Eastman AR610: During the waning days of their New York operation - after founder Epi Stathopoulo's untimely death and in the midst of severe infighting between brothers Frixo and Orphie for control - Epiphone introduced the Devon, a no-frills 17" spruce/mahogany (changed to maple on some of the final production examples) guitar noted for its unusually sweet, mellow tone, and until today's Epiphone factory finally reissues the long-rumored/long-awaited replacements for the moribund Masterbilt archtops this is as close as you're going to get; incorporating elements of the Benedetto design paradigm with the Epiphone platform - this one's also an archtop for the flattop crowd, but in a different way than the AR805 - the wood combination minimizes the "nasal" mids some players associate with traditional archtops in favor of a mellow, smooth, and somewhat subdued tonality compared to a similar maple instrument (not necessarily your first choice for comping behind a 20-piece horn section but I understand a couple players have made it work, with heavy-gauge strings and a long hard initial break-in period) that allows a less-experienced player to, as the old '30s/40s Big Band players used to say, "coax the velvet out" for chord solos or vocal/small-combo accompaniment. Personally, that richness of tone is the reason I always favored vintage 18" non-cut boxes like the Gibson Super 400/300, Epiphone Emperor/Super Deluxe, and D'Angelico New Yorker, as well as the newer (and unfortunately somewhat rare) all-acoustic Heritage Super Eagle and Triggs Master 400 - as I get older and somewhat less able to wrestle with one of those bandstand behemoths I find the idea of a 17-incher with comparable qualities quite intriguing, and the $1500 street price puts this puppy right at the top of my short list...
