Archtops and Selmacs

Craig Bumgarner

Stringswinger wrote: »

....Today a top luthier building flattops or archtops is able to get 25K plus for their instruments. ...

If you doubt that, Ervin Somogyi, for instance, says right up front on his website his guitars are $30K plus extras. No sense beating around the bush I guess.

jonpowl

Moderators: Time for a poll? Try Easy Polls dot net.

Bob Holo

Poll? More like time for a threadlock! lol.

Marc, I said that because you're my friend and I don't care what you play. Selmacs and Archtops are different instruments with different characteristics played with different techniques. That's 100% of the comparison between the two. Live music sounds different depending on player, instrument and technique. I think we agree on that, but just making sure.

Hey, by the way - I hear what you're saying about highest priced archtops being priced higher than the highest priced Selmacs, but that is a condemnation of the custom archtop market, not a compliment to it.

Excessively high prices in artisan trades have much more to do with buyers who have control issues rather than any measure of worth or quality of the product. I'm not talking about the vintage market where there is an investment value deriving from age, condition, provenance in addition to the the quality of the instrument - I'm talking about current buiders - particularly in the "custom luxury" (rolls eyes) guitar market. The GJ market has demonstrated fairly good resistance to overt BS thanks to the large base of old-school European players who resist such nonsense with vigor (God Bless Them) and also due to the well informed new-enthusiast group in North America that has arisen from the djam culture and educational venues where guys like Horowitz & Bauer give opportunities to see, hear & even occasionally play and buy the great seminal instruments - and due to artists like Dennis & Adrian who create world-class educational series & practice tools and then travel to events and give lessons. It's like the old saying about the benefit of "an informed electorate". In this case, it's much harder to pull the wool over people's ears when the whole point of the exercise is to get together and learn and play and gig instead of withdraw and cocoon and diddle and obsess... and make no mistake - gigging musicians aren't buying $30k guitars. But even so, my prices are not a good basis for the value of well made GJ guitars. I sell them for below market partially because I don't want to price-out musicians and partially because I'm an idiot. The speed with which they sell should be telling me I'm underpricing them, but for some reason I can't understand that or don't want to. Suffice it to say, good Gypsy Jazz guitars can command equivalent prices to good Archtops, Flat-Tops, Classicals etc... when they're sold to well informed players and player-enthusiasts. Look at Ari's prices & Hahl's & Barault's & Dupont's handmade (VR) line. There's your baseline for good handmade small-shop & single-maker GJ guitars - and those prices compare straight across to Bourgeois & Collings... to Andersen & Ribbeke... to Hill & Velasquez. It's the price of enough of a good builder's time to do the job right + several hundred for wood, tool-wear, case, hardware, shop costs, taxes, breakage etc.

Stringswinger

Bob,

I disagree with quite a bit of your last post, but since we are friends, I'll reply in a PM rather than air our differences in public. I have made my point here and need go no further. If the Gypsy Jazz police have been offended by any of my posts, good! I have never had much use for religion of any kind. Especially in jazz.

Cheers to all,

Marc

PS I think it is commedable that a luthier of Bob Holo's skill keeps his prices within reach of working musicians and shares his valuable time and knowledge on this forum.

Lango-Django

I would bet that most, especially women would prefer the warm tone of the archtop guitar to the often shrill sound made by the Selmer guitar.

Too true, alas, in the lango-django household...

Buco

In this SelMac vs jazz archtop deal, I think what matters is how you define what GJ is and how close you want to get to interpreting that sound.

I'm of opinion that only Django's prewar stuff is GJ, the rest is jazz in it's various forms of development at the time that Django wanted to explore. Although Django still used his beloved Selmers, the sound as a whole is far from the classic Hot Club sound. I love this sound and enjoy listening to it but with my band I'd like to try to sound as close to that classic Hot Club sound as I can manage with my current skills.
And only a good SelMac copy will make that happen.

Whenever you're playing a type of music so strongly characterized by it's originator, if you want to emulate that sound it's going to resonate a little off unless it's played on the similar equipment.
Coming from rock world, David Gilmour is one player that immediately comes to mind with a very characteristic and very recognizable guitar sound and if I were in the Pink Floyd tribute band I'd use a Strat, it wouldn't be exactly correct to try and get that sound with a Les Paul.
I guess that's where the argument starts because there are people are of opinion that it's in the hands of the player, and that's true to a degree and it comes to my initial comment of how close you want to interpret a certain sound and feel of music.
As I feel a lot of people here are in Django tribute bands, and I see that as a connecting tissue of the forum not as a slap, if you want to interpret that classic sound than it takes a SelMac to do that.

If you're player of jazz in a wider sense and Django or GJ is one of your influences but you want to give yourself freedom to explore the sounds and textures of different instruments, than go and explore.
While I'm typing this (slow moving this morning to get to work) I'm listening to "best of Patrick Saussois and Alma Sinti", and that's a very good example of the above as it includes drums, vibes, piano, electric archtop, accordion, nylon string guitar as well as acoustic SelMac sound and all backed by Lapompe rhythm.
And it sounds great!!!
When newcomers come here and ask "can I play GJ on a Martin?" most of the time the answer starts: "you can use whatever you like, however...".

As Michael B pointed out Alfonso P has used many types of guitars in his live gigs and he sounded great every time I watched him. He even made music on the stage with a $5 cigar box guitar.

It's what's in your head as well as there's no progress without trying it in different ways.

Buco

Lango-Django

When newcomers come here and ask "can I play GJ on a Martin?" most of the time the answer starts: "you can use whatever you like, however..."

Personally, I'd say, "Why not borrow a child's toy metal guitar from a circus clown and use THAT? That's what Django did!"

http://books.google.ca/books?id=xUT0xe2l_2QC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=django+and+toy+guitar&source=bl&ots=hxboK1VD-8&sig=1sIaEEVNA92PwX-YsR194YzEgbQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XuQ6U9ubMIjR2QXzvIHoAw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=django and toy guitar&f=false

Jazzaferri

I always find it difficult to put labels on music.

For me, the concept of GYPSY jazz is not what it is played on but, to put it into a language metaphor ... A different accent,if you will. Kinda like the difference between the accent and slang of Glasgow versus the accent and slang of Australia etc.

In order to learn the idiom, I think it is much easier to get it right aurally ...... the inflections, the stylistic parts, the phrasings on a Selmac IF one has not grown up as a gypsy. After all that is the roots of the genre. Once that has been mastered I think it really doesn't matter.

I think it quite ossicle for an electric band of Sinti, or Manouche or Tziganes to sound like themselves if the choose to. They could also sound like mainstream US jazz if they had worked on that style.

Bones

I think that a lot of the tone aspect of GJ comes from technique and phrasing (of course I'm not saying that Selmac tone isn't a big part of it) but with proper technique and phrasing one can sound like GJ on a Selmac or an acoustic archtop just as well. I think it really comes down to personal preference and also each particular instrument (they are all different even when made to be identical). In GENERAL, though, in my experience, in a purely acoustic setting, 'good' Selmacs are louder and more cutting (especially in the higher register), and in an amplified setting (therefore) they are less prone to feedback (i.e. easier to amplify) due to better high end response and less low end 'boomy-ness'.

Again, these are just my general observations and every guitar is unique so try them all and find the one that works for you (or heck, get a whole pile of them like most of us addicts seem to do). I love archtops and have made (and owned) many of them. For rhythm a good acoustic archtop is a wonderful thing. For amplified or acoustic lead playing, like all acoustic guitars, be very selective and thoroughly 'roadtest' before you buy if possible.

Russell Letson

Just a semi-random thought: Imagine Django's intro and first solo on the 1938 "Sweet Georgia Brown" played on, say, an L-5 of the period. I'm not sure about the speed and articulation of the figures, but the textures are rooted in what a Selmer can do. Similarly, the textures of the rhythm players is at least partly a function of their Selmers' characteristic sound. Which is not to say that Hot Club music requires Selmers, only that its particular feel is strongly rooted in what the particular instruments can produce. And, of course, the music that started with those late-Thirties sessions evolved, just as bluegrass and rural blues evolved to accommodate changes in the musical and technical environments. To my ear, a big band sounds best with an acoustic archtop in the rhythm section, but the reality is that modern bands use amplified instruments. So it goes.