[Steve DeRosa]

Since you asked, Cepheus, some thoughts from a lifelong archtop player:

• If you haven't done so already, set up your guitar with the heaviest strings you can reasonably handle - certainly nothing lighter than 13-56. FYI an archtop is designed to produce sound with a "piston" motion, as opposed to the "flex" of a pin-bridge flattop guitar, and the more string mass/more tension applied the harder the top will be driven - hence more volume/tone; I've used 14-60 PB's on the last three acoustic archtops I've owned - a '46 Epiphone Blackstone, a very early white-label '47 L-7, and my current Godin 5th Avenue - and while I wouldn't recommend them to everybody, it's interesting to note that when the Epi and Gibson were new rhythm players routinely strung their guitars with 15-62/15-64 sets (often with a wound B string) in order to be heard unamplified over a 20-piece horn section...
  
• You've already recognized that archtops require a different technique to bring out their best - in the words of the old Big Band players, "coax the velvet out" - and that's half the battle right there. Bear in mind that Lloyd Loar's original L-5 was intended as the ultimate realization of Orville Gibson's belief in the superiority of violin-style construction, and if you're a bluegrass/string band guy you'll probably learn more about tone production by watching your fiddler play a ballad - especially if he/she has some classical and/or Irish background - than any ten guys hammering away on a D-28. As it was taught to me, the trick to getting that thick, rich, creamy "tone you can eat with a spoon" that represents the Holy Grail for most acoustic archtop players is to think "stroke" rather than "strum" on chords, "glide" rather than "pick" on single-note lines - as much a mental as a physical/technical discipline, BTW - and learn to work the entire neck without the use of a capo; FWIW archtop guitars were intended as virtuoso instruments in their day - simply put, can the open-position "cowboy chords" and get back to some of those position studies in flat/sharp keys - which leads me to:
  
• Most contemporary players are unaware that there was an entire school of "classical archtop" guitar that flourished from about 1925-1940, and upon which Mel Bay based his method; when I was learning in the early-60's the method books bore a statement that they were in fact designed and intended to place the plectrum-style guitar "in the same class as the violin, piano, and other 'legitimate' instruments" (and if you've never hung around in certain so-called "serious" music circles it's difficult to imagine the pejorative attitude directed toward the guitar, even in its "classical" incarnation). FYI, in its original form the classical archtop movement drew from the earlier American school of classical guitar exemplified by the likes of William Foden, Vahdah Olcott-Bickford, et al. (rather than that of Segovia and his Spanish contemporaries, which would become the accepted concert style and instrument), as well as the parlor, "light classical," and vaudeville music of late-19th/early 20th century America - some of which may already be in your string-band repertoire. In addition to transcriptions of well-known classical works, a number of guitarists of the day produced original compositions in a late-Romantic style - music which, while largely out of fashion today, still retains its technical and artistic merit eighty or more years later. As I stated above, the original L-5 archtop guitar was in fact envisioned as a "classical" instrument both tonally and visually, intended as a part of the mandolin orchestras of the late vaudeville era and designed for hall-filling acoustic projection in the days before electronic amplification; were it not for Segovia's sensational American debut in 1928, the plectrum-style archtop guitar - with its violin-family looks and construction - may well have become the accepted "classical" guitar. BTW there are a number of recordings of these period pieces on YouTube, either in the original (by the likes of Harry Volpe, Al Hendrickson, et al.) or re-recorded by contemporary revivalists; in addition, you might also want to check out some of the work of Eddie Lang (both solo and with Joe Venuti on violin), Carl Kress and Dick McDonough, and George Van Eps. Finally, there's an excellent collection published by Mel Bay, entitled Masters of the Plectrum Guitar (available from Amazon TMK), that should keep you busy for a while - and give you a taste of what might have been...

Hope this helps...