40's Era Carved Archtop Question
 

Hello, this is my first post on the acoustic guitar forum. I have a question regarding a 1940's carved top archtop. I have stumbled across one online that looks really nice, but somewhere along the road one of the owners had added a body mounted humbucker pickup and controls. My question is regarding whether or not the body mounted pickup will affect the acoustic sound of the archtop? I know that on a lot of these old carved top archtops people prefer the floating style pickup so that the top can vibrate and project with maximum acoustic volume.

Guitars designed with a body mounted p/up, usually have a large plank of wood glued to the top in order to take the pickup, and deaden the resonance to reduce feedback, so whilst it may look like an acoustic - it's acoustic qualities are compromised.

Acoustic archtops which are amplified with a "floating" p/up secured to the end of the fretboard but proud of the carved top are a different matter.

Consider the way that the "innovations" of electrics evolved.

1. Acoustic carved top guitars - as rhythm instruments, made to sound incisive and middly.

2. Same thing but with a pick up fitted in order to amplify it (the monkey on a stick retro fitted design).

3. The humbucker style p/ups screwed to the fretboard but kept separate from the top.

4. P/ups screwed to the top - lots of feedback problems.

5. Guitar cut into three parts, with a 4 x4 inserted from neck to butt, with pick-ups screwed on, then "wings" of acoustic guitar glued on, Effectively a solid guitar. (See how Les Paul did this).

6. Guitars that look like archtops but are really archtop shaped solid guitars.

As electrification progressed, acoustic sound quality diminished.

Silly Moustache - Your synopsis is good, but why do you say:

"4. P/ups screwed to the top - lots of feedback problems. "

In fact, its the floating pickups (2 and 3) that have the biggest feedback problems. 4 (like an L-5CES or ES-175) have less of an issue with feedback, due to the acoustic dampening of the pickups attached to the top. In fact you might distinguish between 4a. Solid carved guitars (L-5) with mounted pickups and 4b. Laminate guitars (175 etc.) with mounted pickups, as these in general have different levels of feedback.

BTW, you could add a point 7 to cover semi-hollow guitars, which have a center block that reduces feedback inside a hollow-body construction that still adds some acoustic resonance to the tone.

Without question, and although some instruments come out none the worse for it - a good post-war Gibson ES-150 (all-laminated, BTW) could hold its own with many contemporary acoustic archtops - I wouldn't touch it myself...

Thanks for all the help! It's greatly appreciated.

L5CES and ES-175 are designed from the get-go as electric guitars. The ES has a laminated top, the L5 has a top carved thick to resist feedback. Neither are, in my view, good acoustic guitars. I think the first thing I would do is take the pickup out to see if they cut the braces to install it. If they did, the guitar is compromised. But to the point - any pickup installed into the top will have a dramatic and bad effect on tone. It might still sound OK, but it won't sound as good as it might have.