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This is in the land of opinion and speculation. Here goes.
I listened to a fair amount of gypsy guitar and acoustic archtop playing recently. A few things became clear to me that are obvious to many.
To begin with, the archtop guitar was largely viewed as a percussive instrument in early jazz. Sure, it had chords and some solos, but mostly it seemed to replace the banjo. I clearly prefer the rhythmic chopping of the guitar over the banjo for extended performances.
Acoustic solos on the archtop and the "gypsy" guitar could be and often were technical and melodical masterpieces. I listened to hours of masterful playing yesterday. But the tonal frequencies seemed bright and compressed, and in truth they were. There's a big difference when listening to a good flattop playing the same solos.
The obvious became clear to me then. The best accessory to the archtop is the electric pickup. I played early Johnny Smith and compared it to unamplified archtop tunes. The tonal richness of the former felt full and like home to me. But I had mixed feelings. The unamplified players were technically amazing with their speed and cleverness. But they couldn't create the heavy fullness of bass tones or even the richness of mid to high notes.
I don't mean to knock the gypsy style at all. These guys are jaw dropping amazing and a lot of fun to listen to. They play faster than I can think. It may be the culture I grew up in, but the emotional expressions of Wes Montgomery and those that follow in his style and beyond hit me in the heart.
In fairness, here's a video that is evidence that I'm wrong.
Compared to this:
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03-07-2026 12:20 PM
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The term best is kind of putting a value on it but its pretty impossible to argue with you. The pickup changed everything for players that wanted to go in that direction. Its safe to say that it revolutionized playing by allowing the exploration of different tones, colors and textures. On top of that it allowed a player to be heard while play gently or just differently. Im not sure it was the best thing to happen to archtops since in part, it made them obsolete (except for those of us who love them). Once the pickup was in play it was just a matter of time before it was figured out that all you really need is a neck and a bolck of wood.
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Seems to me that Marty Grass is talking about timbre and attack/sustain envelope, and any given guitar is going to have constraints on the timbres it can produce and the amount of skill and effort the player has to expend to get particular effects. I've played acoustic archtops from nearly the entire history of the instrument and, limited as my technique is, I've noticed what it takes to get the effects I want from them. In fact, this has been the case with every variety of guitar--and I've owned more than thirty over the decades: flat-tops of all sizes and vintages, classicals, archtops, Selmer-styles, a resophonic.
Thanks to my acquaintances among builders and dealers, I've played and heard dozens more. A few years ago, I was able to play and hear 1929-30s examples from Gibson, D'Angelico, and Stromberg at a single sitting, and it was immediately clear to me where the centers and the edges of what they could produce were at a given level of effort/skill. (FWIW, a '29 L-5 was as flexible as most flat-tops, and an early-30s L-10 was close behind.) Selmer-styles have similar ranges--the mediocre ones stick out like sore thumbs. What I hear everywhere is how a player exploits the bundle of acoustic resources a given guitar offers, as well as the resources that a given tradition expects or demands (thinking of flamenco and gypsy jazz here).
What amplification offers for all guitars is not only increased volume but the opportunity to manipulate the voice via the signal chain and the secondary instrument that is the loudspeaker. (I've listened to enough amp enthusiasts to see the electronics/speaker/cabinet system as its own entity.) That set of resources offers possibilities that unamplified guitars do not have. On the other hand, not every composition needs fuzztone or wahwah. (But then there's Jeff Beck's transformative version of "I Ain't Superstitious," which is built on those resources.)
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Pickups, in my opinion were a detriment to live music as a whole.
Everything is too loud, guitar tone needs to be shrill to be heard over the drums but also guitarists love reverb which washes them out, so they turn up even more.
All of this is very enjoyable for the amateur musician, but not that great for listeners at a venue. It’s straight up awful for diners who are expecting live background music.
It also makes venues give up on music and choose a stereo instead because musicians are dopes who don’t understand their job.
None of this would happen if volume was tied to an acoustic guitar and any drummer who bashed away was let go instead of taken as a volume challenge.
That’s just like, my opinion. Anyway, as a guy who spends his time convincing venues we can be an enjoyable addition to the vibe and not a detriment to business.
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Haha, you would not wanna be at a show where I get to do what I want. 130+ dB here I come but granted the style I play is supposed to be very loud and in your face.
Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I think for a lot of younger guys who have grown up in the era of noise ordinances and venues having unrealistic expectations of volume we have a generation of guitarists now who actually don't know how to play loudly. More band dynamics are required and a very loud electric guitar basically plays like a different instrument than a quiet electric guitar i.e the entire amp-pedals-guitar takes on a life of its own. I've been educating a younger guy on this for a couple years and he's finally catching on but you can't catch on if you aren't getting the playing opportunities to embrace it.
IMO at the end of the day an acoustic drumset being hit with sticks is loud but anyone with a million bucks becomes a bar owner and goes in with no concept of how live music actually operates. Occasionally I have had to refuse bookings from gigs whose expectations were completely unrealistic and ultimately affected their drink sales. But they are the owner so they have every right to shoot themselves in the foot I guess, same as me.
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Yeah true, there’s a place for loud, but a 50 person bar and grill, or steakhouse isn’t that place.
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Trad Selmer Macaferri guitars are kind of built for volume, cut and projection and nothing else.
My guitar while not a fancy one, is quite old school apparently, and while it's all kinds of loud can get a bit tiring on the ears. But it does one thing superbly. When I have a Hot Club style gig - which I seem to be doing a lot lately - and I lay into those rhythm guitar chords it sounds RIGHT immediately. The guitar does the heavy lifting - once you have the basic la Pompe down and some of the authentic grips.
The problem is amplifying the thing. These guitars do not close mic awfully well, and basically all amplification solutions are varying degrees of disappointing. I also feel these guitars are quite hard to record well.
Luthiers have built more nuanced S-M style guitars that respond with more nuance, but you lose that old school bark in the trade off.
OTOH my quite cheap Loar acoustic archtop guitar is one of my favourites to play. It sounds great in any style. It's complex and nuanced and I don't really feel like magnetic pickups really reproduce that complexity. I can only imagine that some more impressive luthier built guitars would have even more of this quality. But of course a lot of modern archtops are built with the amplified - or perhaps semi amplified - tone in mind.
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BTW - you need to be careful of the bass when playing with an upright bass player. They will thank you. I tend to roll off the bass even on 10" speaker amp. A lot of the classic electric jazz guitar tones are quite mid-pushed.
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It all depends on the specific venue, the stage, and the clientele for sure and being a good bandleader means reading the room. I used to play a 50 person bar-bar extremely loudly back in the 90's. It wasn't a big venue but it was expected that the bands would be loud. I went to that bar about fifteen years ago and it was a completely different place. No smoking. Clean. Band was quiet. Nah, no thanks, lol. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
In a lot of instances I've found that club owners don't care about the volume if people are digging the music and having a good time, staying longer, and drinking more. Then all of a sudden it's just fine. In other cases you break 'em in slowly and get louder as the set continues. Full rooms require more volume than empty ones and you can use good dynamics to fool the ear. A big part of what fueled the low volume club movement were owners just being cheap and hiring shitty bands. No one wants to hear poorly played music loudly.
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I’ve heard many groups even without a drummer who play at >100db as measured on my meter. I typically leave no matter how much I want to hear the band. One band I now enjoy drove me from 2 venues before I heard them at a reasonable sound level.
Hearing loss isn’t worth that kind of ‘entertainment’.
ymmv
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Be funny if it was Dawgbone’s band
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About loud: Even music "meant" to be loud can offer too much of that good thing. I love--really love--Little Feat, but when I got to hear them around 1973 in a really good concert hall, I had to leave because they were too fucking loud. Even out in the lobby with the auditorium doors closed, it was too loud. I wasn't even thirty yet and my hearing was good enough to hear the flyback oscillator on a bad CRT, but Feat were just painful. I'd heard the Basie band, a Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, and our resident string quartet in the same room. Feat was using an outdoor-festival sound setup in a hall that Segovia could have played. (I'd heard Segovia, too, but in a mid-size room.) These days, I won't go to our very good local tribute band's gigs because they play at traditional earbusting levels. (And they all wear ear protection. God help the audience--though they're mostly already-half-deaf geezers*.)
Our local jazz outfit plays a very small room--you can't get more than 30 feet from them--and to my ear they still play too loud, mostly because the level is set by the technically good but too-loud drummer.
* I'm an even older geezer, but while my response curve tops out around 10K, I can still hear pretty much all the music in a performance. I don't need my innards rearranged by sound pressure.
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Even traditionally, western music has more often than not, been loud. If you expect a horn player or drummer, both of which aren't amplified, to use the entire dynamic range of their instruments, it's going to be loud at some stage. A concert band is loud. So is an orchestra. Go watch a DCI event or other serious marching band. G bugles by themselves can push nearly as many dB as a cranked twin....loud is kind of the point.
This is kind of what I'm talking about with people and club owners wanting to have the bragging rights of having live bands but putting unrealistic or just stupid expectations on the groups they hire. Sure, you can be "professional" and all that and suit yourself to their desires but really it's cheating the ardent listener. As a result everything has become watered down in some sense. A loss of dynamics because you are too often expected to play quietly while people stuff their faces and guzzle drinks. If that's all it becomes I would rather not play for others. Go buy a juke box.
Have I been to a show that was too loud? Yeah, but it was mostly driven by poor FOH using so much bass that it drowned out the rest of the music. It was uncomfortably loud, but the bad mix was the bigger problem. If I'm going to blow my ears out it should at least sound good and it didn't so I left. It didn't help that the music itself wasn't very good either but the tickets were free so there you go.
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Familiar with Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony (No. 94)?
"Dynamics" doesn't mean "loud all the time"--it's an indication of range.
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I'm aware of what it means. Being forced into whisper volumes all night is being forced into playing using greatly reduced dynamic range. Originally Posted by RLetson
There is actually a venue around here that can't get many groups to return because you are constantly asked to reduce volume the entire night. At first I thought it was just me then by the 2nd gig I realized she has a problem with drums in general. Not loud drums, just drums. No one in the crowd was complaining, she was complaining. We aren't going to break out dowel rods and brushes in that situation because it's a large courtyard and that would be a bitch move. If it was a tiny room that would be different.
Certain music is going to demand a certain level of volume and anything less is called doing it wrong.
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As someone who done enough 'background' gigs in restaurants and whatnot, I don't really take much pride in it. If we are being totally honest, it's like DEI for musicians, we need it more than the restaurants. Personally if I go out to have a meal and nice conversation, I don't need background live music. And if I want live music, I don't want it to be background. If you want quiet, play drumless, that's how we rolled back in NYC.
As far as archtops, it is what it is, the acoustic ones have one purpose is to cut as rhythm guitar, and that's how I like it, parallel braced Gibsons, Epiphones etc. from 30's, 40's. Anything modern that tries to change the formula never convinced me. The addition of pickup changed everything of course, and for the better, it made the archtop practical for all kinds of applications.
The GJ guitars is a different thing all together, and also I was never convinced they are great for anything other than GJ... And vice verse, for GJ only Selmer/Mcafferi will do.
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Hep: Drumless small groups are quite viable (I'm thinking the Barnes-Braff Quartet, as well as most GJ bands). But on the other hand, brushes. And I think the example of Alex Raderman on full kit with Frank Vignola is instructive.
As for GJ guitars, I own a Michael Dunn that argues otherwise (also a Shelley Park along similar lines but with a bit more honk), and I've played some of Bernie Lehmann examples that I would happily own if I didn't already have the Dunn (and had more money). But then, I'm not a GJ purist in the timbre department. (And not all Selmers are optimal, either.)
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I used to work a gig in a restaurant and the manager would constantly tell us to turn down even though we weren't close to loud.
She was one of those people who was in a position of authority and loved throwing her weight around, every time she walked by the bandstand she'd give us the 'lowering hand' motion.
So one time we saw her coming and said let's get down to whisper level.....she still gave us the motion.
Another bar we were working the owner had the same authority complex and would give us the same hand motion at least once every set. Then one day he lectured us before we played a note as we were setting up.
He was also a guy that would cancel us for the night if there was the slightest threat of rain....even though we were indoors.
The final straw for us was when we were already on the way to the gig and he called and canceled because it was too windy!
A lot of people came to hear us that night and he had to explain why we weren't there.
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It almost seems like you are just exaggerating until you experience this for yourself. I played this real piece of shit place once in Dunedin FL called bausers and they actually had a red light to alert you that your volume level had exceeded the clubs dB restrictions. The drummer realized that coughing on stage would trigger the light. I played another piece of shit venue in the St Pete area called three birds and they kept telling us to turn down until we could hear a sports broadcast from the bar area over the band while we were playing in a courtyard. I can't see the logic in having a band in these instances. I would guess it's a combination of owner bragging rights and having the ability to advertise having live music. Originally Posted by wintermoon
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l'm familiar with good archtops. As a teen I had a late 1920s L-5 I got from a retiring studio musician. It was a poor choice for most of the gigging I did due to feedback. It was modified with a single coil pickup mounted within the pickguard. Amplifying it opened up a lot of tonal possibilities. Feedback was hard to control.
It's very hard to argue that the pickup was a great advance for guitarists. It opens up many doors. And just because you have a pickup doesn't mean you have to plug in.
This is Miller Auditorium in Kalamazoo. It's a fairly roomy place to perform. As a kid I saw Andre Segovia play there solo for a couple of hours. He used no amplification, not even a microphone. He projected well throughout the place. That required the audience to be perfectly quiet, and they were. A couple of months ago I saw Chicago perform there. They were loud, on the edge of discomfort. But my point about the guitar pickup in an archtop was in small part volume and mostly tone expansion.
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This assumes they use dynamics. Originally Posted by DawgBone
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I mean... depends? Originally Posted by DawgBone
If you want to be heard outside, you need to be loud.
If you want to be heard in a concert hall a certain degree of projection is necessary. Orchestras got louder over time.
If you are playing in an intimate setting, sheer volume is less important. Much of the best Western classical music is written for chamber ensembles. And then you have instruments such as the lute.
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Horn players don't have to be loud. They say new guys in the Basie band were told "If you can't hear Freddie Green, you're playing too loud." Freddie did not use an amp. I will not put up with painfully loud music. Life is too short for that, and I value my hearing. Even after almost 50 years of flying helicopters, it's still mostly intact, and I intend to keep it that way. I'll just walk out of a place if it's too loud. I played in a blues jam for awhile, but I had to wear earplugs, even though the other guitars were so scooped there was no audible midrange. I lasted a few weeks, but I just couldn't put up with the volume, and that wasn't even a really loud bar. I would not go near one of Dawgbone's gigs. He's welcome to play as loud as he wants as long as he's miles away.
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Don't blame pickups for what someone does with them distastefully. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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