At the edges of the tonal envelope, archtops can be thin and brassy, harsh, nasal, or (oddly enough) muted. In the sweet spot, the trebles are rather sweet, the bass range is round, and they still manage to bark and growl and cut when played hard. All of mine tend toward the nasal (an almost resophonic honk) when played hard, but they also chunk. And there has to be some sustain, but nothing like what you get with a flat-top (let alone, say, a Goodall).
A builder friend once remarked that getting treble is easy--it's the low register that presents the challenge. That accords with what my ear likes about the archtops that I like most, and I think that's what I hear in a good rhythm chunk *and* a single-string solo or chord-melody passage: a round/sweet high end requires a low-end component.
In my herd, the modern Eastman 805CE offers a good combination of the above qualities, but the best all-around voice belongs to one built by Tom Crandall nearly 30 years ago. And my old (1946) Epi Broadway can be pretty sweet, though it really likes to be played harder. And I just spent a week at swing camp with a Loar 600 that turns out to be a very respectable rhythm chunker when it's wearing a 13-56 phosphor bronze set.
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