with humbucking pickups.

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.

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 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.