What styles do you play on your archtop?

[Silly Moustache]

When I see a thread abuot Archtops here on the "A" GF I always think acoustic archtops, and regard guitars with magnetic pick-ups as electrics.

I have three acoustic archtops, a Harmony Monterey, an Eastman AR805 and a '34 Gibson L-4 (f-hole version).

I bought them to learn jazz and western swing, but failed. (old dog new tricks scenario perhaps)

Here's me 8 years ago playing the Gibson

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by Howard Emerson

....and a little bottleneck for good measure.

Somebody had to do it!
(And from what I see you've made it a habit - funny how I never came across any of that before!)

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

I bought them to learn jazz and western swing, but failed. (old dog new tricks scenario perhaps)

How about some new dogs learning old tricks?


(I meant the guitars in this case of course)

Or some (IMHO) classical music?

[CopyCat]

Originally Posted by Robin, Wales

…Don't get me wrong, my 5th Avenue sounds awful at first strum compared to the cheapest $99 flattop in a guitar store. But actually it has great character lying under the bonnet.

…So I would say, prepare to be both disappointed and delighted when you try an acoustic archtop. If you can see past the disappointment then you can have a really characterful workhorse acoustic instrument in your hands - more than capable of delivering the playing styles you have set out in your post.

A few excerpts from Robin, Wales’ post say it all better than I could.

When I’ve been playing flattops and pick up my (acoustic) archtop, I’m usually disappointed at first. It sounds thin and bare.

Then I get into archtop world. It starts sounding clear, and the sustain, resonance and bass are perfectly ample. Then I’m just playing, and it’s a guitar. It works great.

Going back to a flattop after that can initially be disappointing, but in a different way. It sounds fuzzy and flabby. But I adjust.

When I’m in the groove with an archtop I can play most any style. Rich fingerstyle, not so much, but a huge range of styles.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by CopyCat

When I’ve been playing flattops and pick up my (acoustic) archtop, I’m usually disappointed at first. It sounds thin and bare.

Going back to a flattop after that can initially be disappointing, but in a different way. It sounds fuzzy and flabby. But I adjust.

That's true, and the 1st observation is probably why so many on here will tell you they hate archtops. (*)

The 2nd observation is what made me sell my mini-jumbo, because I simply didn't play it anymore. Of course I never bonded with that instrument in the first place (and it always sounded thin in a way you'd normally suspect from an archtop).

Nowadays my only other guitars are nylon-stringers, and neither disappoints when I pick her up. What disappoints at most is the fact I have to readapt to flubby strings, compared to the heavy ones I have on the archtop. (And that in turn probably explains why the archtop tends to sound thin at first under my fingers.)

*) But how many have listened to e.g. the Seasons recording linked above. I cannot really imagine steel-string flattops sounding that good (but I could be wrong) and I don't (want to!) believe that you can this kind of sound only from instruments costing upwards of 50k$ or so.

To finish, here's a nice demo (for me at least) of those 2 observations:


Everytime I hear that video I set out by thinking that that small jumbo sounds lush and full and wonderful. And then I start to hear the things I didn't like in my own jumbo: too much internal chorus, a "darkness" that's actually more "nasal" (think congested nose) and that jingly nature of the trebles which Michael knows to hide so well.
The archtop played here is among the ones I liked best in another comparison video of the collection it is part of. But when it's her turn I can't help but feel the sound is cold and harsh compared to the flattop, before my ears adapt and confirm that indeed I do prefer archtops.

[deejayen]

Thanks very much for all the replies and the videos etc.

I'm afraid I've not had a chance to watch most of them yet, but will do as soon as I can.

I suspect my playing style won't be a million miles away from Robin's.

I'll also have to see if I can find a dealer within traveling distance who has a guitar or two in stock.

[CopyCat]

The video posted by RJVB makes a nice comparison indeed.

For the OP, if you’ve never spent much time with an archtop, when you get your hands on one it may help to remember they function differently than a flattop. So some of the usual go-to tests: a bluegrass G chord or big open E, for example, will accentuate the initial disappointment.

Michael Munisteri has a neat course on early jazz guitar up on Peghead Nation and he goes a bit into the mechanics of playing an archtop. Part of that style (and a concept that works well beyond the very specific rhythm style addressed in his course) is both using sparse voicings and a pick attack that pushes inward toward the top of the guitar.

Archtops also seem to have noticable string noise that needs some attention to technique. Perhaps these things are what Robin refers to when he mentions he needs to physically play his archtop more than his D-18.

I mostly play Carter family style and older early country (Jimmie Rodgers-era) and Tin Pan Alley stuff…not jazz per se but I do like nice chord voicings up the neck when I can fit them in. For me, the challenges of an archtop are well worth it. Good luck with your search!

[mr. beaumont]

Originally Posted by RJVB

That's true, and the 1st observation is probably why so many on here will tell you they hate archtops. (*)

The 2nd observation is what made me sell my mini-jumbo, because I simply didn't play it anymore. Of course I never bonded with that instrument in the first place (and it always sounded thin in a way you'd normally suspect from an archtop).

Nowadays my only other guitars are nylon-stringers, and neither disappoints when I pick her up. What disappoints at most is the fact I have to readapt to flubby strings, compared to the heavy ones I have on the archtop. (And that in turn probably explains why the archtop tends to sound thin at first under my fingers.)

*) But how many have listened to e.g. the Seasons recording linked above. I cannot really imagine steel-string flattops sounding that good (but I could be wrong) and I don't (want to!) believe that you can this kind of sound only from instruments costing upwards of 50k$ or so.

To finish, here's a nice demo (for me at least) of those 2 observations:


Everytime I hear that video I set out by thinking that that small jumbo sounds lush and full and wonderful. And then I start to hear the things I didn't like in my own jumbo: too much internal chorus, a "darkness" that's actually more "nasal" (think congested nose) and that jingly nature of the trebles which Michael knows to hide so well.
The archtop played here is among the ones I liked best in another comparison video of the collection it is part of. But when it's her turn I can't help but feel the sound is cold and harsh compared to the flattop, before my ears adapt and confirm that indeed I do prefer archtops.

I would never choose an archtop to play that kind of music. It's not the right tool for the job.

That said, I can tell that's a spectacular archtop...

As for the 4 Seasons, I think those are some of the finest sounding guitars ever made.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by CopyCat

Archtops also seem to have noticable string noise that needs some attention to technique.

Funny, I never noticed that on mine, I'd say my jumbo was more apt at picking up small string noises and turning them into a problem, echo'y as it was. Then again maybe that's because I have a parallel-braced archtop.

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

I would never choose an archtop to play that kind of music. It's not the right tool for the job.

We'll have to disagree on that... but you won't catch Michael playing a commoner's instrument ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TwvQld1x8E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv66c5w2yCk

[CopyCat]

I had a maple small jumbo-style that also had more string noise than my archtop.

That said, I remember reading a thread in the jazz guitar forum (I can’t find it now of course) where there were a number of embedded video demos where the comments were incredibly harsh about the string noise. It made me afraid to ever post a clip of my own playing, which is probably much worse!

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by CopyCat

That said, I remember reading a thread in the jazz guitar forum (I can’t find it now of course) where there were a number of embedded video demos where the comments were incredibly harsh about the string noise.

Remember that that forum is populated by jazzers who play flatwounds so they're probably more biased against string noise than against dull tone

[iim7V7IM7]

Here is one of my archtops played by two different fine players (Jimmy Bruno and Tim Farrell) with very different playing styles.

[RLetson]

Every individual guitar and build/design formula comes with a set of constraints: volume, attack/decay envelope, tone profile, and what might be called "difficulty" or responsiveness--the effort and skill required to produce a particular sonic effect.

Both of those Walker guitars are at the edges of their design-formula profiles. The flat-top has a wide frequency response, a long decay, and in the playing is probably very "responsive"--that is, it doesn't take much effort to get those long-sustaining, consonant voices that Celtic players favor. The archtop's sound seems to have been shaped a bit toward flat-top territory, especially in the low register and the attack/sustain area, though it retains the characteristic archtop "doink" and nasality--a "modern" voice distinct from the rhythm chunk of a guitar voiced for big-band playing*.

As for tool-for-the-job, one test of a guitarist's skill is how she navigates the particular sonic/responsiveness profile of a given instrument. To be sure, no amount of skill is going to overcome an instrument's design limits--there's only so much sustain or low-frequency signal available--but technical skill and musicianship can wring a lot out of an unlikely instrument. Not that I'm a technical wizard, but before I found my first archtop, I played swing rhythm on a guitar designed with low-effort fingerstyle playing in mind. I hadn't managed the flatpick yet, so I adapted a rasgueado style, approximating the rhythm chunk and minimizing the guitar's sweetness and sustain. When I got my Broadway and figured out the flatpick, producing that characteristic sound got easier, since the Epi design was optimized for it. (And it still manages to produce fingerstyle chord-melody sounds--it's a very good beast--though my Eastman does so with less effort.)

There's a set of cliche remarks about how a good guitarist makes any guitar sound like his own--I watched it happen when Tim Sparks tried out one of my guitars. It's clear that in such cases, the player assesses and deploys an instrument's resources in ways that wind up sounding like himself and probably the guitar's best version of itself.

* Over the summer I had the opportunity to play a dozen or so high-end vintage archtops, and it was interesting how unsatisfying some of the Holy Grail items were to ears that have gotten used to "modern" sounding examples. Also surprising: the sweetness and flexibility of some 16-inch Gibsons.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by RJVB

Remember that that forum is populated by jazzers who play flatwounds so they're probably more biased against string noise

BTW even better to avoid string/finger noise: tape-wounds.

A recording I made when I'd owned my Loar for about 2 months (and it probably hadn't had much of a setup yet), of a piece that was still very much a work in progress back then.
https://on.soundcloud.com/B5X3V

(A composition for plectrum guitar here approached more as a classical piece because it deserves that IMHO.)

[CopyCat]

Sounds great!