The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
  1. #1

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    The archtop guitar seems to have been invented as a gut strung instrument in Paris around 1820 by Francesco Molino who was a player rather than a maker. He had the guitars made for him by Mauchant of Mirecourt. Molino's intention was to give the guitar a louder voice. The design was not patented at the time and was copied by other makers. Unfortunately, it was not successful in the market perhaps because of musical conservatism or perhaps it was simply before its time.

    A Surprising Piece Of Archtop History-molino_sw-jpg


    A Surprising Piece Of Archtop History-x-ray-sw-jpg
    The guitar has an arched top with two parallel braces as can be seen from the X Ray picture. The back is not arched and is braced side to side. The bridge is movable although the strings are anchored to the soundboard. The fingerboard is curved. The body length is 450mm, the width 305mm and the depth 90mm. Some of the instruments had a lyre shaped peghead and others a single sided style, rather like the one Fender subsequently adopted.

    An example of this guitar can be seen in the Forderer collection on YouTube starting at 6min 11sec

    The explanation there refers only to the Mirecourt luthiers, omitting to mention Molino as the actual inventor and claims an earlier date.

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  3. #2

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    Thank you for posting this.....so much to learn and its quite an interesting instrument.

    Being a guitar and flute player I gathered a bunch of CD's quite some time ago that were relevant to both interests.
    So when you referred to Francesco Molino I was reminded of a disc with his guitar and flute duos and trios for guitar, flute and viola.

    So thats on tonight's playlist.
    I doubt the guitarist is using an instrument like that one but I'll have my ears open anyway!

  4. #3

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    Countless efforts were made in the first half of the 19th century to give the delicate guitar, then still a gut string instrument for the parlor, more volume and projection.

    I didn't read the full article by Panagiotis Poulopoulos (impact of Francois Chanot’s experimental violins on the development of the earliest guitar with an arched soundboard by Francesco Molino in the 1820s | Early Music | Oxford Academic , A Pioneering Guitar Design by Francesco Molino – The Consortium for Guitar Research ), but I know about some principles that Francois Chanot, a fascinating unorthodox luthier, applied in his violins since 1817 (Chanot: Uber die Geigenbauer-Familie der franzosischen Schule in England | Meister-Portraits | Bibliothek | Corilon violins ).
    Heck, it might even have been Chanot who had invented the "teardrop" body! (Chanot Ergonomic Violin — Google Arts & Culture ).


    I might talk to Mr. Poulopoulos personally to clarify whether Chanot or Molino-Mauchant were the first to use the principles known in the violin world as Chanot's ones, but it could be moot.
    Similar to Chanot's instruments, the pictured Molino-Mauchant guitar shows an unusual flat-arched belly without recurve, so some may be tempted to inspect them a bit closer and see, if the top was really carved and graduated. Also, the ladder-bracing is not what we would expect on a carved guitar, neither the "stop-tail" in the heart of the soundboard - though all these features together could be balanced out, and somehow work out.


    Francesco Molino, born near Torino, was a well-known and hard-working violinist, guitarist and composer in Italy, Spain and France. It's not known where he had learned guitar playing; maybe he was an autodidact like Paganini. Hard to imagine that such folks had much time to tinker with entirely new instrument classes, though not impossible, of course.
    Authentic moving reports exist about Paganini who went through hell when he had to bring his Guarneri for a check to Mirecourt-born luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (1789 - 1875) in Paris, another violin maker never afraid of breaking new ground. The third man of wonderful French violin tinkerers, after Chanot and the successful Vuillaume, was Felix Savart (1791 - 1841), a friend of Vuillaume.

  5. #4

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    Not sure if I got trough with the gist of the Francois Chanot violin principle, or the Molino-Mauvant guitar above:

    Chanot's thesis was that the largest possible number of undamaged wood fibers is necessary for a optimal vibration pattern of the top, so he demanded that the wood grain lines should be uncut, without run-out, as long as possible. This is the thinking of all flat-top guitar makers or, in the archtop realm, of the solid_pressed_top supporters. This is one reason why these Chanot and Molino-Mauvant instruments show a relatively flat-arched belly.

    Conventional violin makers think differently: they take the enormous effort of carving a thick spruce plate to compensate a bit for the excessive stiffness the higher arching provides to the soundboard. Not to talk here of other compensations, like the elongated f-soundholes, the thickness and graduation pattern of the plates, the type of bracing, etc..
    To accomplish this goal, the makers of carved stringed instruments have to cut many wood grains of the top by intention - only this way the soundboard can get the best-possible compromise of stiffness-mass-vibration. Such an archtop construction can provide the necessary stiffness to withstand thicker steel strings for a lifetime, and, at the same time, deliver the acoustic sound, balance and projection that many are after. That's what Lloyd Loar, and some other men before him (I think I dropped some names here) did, when they translated conventional violin principles to the archtop guitar.

    It's a bit different (and bigger) world though, when it comes to additional electric amplification.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Ol' Fret
    ... Similar to Chanot's instruments, the pictured Molino-Mauchant guitar shows an unusual flat-arched belly without recurve, so some may be tempted to inspect them a bit closer and see, if the top was really carved and graduated. Also, the ladder-bracing is not what we would expect on a carved guitar, neither the "stop-tail" in the heart of the soundboard - though all these features together could be balanced out, and somehow work out. ...
    .
    There seems to be no doubt that the top is carved, even though the arch is not very deep. The top is not ladder braced. It has two parallel tone bars running along its length. The cross braces in the X-Ray are on the back of the guitar. I have a Levin model 335 from 1964 that has exactly the same construction but with F holes.

    The article by Panagiotis Poulopoulos describes another example of this guitar that is inscribed
    "FMolino inventeur // fabrique de Moitessier fils"

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by aquin43
    There seems to be no doubt that the top is carved, even though the arch is not very deep. The top is not ladder braced. It has two parallel tone bars running along its length. The cross braces in the X-Ray are on the back of the guitar. I have a Levin model 335 from 1964 that has exactly the same construction but with F holes.

    The article by Panagiotis Poulopoulos describes another example of this guitar that is inscribed
    "FMolino inventeur // fabrique de Moitessier fils"

    Ah, thanks for this! X-ray as a summation image is always a bit tricky to read without additional visual inspection or examination.

    There is no doubt that Francois Chanot and Molino/Mauchant/Moitessier were open-minded and up to something new, at least something different to the main stream. After all, Chanot was a teacher of Vuillaume; the latter was one of the most influential violin makers of his period. Of the trio Chanot - Savart - Vuillaume was only Vuillaume commercially successful; now we have to add Francesco Molino.

    So why had Chanot-style instruments almost no impact on the players' scene? What are the downsides of that design? Does Poulopoulos give answers in his article? Or was it simply the usual wretched conservativism of many stringed archtop instrument players, that we still find today?

  8. #7
    Poulopoulos points out three things. Musical conservatism, the fact that the design was not patented and so could be easily copied, spreading the initial profits too thinly and also the probable price of the instruments which he estimates as costing up to four times as much as a top grade flat top guitar at the time.

  9. #8

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    Thanks, aquin43!

    Patent law has always been tricky. The modern French patent system was created during the Revolution in 1791. Patents were granted without examination since inventor's right was considered as a natural one, and patent costs were very high (from 500 to 1500 francs). Though the French patent law was revised in 1844 - patent cost was lowered and importation patents were abolished, it didn't seem to have changed much, if you follow the almost lifelong disputes that Adolphe Sax, who patented his invention of the saxophone in 1846, had to suffer.

    Yes, the cost of making a carved archtop vs. a flat-top guitar are high - it wasn't a big problem for Loar and the Gibson business men at the right moment ... Eddie Lang, Maybelle Carter, and others.
    The guitar evolution moved up a gear after country, western and folk music got popular ... C. F. Martin, the steel string guitar...
    The real thing started at the beginning of the 20th century, in North America with the upcoming of Minstrel shows, blues, early jazz music; in Europe with Vaudeville and the Wandervogel movement. Til today the majority of classical guitarists sticks to flat-top guitars and nylon strings.