Small(er) body acoustic archtop recommendations

[Fatfinger McGee]

I'm sure this thread's been done a hundred times, but the forum search isn't helping me find them.

I am semi-casually trolling the classifieds for a first archtop, mostly for fingerstyle and light picking, I really like the percussive chop and the distinctive tone of them on old records. I'd like to keep it under 1k. I mostly play acoustic, but I don't mind an acoustic-electric if it sounds great unplugged. I'd like something with a scale length under 25" and a lower bout under 16". Playable, with good tone and intonation. I'm not against vintage, just don't know enough about archtops to know how to play or evaluate one.

Thoughts or suggestions? Right now there are two possibles on my list, an acoustic Godin 5th Avenue, or a Loar LH600. An Eastman would be awesome, but too expensive for my budget right now, same for most vintage Gibsons. There are a couple of 50s/60s Kays and Harmonys on Craigslist within an hour or so of me, but both have issues and make me nervous. I'm in central NC, and really don't see many on the walls at the guitar shops around here.

[stevo58]

I have owned an acoustic Godin 5th Ave and do own a The Loar LH-700, which differs from the 600 mainly in the neck wood.

The Godin is like a very well-built Harmony, with laminates all around, and had that sound.

The Loar is all carved solid woods. It’s very much a 20s L5 copy, including the sound and the neck. The neck may be a problem for you; it’s a huge V-neck - which I love, even with my small hands, but it’s not for everybody.

The Loar will come much closer to that tone.

An Eastman is very much a modern guitar (think Benedetto) and won’t get that old tone. The old guitars were intended to cut through horns, like a tenor banjo; the modern ones are more solo instruments (to simplify it)

I wouldn’t hesitate to buy the Godin without playing it first. I would always play the Loar first. I say that, but don’t live it - I bought mine used on eBay, but had reason to believe it was ok from the description. The seller had a luthier set it up and dress the frets, and the photos confirmed that and showed the neck angle was good. The frets are perfect.

I love the guitar. It’s fun to play. It looks fabulous. I avoid picking it up after playing my Martin because it sounds bad to my ear when I do that, until I adjust again to the archtop tone. I put Martin Retro Mediums on it and chunk away with a stiff pick. I added a Paul Fox bound L5 pickguard, changed the tailpiece to an ABM 1504, and swapped the perfectly good gold-plated Grovers for nickel Waverlies because I am anal and didn’t want a nickle tailpiece and gold tuners. I added a JJB pickup (the bell brass ABM tailpiece is hard - it took ages to drill out for the jack.)

Silly Moustache had a bad experience with Loar, but I believe that was an early one and the QA has gotten better. One reason to buy used is that someone else has already dealt with all that. The 600 series is a huge quality jump from the 300.

Well that’s enough of that.


Steven

[MC5C]

You should try a 16" or 17" archtop before you dismiss them. They play a lot easier than you'd think, if you are familiar with a similar sized dreadnaught or Jumbo with 4" to 5" deep sides. An archtop usually has 3" or shallower sides, and they fit under your arm in a completely different way. I find that smaller archtops don't develop the richness of tone that a larger one does, so mine are mostly 16" or a bit larger.

[Fatfinger McGee]

Some great advice, thanks. I'll see if I can find a Loar LH600 to try. I'm not against a larger body guitar, L-5s and L-7s are pretty incredible and I'm large enough to comfortably hold one. It's just that I started looking at archtops because I've been spending time listening to guys on Youtube noodling on old vintage Olympic and Zenith Epiphones, and really like the sweet punchy bluesy tone, percussive strums, and single note sound, figured a smaller body would be closer to that. Like I say, I'm just starting to pay attention to them and have never played one, so I still have a lot to figure out.

Is there a reasonably-priced modern equivalent to the vintage Epiphone Zenith and Olympics? Other than the obvious answer of new masterbilt Epiphones, which seem to be pretty cheaply built.

[Steve DeRosa]

My thoughts:

• Brian's right about the larger bodies - in spite of the width they're 1-2" shallower than a comparably-sized flattop and handle very differently, so don't rule them out;
• Similarly, if you're going to be playing in what essentially amounts to a cello register you need a cello-sized body (or close to it), in order to reproduce the necessary low end that gives those old Big Band-era comp boxes their surprising richness when played with the proper technique - which leads me to:
• As offshoots of the orchestral-string family, you'll want to adopt the bow-based approach the old-timers used to call "coaxing the velvet out" - think "stroke" rather than "strum" and "glide" rather than "pick," subtly leaning into the pick as you play, and if you're still not sure how it's supposed to sound/feel there are some excellent period recordings on YouTube by Harry Volpe, Tony Mottola, Carl Kress and Dick McDonough, et al. ;
• Speaking as an owner, the acoustic Godin 5th Avenue is an excellent introduction to the genre and, depending how you set it up, can take you from folksy fingerstyle to Gypsy jazz to four-to-the-bar comping and anything in between - and while it's an all-laminated box in the mold of the old postwar Harmony and Kay instruments, it's built lightly enough (unlike the period Gibson L-48 and Guild A-50) and solidly enough (unlike the Harmony/Kay stuff) that's it's not only highly responsive for what it is, but isn't likely to self-destruct in 10-15 years like the originals (voice of experience here);
• Speaking as the former owner of a '46 Epiphone Blackstone, if you're looking for a vintage piece at a reasonable price the 16" Epis are seriously undervalued on the current market (routinely 20-25% below their Gibson counterparts IME) - while the Olympics tend to be pricey (thanks to the David Rawlings connection), I've seen player-grade postwar New York-made Zeniths for under $1K, Blackstones for $1100-1200, the occasional Spartan (an all-carved pro-level 16-incher in the mold of the early Gibson L-5/L-7/L-10 and rarer than any of them) in the $1500-1700 range, and you're not going to get anything near this level of craftsmanship or materials for anywhere near the price;
• Finally, if you're also going to be doing fingerstyle and light picking and you've got around $1500 to spend, check out the all-solid/all-carved spruce/mahogany Eastman AR610 17" non-cutaway, a latter-day incarnation of the circa-1950 Epiphone Devon (and, coincidentally, designed by the late Epi expert Jim Fisch) - this one's been on my own personal radar for a while, and if you're looking for a single do-it-all archtop that'll take you from medium-volume comping (fine for a 5-6 piece combo, probably not so much for a 20-piece full-tilt horn section) to chord-melody to rootsier sounds, one of these might be the way to go...

Good luck...

[Fatfinger McGee]

Steve, Steven, and Brian, thank you for the thoughtful and thorough posts, you've been extremely helpful and informative.

A lot to think about. It really sounds like before I try them out, I need some homework and practice on how to play them properly. It's funny, my first guitar teacher tried to teach me to play like that, and I pretty much ignored him. He was an old hippie jazz guy, and I wanted to play folk and bluegrass.

The cello register thought appeals to me VERY much, both in selecting an instrument and deciding what to play on it.

Thanks again all.

[Dave Richard]

I have, at the moment, both 17", and 15" vintage Epiphone archtops, and have previously owned the 16" variety, While they are all(mostly) wonderful, the smaller ones do indeed have a distinctive tone. At the moment, I just did a neck reset, and a refret, on a '35 Epi Zenith(14-3/4"), and I'm very pleased with it. I play these Epis mostly with a flatpick, and IMO, they mostly don't work as well for fingerstyle. By chance, I recently bought a '33 Martin R-18 roundhole archtop, and that one does work better for fingerstyle(it's x-braced, as opposed to tone-bar braced, which certainly makes the difference). I do feel the earlier Epis('32-35), which are braced slightly differently than the '36 and later guitars, have a tone that would work better for fingerstyle, and have heard them used to great effect.
All my Epis needed some significant amount of work(which I do myself), to play their best. You can see and hear a number of vintage archtops, which I've repaired, at my FB page, David Richard Luthier. Good luck with your search.

[ArchtopLover]

Originally Posted by Dave Richard

I have, at the moment, both 17", and 15" vintage Epiphone archtops, and have previously owned the 16" variety, While they are all(mostly) wonderful, the smaller ones do indeed have a distinctive tone.

Totally agree with Dave here. I have collected a number of vintage Gibson archtops over the past few years, the first was a 1948 L-50 (that was the guitar that got me hooked) in great original condition. The 16" lower bout size, for any archtop, IMO, is the best place to start if this is going to be your first. The smaller size models, like the L-30 (14-1/2") and, for example the L-1 (13"), of which I own examples of each, have upper registers that are somewhat similar in the quality of their tone. However, the lower register, or the bass, is just not that satisfying. I love to play my little L-1, but I'm not as inspired as I am when I play one of my L-50's, or, for that matter, my most recent acquisition, a gorgeous 1934 Gibson L-7 with a 17" lower bout. The fullness of tone and the deeper bottom-end is just amazing. So, if I was to choose the body size to own, if I had to own just one, it would definitely be the 16".