Modern Design Carved Archtops

[deacon Mark]

What about the shape of the F holes here are a modern Ted Megas and a modern Ribbecke

Attachment 127786

Attachment 127787

Ted Megas makes wonderful guitars and I like that one in particular. The f holes are perfect for the total picture of his guitars. He build sound and I wish I had one but not many around.

[SierraTango]

Pretty sure esteemed forum member Mark Kleinhaut plays a Ribbecke I can't remember the model. I've had a chance to play a Ribbecke and it was outstanding. It wasn't the model that Mr. Kleinhaut plays but a more traditional F-hole instrument. His work seems to be a bit under the radar.
I've always thought Mark K had great tone-of course he is a great player!

Someday My Prince Will Cime

[Rickco]

" A 15" thin bodied hollow bodied archtop with a short scale full neck profile (say '59 or so) that is affordable (varying definitions of affordability here) seems to be relatively uncommon."
For me this is the biggest conundrum, If the necks not comfortable then everything else is irrelevant. Finding the neck that fits you on the body you want in a time when theres less chance of finding one and trying it out is tough. I wanted the neck from my 175 ('74 mahogany) on a smaller carved body. Several guitars got close but it took a luthier built custom instrument to bring it home ( affordability...?) the catch is if I knew that first and hadnt gone through a lot of almosts my ultimate cost would have been the same but...without the prior purchases I wouldnt know that.

[Archie]

Archtop guitars are not violins at all in design. They have no soundpost that connects the back to the top like a violin. The archtop guitar has a solid back that is supposed to stop sound and throw it back out through the top and f holes. Violins are bowed and this changes the picture too in terms of everything. So as Bill Barker once said you don't compare violins with archtop guitars, but they have some similarity's, just not that much to be building guitars based on violin sound principles.

This my personal ear but not everyone agrees. I have personally never found an archtop guitar with another sound hole that is not like, an f hole to be as good. I find the sound of the traditionally placed f hole to be by far the best. Played a number of round hole archtops but they have never been better than f holes in sound. I say that too about other makers who have put them in odd places. This is not what many who have these guitars think and hear but it is my ears, and I rely on them first.

When I bought my first D'angelico NY in 1981 the fellow had at his house another D'angelico that had a round hole very rare. This fellow loved the guitar and was never going to part with it. I found the f hole D'angelico much better it terms of sound and focus. I might add this player is a top-notch jazz guitarist of highest caliber. He also happened to like the Django style stuff so maybe the round hole made more sense and impression on his ears. I know one thing for sure I was only 20 years old he was maybe around 30 but could play rings around me any day of the week. He actually lived with Lenny Breau for a while was about the only player who could keep up with him.

I recently bought my first 'sound port' guitar and acoustically it blows anything else I've got away. Of course one example doesn't make the rule but it has changed the way I see archtop design.
As I've said before, the f-hole is not for the guitarist, it's for the audience. The sound port if for the player.
Why build guitars for an audience that isn't there 95% of the time? In many cases 100% of the time.
All that sound you're giving away when it could be directed at you!

[Rickco]

I recently bought my first 'sound port' guitar and acoustically it blows anything else I've got away. Of course one example doesn't make the rule but it has changed the way I see archtop design.
As I've said before, the f-hole is not for the guitarist, it's for the audience. The sound port if for the player.
Why build guitars for an audience that isn't there 95% of the time? In many cases 100% of the time.
All that sound you're giving away when it could be directed at you!

Ive really thought about doing that to one of my guitars (or having it done) but cant quite make the move, the guitar in question is an L5 very nice acoustic Im not planning on selling it so resale doesnt matter add to that some very highly praised guitars have them now so it would improve an already excellent instrument. So would anyone here consider doing that to one of their best irreplaceable guitars? What would MC or BT do?

[floatingpickup]

Ive really thought about doing that to one of my guitars (or having it done) but cant quite make the move, the guitar in question is an L5 very nice acoustic Im not planning on selling it so resale doesnt matter add to that some very highly praised guitars have them now so it would improve an already excellent instrument. So would anyone here consider doing that to one of their best irreplaceable guitars? What would MC or BT do?

Don’t do it!!!

[Rgblutone]

Yes, there are indeed some clear differences.
As mentioned by other members of this forum, classifying guitars (and luthiers) is never an easy task. Still, in my very personal (and therefore debatable) view, the archtop world can roughly be divided into four main groups:

1. Vintage Gibsons
2. Vintage D’Angelicos
3. Modern Gibsons and luthiers drawing inspiration from their design and tone
4. Contemporary archtop builders, such as Monteleone, Mirabella, Parker, Wells, Ribbecke, and others

Within each of these categories, you’ll encounter striking variations in both sound and price, so the best way to understand them is always to play and compare in person.
That said, I would dare to say that modern archtops, in general, offer greater versatility.

That's not true at all, there's more than four basic categories of archtops, there's the whole world of European archtops, which would have at least three categories themselves.

[bluejaybill]

Don’t do it!!!

Agree, there goes the value of the guitar, and the structural integrity!

Get one custom built with a sound hole if it's important to you.

Anyway I doubt that folks like MC would do it.

[Cunamara]

" A 15" thin bodied hollow bodied archtop with a short scale full neck profile (say '59 or so) that is affordable (varying definitions of affordability here) seems to be relatively uncommon."
For me this is the biggest conundrum, If the necks not comfortable then everything else is irrelevant. Finding the neck that fits you on the body you want in a time when theres less chance of finding one and trying it out is tough. I wanted the neck from my 175 ('74 mahogany) on a smaller carved body. Several guitars got close but it took a luthier built custom instrument to bring it home ( affordability...?) the catch is if I knew that first and hadnt gone through a lot of almosts my ultimate cost would have been the same but...without the prior purchases I wouldnt know that.

The necks on my 2005 ES-175 and my 1981 GB10 are almost identical. The ES-175 is just a trace more full, the GB10 has larger frets and is a little easier to play (and the Gibson is really easy to play). They are my favorite necks. The GB10 is short scale and 14 3/4" wide. Not carved but mine has surprisingly good acoustic sound and sounds great amplified. It's the readily available guitar that would meet the desires of most folks in the market for a smaller archtop. You do need to spend some time understanding the interaction of the quite hot pickups, knobs and the amp to access the huge tonal range available- it's got more range than my ES-175. I always feel like a shill talking about these. If I only had one guitar, the GB10 would be it.

[Rickco]

Agree, there goes the value of the guitar, and the structural integrity!

Get one custom built with a sound hole if it's important to you.

Anyway I doubt that folks like MC would do it.

I doubt I will do it but, why would it impact the structural integrity? your right about resale but from a practical point of view (philosophically) if the work was done well and the acoustic advantage works for the player why isn't it a "better" guitar for the owner. If the O.P. is asking about modern archtops wouldnt that be a desirable feature? So let me ask another way, if I had a guitar made by Mark that I loved and down the road thought the extra sound hole desirable, would it be wrong to ask him to do the modification and in that case would it lower the value or increase it (theoretically) since it was done by him. I bring this up as I have recently acquired a very desirable prewar in great shape heavily modified but the work done by a luthier, I thought "what nut would do that to this guitar!" and it sat for years, I started looking at it again and realized that if I took its stature off the table the mods actually worked quite well for me and the owner was having to practically give it away. So in the end I got an amazing guitar modified in a way no-one would consider because of its mods/improvements which for me actually increase its value. This is just food for thought, I could also shut up and play.

[bluejaybill]

I’m not an expert, but I would think that if you want the sound hole (I would find that very useful with my hearing) that it would have to be built that way from the start. Maybe reinforced differently. Cutting an hole after the fact sounds dicey.

The value proposition- take it from me, who has done some ill- advised modifications, not usually a good idea, we often end up selling a guitar that we thought we’d be buried with. If Mark C did it to one of his own, he would know that it was structurally sound, so maybe not such a bad thing. On something like an L5 definitely you would be losing value. IMHO etc.

[Archie]

Ive really thought about doing that to one of my guitars (or having it done) but cant quite make the move, the guitar in question is an L5 very nice acoustic Im not planning on selling it so resale doesnt matter add to that some very highly praised guitars have them now so it would improve an already excellent instrument. So would anyone here consider doing that to one of their best irreplaceable guitars? What would MC or BT do?

The sound port is a replacement of the F-hole. You can buy guitars with both but my thinking is that if you design an archtop with just the sound port in mind, you can built a completely different archtop.
If anyone has a better understanding of this then please correct me but cutting f-holes in the top of an domed plate, where downwards pressure is applied, can only seriously weaken the integrity of the structure. Thus a plate is thicknessed and braced with that in mind. If you do not create this problem in the first place, by not cutting any F-holes, what type of plate can you design?

So no, I don't believe taking an inferior structure and trying to make it ‘better’, is the right way to go. You’ll still be left with the inferior structure underneath your addition.
Start from first principles and go from there. In this case, there are no F-holes.

That being said, I think yes, adding a sound port will increase the quality of the sound you receive from your guitar by driving it towards you but; it won’t improve the acoustic quality of the guitar. It will still be an f-hole guitar, with the requisite thickness and bracing for such.

Whether one is better is subjective but I think you can make an argument that an archtop plate, made without the intrusive and subtractive addition of f-holes, has the potnetial to be a batter carrier of sound/vibration etc..

**What bluejaybill said

[SOLR]

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S

[Spook410]

I have sound ports on most of my Yunzhi and Wu archtops and I'm a fan. They do make a big difference from the players perspective. However, can't bring myself to have someone cut holes in any of my other acoustic guitars. Not sure why.

[SOLR]

another view from LHT guitars

[dconeill]

... Let me pose the slightly more updated version: Bailey or Jennifer?

Who?

[Cunamara]

The sound port is a replacement of the F-hole. You can buy guitars with both but my thinking is that if you design an archtop with just the sound port in mind, you can built a completely different archtop.

If anyone has a better understanding of this then please correct me but cutting f-holes in the top of an domed plate, where downwards pressure is applied, can only seriously weaken the integrity of the structure. Thus a plate is thicknessed and braced with that in mind. If you do not create this problem in the first place, by not cutting any F-holes, what type of plate can you design?

Ken Parker detailed this on his YouTube channel.

[GuyBoden]

Ken Parker detailed this on his YouTube channel.

Yes, Ken Parker (RIP) did an excellent series of videos on youtube:

Arched Plates:

[CliffR]

another view from LHT guitars

Do you own an LHT guitar? I was sorely tempted by a beautiful red one at Dream Guitars, but it sold just a week before I came into some money.