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Well I am really liking my L-4 CES
I've only played one archtop, my own Ibanez. It looks beautiful but soundwise I don't find a real purpose for it. When I bought it I imagined something else. I keep it at a different place than my acoustic and so I sometimes use it at my church rehearsals instead of my Taylor. I stringed it with actual acoustic strings now (as I've promised to try), Elixir 11-52 Phosphor Bronze, and I play it through an acoustic guitar amp. The amp's not mine but it sounds better than my own "electric" guitar amp.
In addition to the Eastman and Loar acoustic archtops Stringphonic is also making them.
Every acoustic archtop player I've ever worked with uses some variation of a floating pickup plus vintage tube amp combo
@voutoreenie well that speaks to the fairly quick evolution of archtop guitars from purely acoustic instruments to electro-acoustic instruments. As a working jazz musician in the 30/40s and beyond, you could see why every single player jumped onto the amplification bandwagon the moment they had the chance. It’s just so much more practical for day to day gigging and it elevates the guitar to that of a featured solo instrument like a sax or trumpet. Of course, this led to loosing the cultural knowledge of how to build and play acoustic archtops. Other than a few revivalists, like the previously mentioned Jonathan Stout and Matt Munisteri, there hasn’t been a living tradition of playing acoustic archtops at a professional level since the 1940s. The same thing probably would have happened in Europe if it weren’t for Gypsies keeping the acoustic tradition alive. So every contemporary jazz guitarist is an electro-acoustic guitarist at heart. They never learn all the technique required to really play an acoustic archtop (i.e. rest strokes, stronger hands, good rhythm, etc.) nor is there much of an outlet for purely acoustic archtop playing. I mean, is there something like the Rosenberg Trio where people are playing super virtuosic swing music on archtop guitars? I guess the stuff Frank Vignola did with Mark O’Connor would qualify, but it’s the only example I can think of.
Yes, being in the business helps! I’ve also spent many hours at Joe Vinikow’s over the years playing lots of great stuff including his personal collection (which I hope survived the recent fire.)
@MichaelHorowitz Frank Vignola is an exceptional guitarist. I really like the pairing they had with Jimmy Rosenberg. They were both great, but polar opposites in a way. Jimmy being the "nature boy", who didn't know the names of the notes he was playing, while Frank knows everything. He's like a theory nut.
@bbwood_98 Very interesting and while I never used a 58, there were a few times we recorded with overheads and they sounded great in conjunction with a 57 on the amp (keep in mind the gain was very low, just enough to add additional tone to the recording). Ironically, the group I played in didn't have drums, just 2 guitars, fiddle and bass fiddle. That said, amping was just easier for gigs where we ran our own PA, which was the majority. Plus, we liked to stand so micing up the guitars was a bit challenging unless it was at a concert gig with a great engineer/sound system.
As a working jazz musician in the 30/40s and beyond, you could see why every single player jumped onto the amplification bandwagon the moment they had the chance. It’s just so much more practical for day to day gigging and it elevates the guitar to that of a featured solo instrument like a sax or trumpet. Of course, this led to loosing the cultural knowledge of how to build and play acoustic archtops.
@MichaelHorowitz Exactly and as you go on to talk about the decline of acoustic archtop players, I wanted to highlight that particular sentence because this is a very important detail and why most FG-style archtop players look for vintage instruments because it's fact that there's just not the same level of great acoustic archtop luthiers as there were back in the golden era production days at Gibson/Epiphone/etc. Which makes sense because lord knows it's not a money making endeavor lmao. But yeah, I think that's why so many players nowadays aren't very impressed by how modern archtops sound because real talk, most of those instruments just sound mediocre-to-bad acoustically, especially so many of the non-luthier factory guitars. And then when you talk about truly capable luthiers you're also suddenly looking at $20k+ instead of less for a vintage Epiphone or even Gibson from the golden era of archtops.
One more anecdote, way back in 2003 when I was first starting in the style (and quickly realized I needed a real acoustic archtop), our Gibson rep was cool and sourced me a L-7C from the Montana custom shop...which, after sacrificing my blonde '78 Rickenbacker 4003 (RIP), I ended up buying - such a beautiful guitar, was stunning to look at. But the tone? It was just completely lacking...and yeah, maybe it needed 30 years to "open up" but lord knows I wasn't going to do that. Eventually ended up selling it and buying the 1951 Triumph Regent, which just blew it away in terms of tone. Anyway, not that my story adds much weight to the argument but I can certainly say that most vintage archtops just have that "it" factor you're not gonna see from many modern archtops...certainly not without mortgaging the farm first lol
Oh and last things, I did have the chance to play a 70s-era Ibanez lawsuit L-5 when I was much younger and it seemed pretty great...I just wasn't nearly the player at that age, nor did I have enough instrument knowledge to truly assess it but I would guess some of those lawsuit Ibanez's could give some of the golden era instruments a run for their money too.
And then when you talk about truly capable luthiers you're also suddenly looking at $20k+ instead of less for a vintage Epiphone or even Gibson from the golden era of archtops.
@voutoreenie well a lot of the good vintage Gibsons are getting up to $20K too! But you can find “player’s grade” one that are beat up or less ornate models like the L-7, L-10, L-12, L-50, etc that cost a lot less and can sound great. That’s what’s nice about the Eastman AR805 and AR610. They’re very good acoustic archtops being built here and now for not a lot of $.
Yes, those reissues Gibson did of the 1934 L-5 and Advanced model L-7 looked great but weren’t even close in terms of sound to the originals. Perfect example of how the institutional knowledge Gibson had for building great acoustic archtops was lost.
Allegro Girasole by Otto D’Ambrosio
Sounds like this:
This is a pure acoustic archtop, as noted by others in this thread, loud, modern, acoustic archtops are rare. This guitar is one of those instruments that is so darn good, it inspires me to practice just so I can play it better.
There was Eastman archtop I was eyeing for a while at Old Town School in Chicago. It may have been AR 804 or 904. Blonde, acoustic, oval hole without cutout. I thought it sounded amazing. I came across others of the same model in different stores but none came close to this particular one.