Should I Give an Archtop Another Try?
 

In the last three years I've bought and sold two semi hollow bodies. Love the sound, but two things turned me off, thus I sold them.

First, the nut width was just too narrow. I need at a minimum a 1.75 for my size hands. I started capoing at the 2nd fret to get past this.

Second, I just hate a floating bridge.

I'd like to give the an electric another try. Any suggestions where I might look for a larger nut width and a non floating bridge?

Hi, confused here, do you want an archtop - I mean a real arched topped acoustic guitar, like these



or

Or an electric ? If a guitar that "looks" like the above but has a pickup screwed to the top then they won't be truly acoustic as most have a fencepost glued under the top to kill the resonance.

You can get real acoustics with a floating bridge on a real acoustic but can also be plugged in - Eastman made a version of mine above with a Kent Armstrong p/up installed and sublte tone/volume pots on the underside of the pick guard.

Please don't find a real acoustic and screw pick ups to it. There are too few real acoustic archtops that have not been spoilt in this way.

My thoughts, in reverse order:

• Most modern semi-hollows have the bridge permanently anchored into the top, either with studs (into which the height adjustment screws/wheels are mounted) or by pinning the base - shouldn't be a problem finding something that suits your needs;
• I've been playing since 1962, taught in the public and private sector for 45 years, encountered countless fellow guitarists over my lifetime - and barring genuine medical issues, IME much of the professed need for ever-wider fingerboards among flattop=based steel-string players is rooted in poor left-hand technique (something those of us who were trained from the get-go on archtop don't generally have, BTW). I had the pleasure of meeting renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, who has a pair of mitts worthy of an NFL linebacker and has no difficulty whatsoever handling the narrow neck/string spacing of a violin, and many of the same people clamoring for bigger necks double on fiddle/mandolin - often quite proficiently, which smacks as much of compartmentalization as the aforementioned technical deficiencies. My suggestion is to adopt an orchestral-string players' technique - get off the flats of your fingers and up on the very tips (also improves articulation. BTW) - and while Eastman makes a line of semis with 1-3/4" necks, you may just find you really don't need as wide a fingerboard as you originally thought...

Thank you. Thinking about your thoughts, my fingers might be lazy. They don't always stand up. Something for me to work on.

My thoughts have been on neck width for a while now, since I am making a new neck for one of my earlier archtops and I've decided (today anyway) to make a 1 11/16" nut width. Why? Because my 1946 Epiphone has a 1 11/16" nut width and I like it. I usually make 1 3/4 or even 1.8" nut widths. Most people leave 1/8" of fretboard outside the strings, so on a 1 3/4" nut your string spacing is 0.3" while with a 1 11/16" it's 0.29". 1/100" difference. Not much. Yet we all seem to be able to tell the difference from across the room. I wonder why that is...

A semi hollow body guitar is really more of a solid body than it is a hollow body. The bridge is usually attached to the solid center block.