Is it an Archtop or a Telecaster? A listening Challenge.

[TLerch]

General,
read few post up. for gear info

[TLerch]

Great playing Tim. Besides the close mic and low volume would it be fair to say that most of the playing wasn't on the bottom 2 strings and since there weren't more chords played it favored a more similar sound between lead takes. One could hear a slight difference in some and more in others if the sequence was repeated but would it have been more obvious if a chord melody had been played, something along the lines of a Joe Pass solo performance with chords and solos in the mix?

I can try to do another with solo guitar style and we will all be able to hear the results, I think you might be right though. since the archtops respond differently to right hand fingers.
Tim

[Generalmojo]

Don't know how I missed that post. Very interesting! A lot of plain G strings and round wounds! This is a very cool video. Thanks for making. I've already shared with some friends to challenge them and have a feeling I'll be showing this to students and more friends for some time.


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[Naquat]

I can try to do another with solo guitar style and we will all be able to hear the results, I think you might be right though. since the archtops respond differently to right hand fingers.
Tim

You get a great sound out of the solid body guitars that most wouldn't associate with a "jazz sound" until they hear you play. Nice job.

[jazzbow]

Tim, such fantastic playing.

I especially like the clip with the Epi Emp Reg & Lollar CC. Love the even tone and the ease at which those notes flowed.

Thanks.

Regards

Roy

[Ol' Fret]

Wow, great testing and playing - and a very nice sound! It's convincing to see your point, that solid body guitars "set-up for jazz", can get very, very close to the sound of archtop guitars. Basically, I agree with this notion, except for the last four or five percent that even the most sophisticated solid body cannot pull off, in direct comparison. It's these four or five percents why some luthiers made/make huge efforts with archtop guitars.

There's no commonly accepted base concerning the description of sound or aspects of sound, so each initially serious debate is condemned to failure. Hence, just some own thoughts - not claiming they were universally valid or even scientifically or whatever... they're expressly not:

- The solid body guitar has at most a '90/10%' sound, i.e. 90 percent of what we hear is transmitted by the electric proportion (i.e., the construction of the guitar, the pickups and the amp). About ten percent are radiated by the vibrating strings and the woods, corresponding to what you can hear when you play the solid body unplugged). If you dial around your pickup and amp (reverb, equalizer, etc.), depending on the particular venue, you might be able to push this proportion up to maybe '85/15%', but not essentially higher.

- The archtop guitar is a much more tricky beast, since an archtop is not an archtop.
By far most of the archtop guitars on the market are electric archtop guitars. These guitars were constructed and made for electric playing, despite their still inherent acoustic properties. If you play them unplugged you'll get a decent volume and a halfway nice tone, but, similar to solid bodies, the electric archtops never come to full life and tone before they get plugged in. In some cases that difference is more striking than with others. It's what I call the iconic '80/20%' jazz guitar sound. Maybe you're able to push this up to a '70/30%' or even '60/40%' proportion, but that's more or less the end of the road for most electric archtop guitars.
The reason, why this iconic jazz guitar sound became the state of the art during the last fifty years, varies: First, it's what most jazz guitar heroes appreciated in the past. Second, it has been most satisfying and profitable for the guitar industry and the dealer network: the former didn't have much to struggle with working out the recurve or a marked, time-consuming graduation on the carved plates, etc. And the consistency of the archtops made by different hands of a company gained from developments like the (set) humbucker that have been able to level out naturally existing differences of archtop guitars. Then, the mass development of laminated guitar bodies did the rest...

Undoubtedly, the '80/20%' or so, jazz guitar sound became the sound most of us are used to. It's not too far away from the jazz-related solid body sound, and, IMO, that's what your test is proving. Of course, your playing is flavored by your own voice and musical ideas/contributions, so we better call it the Tim Lerch - Lollar pickups signature jazz sound. Again, it is great, and I can see why so many guitarists like it. But it's not the only imaginable archtop sound, and some exceptional guitars do exist, that surpass the intrinsic constructional sound limit set by solidbodies and - to a smaller extent - the electric archtop guitar concept. D'Angelicos with DeArmonds 1000/1100 come first to my mind.

Then, there's the limitation and general uncertainty of any recordings and sound clips, which never can take the place of personal testing (and feeling). I'm asking myself what would happen if the solidbodies and archtops in your test were recorded unplugged, just miked through one or two fine mics, under standard conditions to about the same volume level. And I keep wondering, when the majority of archtop guitarists is going to realize to what extent the used pickup and the amplification, in combination with certain guitar construction features, de facto influence the sound of their archtop guitar.

Once again, jazz music played on a solid body guitar, especially a Tele, can absolutely be great - as it can be on any other guitar construction or musical instrument. However, the difference between a jazz solid body and an archtop being ever so small, it is not unhearable and not insignificant for some, and in the sight or hearing of these folks justifies the disproportionately higher effort of making and playing an archtop guitar basically constructed and built for electric-acoustic playing - what I rather call the '20/80%' archtop guitar sound.


If you come across really unorthodox guitar design (not just the X-reissue of the design Y) like, for example, the Hoyer 'Fantastik', you won't believe these could play and sound like any conventional electric hollowbody archtop guitar. Well, they could - of course, depending on your skills and the used electric equipment. But a Fantastik could never be a match for a fine carved electric-acoustic archtop guitar, at least not more than the maximally attainable 95% or 96%:
- Schlaggitarren.de – Diverses (scroll down for some English text). An American publication wrote about these guitars in 1960: "... produce[s] a distinct, resonant tone that is especially effective in solos... has been put into production, costing about fourty percent more than an ordinary high-quality guitar. It is made of maple and pinewood."

[Herbie]

One remarkable detail which delighted me was the great jazz sound with Lollar Gold Foil pu. I understand that they are mostly considered as Ry Cooder -pickups but I had a pair of them in a parts-Mustang and loved their personal sound a lot.

They have everything: the bite, the bottom and the mids just where they belong. Musical compression. Very friendly and attracting response. In fact I almost laughed every time I played the gtr with them!

In the end I decided to investigate more the Gretsch type sounds and changed the Gold Foils to some filtertrons. Not bad either!

[PaulHintz]

Thanks Tim! Great examples of fine tone and fine playing. And a testimonial to the impressive powers of the Henriksen Bud. I've been the lucky owner of a Bud since last April and I don't believe I'll ever buy another amp. Everything sounds good through it, and of course it's sized right for an aging part-time solo-gigging guitarist.
Now I gotta go get my Tele-style guitar out and play for awhile...

[Marty Grass]

This is a classic thread!

[Robertito]

Tim, thank you for posting - I enjoyed all of the examples, and although they do all sound distinctive, your personality came through clearly in each one, uniting them. Well done, sir!

[RUKelly]

Ditto... Tim teles are my favorites!