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Just because the experience of an individual varies from a trend doesn't make the trend a myth.
- Most solid, carved top guitars have a better acoustic sound than most plywood guitars. How much the acoustic sound of the instrument will contribute to what you wish to deliver to the end listener will vary.
- You can play jazz on anything. However an archtop often sounds good without much effort while a tele/strat requires some serious coaxing for a pleasing jazz tone. There are many who fail attempting the latter.
- Picks and strings matter. They won't make you good or bad player but they do contribute significantly to how you sound.
- There are pickups that are poor in all applications. There are pickups that are not as good others for what most people consider a nice jazz tone. There are pickups that almost everyone likes.
- I don't know about poly vs nitro in terms of tone, but I do know nitro is easy to repair which is not a mythical requirement on occasion
To me the biggest myth in jazz guitar is 'you get what you pay for'. It should be true, but at least as it applies to the low cost and moderate cost markets, it isn't.
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06-20-2014 09:18 PM
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"You can play jazz on anything. However an archtop often sounds good without much effort while a tele/strat requires some serious coaxing for a pleasing jazz tone. There are many who fail attempting the latter."
Hmm? IME an archtop does yield a decent jazz tone easily--or it isn't a good archtop. However, a decent Telecaster also yields a good jazz tone pretty easily. I have never had trouble getting a good jazz tone out of a Tele on the neck position (maple or rosewood neck). They are surprisingly versatile guitars. Many Les Pauls are also good jazz guitars in the neck position. I used to use a Les Paul Custom with a Fender Pro Reverb--it sounded quite good for jazz. The Telecaster is better, still.
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IMHO if it sounds good to your ears and feels good in your hand that should be enough...
Audience don't care about the value or brand of gear ...only musician's pride does!!!
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Wow, old thread. I could not figure out my [more] bizarre [than usual] comments early in the thread, but it seems they were in reaction to various troll posts that have long since been deleted.
Surely after all the jazz that has been played on pretty much every guitar type made, it is hard to declare a given sub-type of archtop to be the only jazz guitar.
And I'd still want a modest guitar with a great setup over a finer guitar that had a more typical setup.
Chris
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I have some things to add.
Those of us who bought and sold vintage guitars in the last century were mostly at the mercy of dealers. So unless you held the guitar a good bit of the time, you typically sold it for half what you paid. Today, with Internet sales, it is a lot easier to get what you paid for the guitar. So buying and selling vintage guitars is not that expensive a hobby.
Every time I buy a new guitar, I play twice as much for a month or so. Usually with a step up in proficiency. Also, I usually learn a little bit that makes me a smarter buyer next time. So if you are not being stupid about it, the hobby has some intangible benefits, at least for me.
I make it a rule of thumb to try to avoid paying four figures for a guitar that is not clean and original. Acoustic archtops with repaired cracks are not fixed. You still see them, they will bother you. And it is one more thing you have to explain when you sell it. Wait for a no issues guitar at that price point, they pop up from time to time.
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I like the quote I recently read by either Eric Gale or Earl Klugh...I can't recall which...I should have saved the page...they're being interviewed and a question is asked why do you play archtops exclusively. The response was very close to this:
Originally Posted by Spook410
"Of course I play archtops exclusively...does a violinist play solid flat bottomed violins?"
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"Wait for a no issues guitar at that price point, they pop up from time to time." This is sage advice. I have never had problems selling a no-issues guitar--at profit. "Players" need to be _deeply_ discounted. Then, you will need to deeply discount them on the turn-around.
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Not sure why it would take serious effort to get good tone out of a solid body such as a tele than a carved archtop. There does tend to be an element of carved jazz archtop is better than laminate archtop is better than solid body. The prices stack up in that direction too so I hope younger players, who generally have less disposable income don't feel too bad about themselves.
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Duplicate deleted
Last edited by Chimera1to1; 06-26-2014 at 09:35 AM.
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Hi Chimera,
In my opinion it is not a matter of "tone" with a solid body, but rather the dynamic envelope of the sound.
I hear many examples of perfectly fine and easily varied tone from a Tele, but the attack, decay, and harmonic content variation throughout the note duration is radically different on a solid body. There have been sone notable attempts to address this. The somewhat weird Princess Something-or-other guitars are solid bodied, yet are better than one would expect in term of a less sterile dynamic envelope.
But much as I would not wear Crocs of Capri Pants, I would not want the Princess Whom-so-ever guitar. But I think there is considerable room available for development of thinner, lighter planks that do not acoustically sound like a hollowbody - yet they capture the characteristic dynamic envelope character when played amplified.
I can feel a new axe coming on one of these days along such lines,...
Chris
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I think it requires more effort to get a good jazz tone out of a solidbody if you have a narrow scope of what a good jazz tone is.
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The hardest part about getting a jazz tone from a solidbody is in taming the sustain. The only way to do it easily is to use big flatwound strings so it goes thud. Granted, it's a pleasant thud but it lacks the air, bounce, and resonance of a hollowbody thud.
I like Teles very much, own a couple, and enjoy Bickert's playing, etc., so no need to "school" me. I just think a new player should become familiar with these differences before choosing an instrument.
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Again, seems like we're confusing "good jazz tone" and "traditional jazz tone."
A traditional jazz tone is A good jazz tone, not THE good jazz tone.
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I'll just go out and say it: I dislike Ed Bickert's tone. It's boring and I don't consider it good jazz tone. I don't particularly enjoy listening to electric bass (vs upright bass) either. But it all comes down to personal preference...some just prefer an archtop's tone. No myth there, just personal preferences.
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A tone can be boring? That's a new one to me.
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Hmm, maybe "bland" is more appropriate.
Uh oh, I think I just heard a car screech up...I think the Canadian Jazz Police are after me for my blasphemous comment!
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Mr. B is correct that my post referred to a traditional jazz tone. Obviously, if one wants, one can copy Mike Stern's tone or Krantz or Tim Miller or any of the other dudes who mix it up and roll their own on solidbody guitars.
I also agree on Bickert's tone being bland. It does lack the depth and nuance of an archtop - it's kind of one dimensional. That doesn't stop me from enjoying his great, fluid, creative playing, but for pure guitar tone nirvana, I'd pick a different artist.
Purely personal taste, it all is...
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I would be remiss if I did not mention that some players get crazy awesome jazz tone from solid body guitars...I just don't consider Mr. Bickert to be one of them, though I too love his playing (I only have like 6 of his albums!!). Guys like Stern are going for something completely different, and that's cool.
I loaned my guitar teacher my old solid body guitar for a couple months after his was stolen, and he used it on a gig here in town with, essentially, the first-call players. He killed it on the gig. Unreal playing and unreal tone, but he was using a big tube amp. Another guy in town also gets a tone I really enjoy out of his tele - he uses a Twin Reverb. None of these guys (in my very small sample size) are using sub-25lb portable rigs. My teacher now has a new fender tele with regular single-coil pickup, 11 gauge round strings and a medium pick. He gets a fantastic sound through his tube amp with 12" speaker. Somehow he gets it to sound a bit "woody" in ways I did not think possible through that set-up.
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that brought back some memories. Originally Posted by Archie
My teacher plays an old Ibanez archtop, and sounds like John Scofield. I have a Gibson ES135, and sound like Tom Fogarty. When my teacher plays my guitar, guess what? He sounds like John Scofield.
when I was young I was fortunate enough to scrape up enough dough to buy an L-5 for $900.
soon after I began studying w/ a guy that played a Guild X-500, and he sounded great on it.
so I foolishly went to a music store and tried to trade the L-5 for an X-500 thinking that was the answer.
the store owner said fine but I think you're crazy, an L-5 is THE guitar to play if you want to play jazz.
another customer in the shop overheard the conversation and said he'd go home and bring back his X-500 to trade me if I wanted.
I hung on to the L-5 and realized that if you can't play, no guitar will sound good in your hands.
that L-5 is long gone [poorly set neck angle that kept wanting to pull the bridge to the side]
but I've played and still play L-5's to this day.
sorry if this has no pertainance to this thread....
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Wow, good stuff! What I've learned........what you get out of your guitar is gonna be dependent on why you got a guitar in the first place.
What my experience has been........
The "old timey" thing. In 1978 I bought a 1972 Les Paul Custom(the black beauty). And those with the old timey fetish ragged on me for buying a modern as opposed to a classic Les Paul. I sold it in 1984 for 50% more then I paid for it. And 30 years later it's now considered a "classic" and have seen one that sold for $4500. Why did I buy it??? The price was right..........that and a hot rodded Twin Reverb for $1200 and I was playing jam sessions and bar bands. Why I sold it........it was a tool for a trade I no longer practiced.
My latest guitar is an inexpensive Ibanez AF75. I wanted something that sounded good acoustically and amplified, with a sound that I've come to associate with that "jazz tone". It does and amplified, it does it thru a simple SS Crate 15 watt amp. I wanted something that I could play with, without the onus of large amounts of money being wasted if I screwed the pooch. I wanted something that had that classic jazz guitar visual appeal. This weekend I will find out if what I have changed has been a plus or a minus. I also wanted something inexpensive because my wife bought it for me(I wanted to have sex again in this lifetime).
And yes, I realize that I won't ever make a silk purse out of this particular sow's ear. But I'm not looking too. What I want is a good leather wallet.
One of the most important things I've learned...............what I like and want are not the same as what others like and want. If you like collecting vintage guitars, then that's your thing, for me post some pics (I love guitar pron). If you like playing....whatever.......I got no skin in the game(Post some pics, I love guitar pron). If you like to share and brag about your toys.......well, hell I do too.......so I'm definitely down for that(but I love guitar pron, so please PICTURES).
Oh, did I mention, I love guitar pron.........and man have I seen some fabulous guitars here.
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So on the topic of solid bodies and jazz tone..
Do we have to qualify what we mean by 'jazz tone'? IMHO, not really. If something other than 'traditional' is intended, that qualifier would need to be included. I don't think most think of a Tele when they think of 'jazz tone'.
Do archtops create this generally held idea of what a jazz tone is more readily than a solid body? Yes. They do.
Are there always exceptions, constraints, and interesting detours? Sure. And folks are always noting these as if they somehow repudiate the basic idea. However, they don't. They are just exceptions.
I think if I were going to identify a broadly held myth in regards to archtops and jazz I would go the other way. Not that solid bodies are differnt-but-equivalent to archtops for playing jazz, but that archtops do a broad array of things very well and to limit them to jazz unnecessarily constrains their great flexibility.Last edited by Spook410; 06-26-2014 at 08:57 PM.
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IMHO, I think the whole elitist carved archtop = jazz guitar better than anything else betrays some really interesting thoughts going on.
Jazz's sociable societal roots and the use of standards facilitates group playing, with improvisation providing a sense of performance for the audience based around the knowledge and abilities of the performing musician, as opposed to the composer-centric musically scored orchestral music of historical Europe. The notion that an acoustic archtop guitar is the best instrument for a raucous riskee musical genre characterised by loud acoustic brass instruments rather ignores the historical need to amplify the guitar so it had parity of volume with the other performers. Having amplified the instrument, it then had to have the acoustic nature dampened down to prevent it from feeding back. This was achieved by thicker fronts, laminated fronts and semi or solid bodies. They were radically changed to overcome their inherent deficiencies for the popular music of the time. They developed into different instruments because they didn't perform as needed.
The carved archtop's stomping ground is within the sanitised, rarified, white version of jazz that is the solo chord melody type performance and in this role they excel. As guitarists we are exposed to this type of playing and accept it into the genre of jazz guitar but I am not sure non-guitarists would see it the same way and would probably categorise it more closely to classical guitar or an orchestral performance. The carved archtop is a niche instrument within the niche of jazz guitar within the niche of jazz.
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I'd bet a lot of the g2p2 (general guitar playing public) would associate the sound of a laminate jazzbox--like a 175, with a traditional jazz tone over the sound of a carved top instrument.
As for bickert, he wasn't concerned with making that tele sound like an archtop...he used pretty light strings and used the sustain to his advantage...his playing sometimes reminds me of an electric piano.
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>>> I'd bet a lot of the g2p2 (general guitar playing public) would associate the sound of a laminate jazzbox--like a 175, with a traditional jazz tone over the sound of a carved top instrument.
Definitely agreed. I also think many a dentist or collector goes to buy their big $$ carved archtop only to wonder why it sounds to them like and Ovation Adamas.
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