What magic is this?
 

Wandering YouTube recently looking at vintage archtops, I found these two videos of Recording King M-5s. The difference in tone is profound, they’re completely different guitars to my ear. Recording quality aside, is it just down to knowing how to play an archtop?

https://youtu.be/-DoQS0FSqME

https://youtu.be/ZXJ6UNl_kzQ

Notice the sound of his voice in the second video - it sounds thin and terrible as well.

While each guitar is slightly different, and we don't know the setup/strings/condition of each, I'm sure the majority of what you're hearing is recording technique. The first one had a close mic, the second one was likely the built-in mic on his phone/camera well away from the source.

-Douglas C.

The guy at Bernunzio's knows how to play, and they used a real microphone to do the recording.

The repair shop guy is an amateur player, and it sounds like an overdriven phone mic.

The truth is somewhere in between. I believe it's the reason for YMMV.

Regards,
Howard

Mostly the recording setup and the room acoustics, not the player.