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Old 09-25-2022, 10:36 AM
Steve DeRosa Steve DeRosa is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbeltrans View Post
...the absolute finest guitar I have ever played is my Citation. I would like to play some of those old Epiphone archtops from back when they were made in the US.

To me, the "perfect" guitar (whether archtop or flat top) is the one you (anybody) plays and never wishes it was just a bit bigger, smaller, wider string spacing, etc. The guitar is perfect as is and one can stop looking for the next one. The only guitar that has done that for me is my Citation...I played it out of curiosity and was completely blown away, an experience I have never had with another guitar of any type. Even after owning it for a little while now and playing it every day, that same experience still occurs.

My interest in playing other archtops such as the early Epiphones is one of curiosity and for the experience of it...

...I noticed in the videos you posted to demonstrate "coaxing the velvet out", that the player used a circular motion at times, and at other times a straight up and down motion. All the videos seemed to focus on using a flat pick (called a "plectrum" in those days as evidenced by some of the old books I have from the 1930s such as the Eddie Lang and early George Van Eps methods).

My preference is for playing using bare fingers. I have tried using a pick, but it just feels awkward to me. I certainly get a lot more volume out of my Citation with a pick, but fingers just feel more natural and sound warmer to me...
In no particular order:
  • I had the opportunity to play a brand-new-with-tags, faded-cherryburst Citation about 30 years ago, at a now-defunct out-of-the-way Brooklyn music store that would be the last place you'd expect to find one , and it's everything you say it is and then some - unfortunately we were just getting off the ground as a family back then, and I couldn't afford the five-figure price of admission...
  • I've essentially made a second career playing guitars "out of curiosity," and as I think we've both discovered it's a wonderful way to not only determine what's right for you (as opposed to the "popular opinion" - can you say 1-3/4" prewar neck OM...? ), but to experience hands-on all those legendary instruments that still set the standard for everything a good guitar should be; while I've owned a few (Martin D-45, A-Series/white-label L-7, New York Epi Blackstone, Hofner 5000/1 Deluxe bass, my current White Falcon) it's a combination of serendipity, having come of musical age during the last days of the "old" NYC music scene, and an abundance of available vintage instruments in the pawnshops and dealers' "used sections" of the late-60's/early-70's, that provided a wealth of experiential knowledge...
  • While I won't get into an in-depth analysis in the interest of brevity, orthodox archtop pick technique is derived from orchestral-string bowing technique, and my rationale for choosing the above examples of the two contrasting approaches: the round, mellow sul tasto reinvented as "coaxing the velvet out" (the "glide-rather-than-pick/stroke-rather-than-strum" approach in Mr. Vuillemin's videos, to which you refer in your comments) versus the sul ponticello hammer-down of Messrs. Stout and Rossi, much like that of a Paganini seeking to extract the last ounce of volume from his instrument and project it to the farthest reaches of the concert hall by consciously emphasizing the upper frequencies - and the very reason I said that an archtop player should, in spite of personal preference, be well-acquainted with both...
  • One of the aforementioned serendipitous happenings was, as a kid, taking lessons with jazz legend (then a teenage phenom) Jack Wilkins, to whom I owe much of my understanding of acoustic archtop guitars. Lessons were routinely conducted with a prewar script-logo L-5N (nearly identical to the one Mr. Stout is playing in the duet video BTW), and one of the things he taught me to look for in a good archtop guitar is its fingerstyle response: while any half-decent instrument can do the Freddie Green four-to-the-bar chunk, and the better ones lend themselves to single-string and chord-melody work without sounding strident and edgy, it's only the very best that have the sensitivity of response to be usable as full-dynamic-range fingerstyle instruments - IME rare company indeed, and (pun intended) it sounds like you've got one of those on your hands...
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