[Alan Carruth]

That first archtop was an experiment of sorts, built for a friend. I'd been working with Carleen Hutchins on violins for a couple of years, and my friend helped me take the plunge into archtop guitars. He traded it off to his teacher, Randy Roos, in exchange for lessons, and bought another from me.

Randy said that it took him three months to learn to play it. Eventually he realized that he had to treat it more like a Classical guitar than most archtops, and when he did he found he could get quite a range of tones from it. In the end he sold off nine other guitars that he didn't need any more, and that was the only acoustic he played for years. Finally, he had me make him a flat top.

Randy did a lot of recording with that guitar, so it's possible you may have heard it, probably without knowing it.

One curious thing about that archtop was that, when I first strung it up, it sounded terrible. I'd been in the shop all day working on it, and brought it up to my dining room, which was warmer, to put on the strings. It sounded so bad I darn near threw it out in the snow and went to bed. The next morning it sounded so much better I was glad I hadn't. That's the only guitar I ever made that did that.

BTW, the B&S wood on that is some nice mahogany: it was what I had on hand, and I didn't want to pay the ransom for a 'real' set of maple for an experiment.