Total Collapse Of The Archtop Market (above $900 models)

**Doctor Jeff** · 10-01-2015, 08:35 AM

Whadya mean mutton isn't lamb??

At the risk of restating the obvious, as long as there are rare things there will be collectors. The market will correspond roughly to the economy and people's disposable incomes.

However, there are fads in collecting. Old things come into and go out of fashion. (When I was a teenager, for one example, you could hardly pay someone to drive a 60's Mustang.) And it's a really valid question if today's younger generation of millennials will value fine archtops and even Les Paul's and other solid bodies the way we, uh, middle-aged persons do.

In a similar vein, I'm amused at the attention Freddie Green, Johnny Smith and Tal Farlow among others get on this forum. I bet not one in a hundred thousand people under the age of 40 even know these guys played guitar, much less their role in jazz guitar history.

**barrymclark** · 10-01-2015, 08:45 AM

Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff

In a similar vein, I'm amused at the attention Freddie Green, Johnny Smith and Tal Farlow among others get on this forum. I bet not one in a hundred thousand people under the age of 40 even know these guys played guitar, much less their role in jazz guitar history.

I would be surprised if anyone pursuing jazz guitar, regardless of age, isn't at least marginally aware of Green. I'd think he would be part of fundamental study in the first few years. Not saying you're wrong. Just saying I would be surprised.

**Archie** · 10-01-2015, 09:22 AM

Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff

Whadya mean mutton isn't lamb??

At the risk of restating the obvious, as long as there are rare things there will be collectors. The market will correspond roughly to the economy and people's disposable incomes.

However, there are fads in collecting. Old things come into and go out of fashion. (When I was a teenager, for one example, you could hardly pay someone to drive a 60's Mustang.) And it's a really valid question if today's younger generation of millennials will value fine archtops and even Les Paul's and other solid bodies the way we, uh, middle-aged persons do.

In a similar vein, I'm amused at the attention Freddie Green, Johnny Smith and Tal Farlow among others get on this forum. I bet not one in a hundred thousand people under the age of 40 even know these guys played guitar, much less their role in jazz guitar history.

Not to break the mould but I suppose although just short of being a millennial and coming in on the tail ends of generation X, I got into Jazz at the age of 26 and I am now 35. When I was at Uni the average age would have been about 20 so yes, plenty of young people learning jazz for sure but as I said, many of them didn't care for archtops. Those of us into traditional archtops were in some ways looked down on by those who preferred what they thought was a more modern style. And of course when you start learning the post modern harmonies and arrangements of Kenny Wheeler (which is vital imo), then you hear Bill Frissel on Angel Song and suddenly your old school guitar doesn't seem so useful. In fact it starts to handicap you. I was always just a bit of a purist but on learning Bill I did buy an archtop with a a bigsby (Epiphone Elite Chet Atkins) which turned out to be the best archtop I think I've ever owned. Go figure.

If we take a generation to being every 15 years which I think is much more accurate than the 30-40 year window of generation X's, then there are at least 3 probably 4 different generations of people on this forum. The question is, and maybe a good indicator, how many people are joining the forum? I never once cared to know but it seems like a tasty bit of info in regards to the thread.

**travisty** · 10-01-2015, 10:06 AM

ATH, at the bottom of the forum main page it will tell you how many users are online now, and what and when the record was. The record was 4 days ago.

For a broader outlook, you can let google do the walking... so to speak... but that is a bit of an American idiom.

https://www.google.com/trends/explor...tz=Etc%2FGMT-8

and you can fiddle around with figuring out relative popularity.
I included terms "jazz guitar", "archtop guitar" and "jazzguitar.be"

Because use of search engines constantly increases (you don't think about it but when you put that term in the top of your iPhone safari browser rather than type in the http address, that's a search), even if the number of searches rises it can rise more slowly than the total search pie. So it declines.

Looking at this one is discouraging. Though one can take comfort that at one point in 2006, there was a time when searches for "jazz guitar" topped searches for "kim kardashian."
https://www.google.com/trends/explor...tz=Etc%2FGMT-8

But it is fun to poke around on google trends.

**Greentone** · 10-01-2015, 10:35 AM

FWIW, ATH, when I was at university 40 years ago, the views towards archtops were exactly the same. I brought an acoustic archtop and an electric archtop with me and people thought I was from the moon--oh, yeah, he's that "jazz guy." All the guitarists at my university--even the ones studying guitar--played solid bodies. In the 70s it was the Les Paul and the Stratocaster, exclusively. I even caved and bought my first Strat, trading in my electric archtop.

As I recall, it was Steve Howe, with the British Prog group "Yes," who put the archtop (an ES-175D) back up on everybody's radar. Then, the Virtuoso albums blew all of the guitar players away, and the 175 was cool with the younger set.

It could happen, again, but what will it take? Guitar survived the very synth-y 1980s...but not completely intact.

**rabbit** · 10-01-2015, 10:37 AM

Economist Steve Keen is a fellow to check out for you policy & economics folks.

Steve Keen's Debtwatch | Analysing the Collapse of the Global Debt Bubble

**Hammertone** · 10-01-2015, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by Greentone

…[]...The ineluctable long-term trend, of course, has been movement away from archtop guitars toward solid-body and semi-acoustic electric guitars. Recall that before 1950 almost _all_ electrics were archtops. 65 years later, the solid body, and to a lesser extent, the semi-acoustic has eclipsed the good old archtop. Musical tastes account for this.
Musical tastes also account for the gradual reduction in the number of electric guitars sold, overall. Music is now being crafted by people with GarageBand, FL, and other digital programs...2015's two turntables and a microphone.
No cause for alarm, though. What we do with archtop guitars is still very enjoyable and will be valid for a long, long time.

As an analogue being, I find the pleasure provided by interaction with analogue devices to be effective relief from the corrosive effects of digital life. I believe that I'm not the only one who feels this way. My analogue therapy device of choice is the acoustic archtop guitar, followed by electric guitar played through tube amplification. I also play upright bass, but that's another story, and this is not a bass forum.

I'm not worried about the future of the acoustic archtop guitar, which is just a subset of acoustic guitar (classical, steelstring flattop, and so forth). Given the relatively obscure position of the acoustic archtop within the musical universe, I see a pretty stable balance of supply and demand for decent-sounding acoustic archtops, with predictable, minor, regional price fluctuations - the number of such instruments built before the domination by the electric guitar (call it 1950, as above) slowly goes down over time, while new instruments enter the market from individual builders and small enterprises. I don't see the sky falling anytime soon.

**Stringswinger** · 10-01-2015, 02:30 PM

If the archtop market above $900 ever does seriously collapse, I am going on a buying spree.

On my wish list:

D'Angelico New Yorker
Pre 1965 Gibson L-5 (acoustic)
Pre 1965 Gibson Super 400 (Acoustic)

At current pricing, all three are a bit rich for my blood, but if the prices fall say 50% from where they are today, I am a buyer.

I would also like a Pre CBS Tele, but prices on those will have to fall 75% before I step up to the plate on that one...

I do not see a slowdown or fall in prices of these guitars as cause for alarm, I see an opportunity.

**Greentone** · 10-01-2015, 04:14 PM

Stringswinger, I'm with you...both in tastes for guitars and in hoping for prices to drop enough to make me a buyer, rather than a seller.

**Bluedawg** · 10-01-2015, 04:30 PM

I'm too old to be a millennial and too young to be a baby boomer ... or perhaps on the youngest edge of the baby boomers ...

If baby boomers aging or leaving this vail of tears results in lower guitar prices I may still be young enough to enjoy it for a decade or two before it's my turn to leave

Guess I better sell off what I can now and prepare for the bargains on the really good stuff

**Max405** · 10-01-2015, 04:56 PM

Originally Posted by ArchtopHeaven

I see early 70's blonde Johnny Smiths going for £2250

If you see another one at that price, please share it with me.
That translates to roughly $3500. Unless it has bullet holes in it and a broken neck, I'm interested!
Joe D

**nopedals** · 10-01-2015, 05:12 PM

Archtops never had the crazy jump in prices that strats and les pauls did, especially the noncut acoustics. A noncut L5 and a pre-CBS strat both went for about 4-5K in the 90s then all of a sudden the strats were 25K. Even an electric, like a 175, hasn't had crazy appreciation. I paid 3K at Southworths (ie, retail) for a '53 ES-175 circa 1997. You would probably pay 4K now for the same guitar.

I think there is a limit to how low an archtop can go because the spread between their intrinsic (what a replica would cost) and vintage prices are not so great. You can buy a pretty good replica of a '62 strat for under 1K, a tiny fraction of the cost of clean real one. On the other hand, Gibson and Guild sell replica jazz boxes that cost more than vintage models.

**jorgemg1984** · 10-01-2015, 06:11 PM

Originally Posted by Stringswinger

If the archtop market above $900 ever does seriously collapse, I am going on a buying spree.

On my wish list:

D'Angelico New Yorker
Pre 1965 Gibson L-5 (acoustic)
Pre 1965 Gibson Super 400 (Acoustic)

At current pricing, all three are a bit rich for my blood, but if the prices fall say 50% from where they are today, I am a buyer.

I would also like a Pre CBS Tele, but prices on those will have to fall 75% before I step up to the plate on that one...

I do not see a slowdown or fall in prices of these guitars as cause for alarm, I see an opportunity.

That's precisely one of the problems with deflated markets - people start expecting prices to keep going down and start delaying purchases undefently. Hope that does not happen with guitars - it's never a good sign. If it's price adjustment to actual value and not "hype value" than good.

**Stringswinger** · 10-01-2015, 06:44 PM

There is plenty of "hype" value in todays guitar market. A correction is due.

Especially as far as Vintage Strats, Teles, Les Pauls and certain Martins go......

**jorgemg1984** · 10-01-2015, 06:47 PM

I agree. I am all for asset deflation - I just hope it doesn't turn into a stagnant market for who knows how long.

**fumblefingers** · 10-01-2015, 10:20 PM

Originally Posted by ArchtopHeaven

Not to break the mould but I suppose although just short of being a millennial and coming in on the tail ends of generation X, I got into Jazz at the age of 26 and I am now 35. When I was at Uni the average age would have been about 20 so yes, plenty of young people learning jazz for sure but as I said, many of them didn't care for archtops. Those of us into traditional archtops were in some ways looked down on by those who preferred what they thought was a more modern style. And of course when you start learning the post modern harmonies and arrangements of Kenny Wheeler (which is vital imo), then you hear Bill Frissel on Angel Song and suddenly your old school guitar doesn't seem so useful. In fact it starts to handicap you. I was always just a bit of a purist but on learning Bill I did buy an archtop with a a bigsby (Epiphone Elite Chet Atkins) which turned out to be the best archtop I think I've ever owned. Go figure.

If we take a generation to being every 15 years which I think is much more accurate than the 30-40 year window of generation X's, then there are at least 3 probably 4 different generations of people on this forum. The question is, and maybe a good indicator, how many people are joining the forum? I never once cared to know but it seems like a tasty bit of info in regards to the thread.

since when could college kids afford archtops? The closest most get is a semi-hollow.

**drbhrb** · 10-02-2015, 01:11 AM

Originally Posted by fumblefingers

since when could college kids afford archtops? The closest most get is a semi-hollow.

You can get a used Ibanez or Epiphone for like $300.

**MaxTwang** · 10-02-2015, 03:04 AM

Originally Posted by fumblefingers

since when could college kids afford archtops? The closest most get is a semi-hollow.

I saved up in college for an well used ES-175. Around '82 or '83 I found one for $400 with an amp I later sold for $100. Best part was when I took the guitar apart for a cleaning, the pickups were PAF's. The guitar was much older than I or the seller thought. I still have that 175.

**Archie** · 10-02-2015, 04:41 AM

Originally Posted by Joe DeNisco

If you see another one at that price, please share it with me.
That translates to roughly $3500. Unless it has bullet holes in it and a broken neck, I'm interested!
Joe D

Sorry Joe there must have been a type o in my message, it was £3,250 that it sold for, which is still about £1,000 under value and it went round for about 3 weeks.

Nothing wrong with it in terms of cosmetics, for a 70's model it was a good looker.

**Archie** · 10-02-2015, 04:43 AM

Originally Posted by fumblefingers

since when could college kids afford archtops? The closest most get is a semi-hollow.

Haha you say that but then one of them played a 64 pink strat his dad gave him and the another had a 62 Es varitone. Left it on the train home a well from Brighton, luckily the train staff picked it up and kept it at the station, could you imagine.

If you're able to take on debts of £40,000 and study an esoteric, niche subject like Jazz, then you probably have enough money to own a nice Archtop.

**orri** · 10-02-2015, 06:48 AM

What about demand from "other" parts of the world?

In China and Brazil for instance (1st and 5th most populous countries in the world) where there is a growing middle class that has been catching up with the "western" middle class, and the number of people who "can" afford archtosp is probably rapidly increasing.
But are they interested or will they become interested?
The number of world class classical musicians from China has been increasing steadily, and I assume that the numbers of really competent (the levels slightly below "world class") classical musicians have been growing as well.
I could guess that it might have increased the demand for vintage violins. Both the top price classes as well as the few price classes below (yet expensive).
If anyone has any insights in the vintage violin market, and how demand from Asia has affected it, at least I would be very intrested if you could share with us.
( I found this article on violin price classes a while ago and found it really interesting to read: Value of violins )
Just in general, increased demand from the growing Chinese middle class is affecting prices of a lot of commodities the last few years.

And does anyone have much insight regarding interest and demand from for example Japan and South Korea, where there has been for a while a substantial middle class who can afford $900+ archtops?
Are they perhaps less interested in vintage American guitars like Gibsons and more fond of locally made archtops?

**jorgemg1984** · 10-02-2015, 07:02 AM

I have some knowledge of Brazil - first growth has stopped in the recent years and the real is now a very weak currency (again). And the jazz market is a niche and importing stuff there is incredibly expensive... so I doubt it has had any major impact on the archtop market. But who knows...

**Archie** · 10-02-2015, 07:09 AM

Originally Posted by orri

What about demand from "other" parts of the world?

In China and Brazil for instance (1st and 5th most populous countries in the world) where there is a growing middle class that has been catching up with the "western" middle class, and the number of people who "can" afford archtosp is probably rapidly increasing.
But are they interested or will they become interested?
The number of world class classical musicians from China has been increasing steadily, and I assume that the numbers of really competent (the levels slightly below "world class") classical musicians have been growing as well.
I could guess that it might have increased the demand for vintage violins. Both the top price classes as well as the few price classes below (yet expensive).
If anyone has any insights in the vintage violin market, and how demand from Asia has affected it, at least I would be very intrested if you could share with us.
( I found this article on violin price classes a while ago and found it really interesting to read: Value of violins )
Just in general, increased demand from the growing Chinese middle class is affecting prices of a lot of commodities the last few years.

And does anyone have much insight regarding interest and demand from for example Japan and South Korea, where there has been for a while a substantial middle class who can afford $900+ archtops?
Are they perhaps less interested in vintage American guitars like Gibsons and more fond of locally made archtops?

I agree, if anything as the world opens up and more cultures are exposed to Jazz, it should create quite a demand. I'de already like to go to China and open up a guitar shop.

**mispeltyoof** · 10-02-2015, 01:09 PM

Another factor that I don't think has been mentioned. If I go to a dealer I can buy a guitar with a credit card and only pay my minimum monthly payment over a number of years. If I buy from EBay or an individual seller then I have to have the cash in my account,highly unlikely,for a high level archtop.I could get a bank loan or cash on my credit card but the cost would be prohibitive. I will continue to try to off load my carved archtop at a ridiculously reduced price ASAP before its desirability becomes diminished further.

**Bluedawg** · 10-02-2015, 01:14 PM

Originally Posted by mispeltyoof

Another factor that I don't think has been mentioned. If I go to a dealer I can buy a guitar with a credit card and only pay my minimum monthly payment over a number of years. If I buy from EBay or an individual seller then I have to have the cash in my account,highly unlikely,for a high level archtop.I could get a bank loan or cash on my credit card but the cost would be prohibitive. I will continue to try to off load my carved archtop at a ridiculously reduced price ASAP before its desirability becomes diminished further.

My current credit card is interest free till next May .... I have been working hard to avoid the temptation of using it

I'm being pulled between the a new L5 Premier and a '70s Super 400 or two I've seen on the internet .... but I'm in no hurry to spend any money at the moment so I just day dream for now.