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Hi all,
I just became a member after years of passively following discussions on the forum.
What motivated me to actively join the discussion is my recent purchase of a Martin 000-17sm, a beautifully understated 12-frets-to-the-body flat top. This is basically my first quality acoustic guitar having played for most of my life (I started when I was 6).
My main guitars have been archtops and telecasters. I had never cared much for flat tops, probably because of their mere niche existence in jazz. However, I recently stumbled upon this guitar and was intrigued by it. Its wide neck, lack of access to upper frets, long scale and somewhat high action (in comparison to a well setup electric guitars) made it a little challenging at first, but the sound, sustain and sensitivity to touch lured me in.
Having spent some hours with it, it feels very comfortable now. I feel I just realized what a steel string guitar was always supposed to be. It's so pure yet versatile and responsive, everything else (pickups, cutaways, amps) suddenly feel like cheap gimmicks
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It also makes me play more polyphonic textures, perhaps because it feels a little like a classical guitar, and thus makes me appreciate the fundamentals of harmony and voice leading anew.
Well, I just wanted to share that. Apart from all the (somewhat pointless) discussions on types of fingerboard woods on electric guitars, Seth Lover vs Antiquities vs Lollars, Sadowsky vs Collings etc. (in which I love to participate), a good and simple acoustic guitar can show you what a bloody guitar is meant to be.
Cheers
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10-26-2019 01:47 PM
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Steel string flat tops have a secret role in jazz: they are sometimes used in New Orleans style and big band recordings to bring an acoustic, "fruity" flavor to guitar comping. How widespread this is, I don't know. Mic'ed from a close distance, they stand in for an acoustic archtop, which would be more authentic and percussive but is becoming increasingly rare.
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Nice to meet you, congratulations on your Martin.
About half of my guitars are small-bodied flat tops.
You have good taste!
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the great hungarian guitarist gabor szabo used a martin flat top...played with chico hamilton, charles lloyd, paul desmond...many solo albums..and cut breezin before benson
cheers
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I had one of these for about a year. Very cool guitar for modern jazz. Adam Levy plays one (among many). I ultimately sold it for a waterloo to satisfy my flattop needs with a more traditional tone. However, this tone and this style of playing were what originally attracted me to it. This isn't the same guitar, but it's a very similar build.
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See you that and raise 'ya...
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My first electric was one of my first acoustics. I could just barely afford one of those De'Armond round-hole pickups. And where do you think I got that idea? Thanks Gabor!
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I still have one of those DeArmond pickups lying around. I used it in a Gibson J45 back in the 70s and early 80s. That J45 is not a great guitar, but it was okay for several years. I still have it, but don't often use it.
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Sherly Bailey recorded duo album with the acoustic guitar:
Johnathan Kreisberg also has jazz recordings where he plays acoustic guitars.
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A nice flattop is a wonderful thing. 
And contra the case with an archtop, the player gets the best seat in the house! 
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While a typical dreadnought with its boomy bass and bell-like treble makes one want to play Dueling Banjos or Tennessee Stud more than ATTYA or Misty (at least it does for me), many flattops sound great for jazz. My only FT currently is a Voyage-Air travel guitar--great flattop as well as a great travel guitar--and it even works fine in the jazz context.
I've not tried a smaller Martin, but Taylors in particular have a mellow, balanced sound.
I thought Joe Pass recorded some with a flattop--I know he recorded with a 12-string and with a nylon-string, not sure about a traditional flattop though. But a Guitar Player article has this interesting info: "Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey into a working-class family, who later relocated to Johnstown, PA., where Pass’ father, perhaps the real hero of this story, went to work in the steel mills and coal mines. Mariano Passalaqua was so determined to see his son not follow in his footsteps that he bought Joe a $17 Harmony flat-top steel-string acoustic for his ninth birthday and forced him to practice for six hours every day for the next several years. Needless to say, Pass got good fast, and three years later, the Harmony was replaced by an 00-42 Martin, which he fitted with a DeArmond pickup. That guitar served him well beyond his first gig at 14 with Tony Pastor’s band, where he got to improvise on tunes like “Honeysuckle Rose” and “I Got Rhythm,” and apply on the bandstand the stuff he was learning from Charlies Parker and Christian, Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, and pianist Art Tatum. At 16, Pass switched to a Gibson ES-150 sporting a Charlie Christian pickup and found his sound."
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This cut of Gabor does not sound bad but clearly sounds far from ideal. I am just not a fan of the sound and they attack/decay that a flattop has in jazz setting.
Originally Posted by neatomic
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I'm glad a flattop has filled a need for the OP. I keep thinking of how easy my gear searches would've been if flattops worked for what myself and others wanted to do. But somewhere along the line, it was reasonable for me to conclude that if flattops really did work for jazz, then from day one, more guys would've been using them.
I figured it wouldn't take long for someone here to mention Gabor Szabo, and it didn't. But when you try to find another ten flattop players to mention, you'll struggle. Tommy Emmanuel, uh - .
And your money goes further with a flattop than an archtop too. So at some point you have to rightfully conclude that since the beginning, despite the economic struggles of jazz players, the majority of players still preferred archtops over flattops for jazz . There must be and are reasons for this, and with a little digging those reasons can be found.
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Lots of people use flattops for jazz (Metheny, Kenny Burrell, Kevin Eubanks, Larry Carlton, Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin, to name a few off the top of my head), but usually as another color. I almost don't even count Gabor Zsabo because his was in effect an electric guitar. Originally Posted by Dennis D
I agree, though that's it's difficult to get one to sit well in the mix of a jazz group, while maintaining an acoustic-like sound. The high strings lose out to cymbals, they don't sustain enough, and feedback is even more difficult to manage than with an archtop. But, in a quiet setting it can be a really nice sound.
John
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I always thought the flattop issue was the bass - -it'd just boom and drown out the mids, with no separation....... Originally Posted by John A.
........yes the guys who sometimes played Ovations ( Coryell, McLaughlin ) liked the fact that these gave them an acoustic, more even sound, and took out that bass boom.....
Yes, no ??......
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as per gabor...who cares if 10 other guitar players don't use flat tops?...if it works for you..thats all that matters...it worked for gabor..and yes even tho he had his trusty dearmond soundhole pup for amplification, im sure he chose the guitar because of its acoustic response time..it formed the way he played...his linear style
he was hugely influential...coryell and santana both praised him..chico hamilton has said guitar players would be lined up in front of gabor when he played with him..and chico had jim hall, john pisano and dennis budimir in his bands!!
whatever works for you should be your guide...not if its so good why wouldnt everyone else be doin it?...mclaughlin used a flatop with dearmond pup too (on one of his best early lps-extrapolation)..before ovation..and coryell used loprinzis...towner still uses flatop 12!
play dont worry..and be yourself...that's the hardest part! to trust your own uniqueness
also dont go by poorly recorded vintage szabo live utube vid i posted to judge his tone...i just posted to illustrate his use of a martin guitar for op...his studio sessions are great...listen to him on his solo lps..dreams...spellbinder...mizrab..etc etc
cheers
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That was recorded several years ago if Gabor recorded Breezin' before Benson did. Sound recording wasn't nearly as good as today either. Originally Posted by deacon Mark
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Steel stringed acoustic flattop are extremely are diverse class of instruments that can cover a wide variety of musical genres including jazz. While they can be used successfully in jazz for ensemble play, I feel they truly shine for solo play. Many flattops are designed for other musical genres like bluegrass where volume and a strong bass within an ensemble is needed (Dreadnoughts). Some others are designed for solo fingerstyle play where lush atmospheric overtones can be beneficial.
For solo jazz chord melody, I favor flattops in a variety of sizes, but made using higher damping body hardwoods like koa, maples and mahoganies over the lower damping rosewoods. The weight of their mids tend to a bit stronger and string-to-string clarity is improved as well due to shorter sustain and less overtone content. These characteristics are beneficial when moving between three and four note chords and single line play at a variety of tempos.
My $.02
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Many people used Ovations back in the day because those were pretty much the only guitars with built-in piezos and onboard preamps. Then Takamine came along in the 80s and the floodgates opened, and repair guys started figuring out how to install under-saddle pickups. But before that, it was either a mic or one of those crappy stick-on Barcus Berry things, or a soundhole magnetic, or an Ovation, which didn't sound great, but worked. And yes, boomy bass is an issue, especially with dreads; that's what I meant by sitting in the mix and feedback. Originally Posted by Dennis D
John
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One of the many "better than I deserved" guitars that's floated my boat was a Martin OM-18V.
A pal who deserves it owns it now.
He loves it for recording especially.
Can't say he plays much jazz on it but it's an excellent all-arounder, which is a theory with OM's.
Talk to Eric Schoenberg ( a Prince ) about that.
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Cool. Here is another one, without amplification: Originally Posted by omphalopsychos
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I like a good flat top, I have a couple of nice Martins (and a cheap Yamaha!). I bought them, though, when I was going through a phase of playing more acoustic music, and I really like their sound for that.
Whether one works for you for jazz depends on your particular style. If you're fingerpicking more contemporary material, or playing solo, it might be ok.
If you're trying to play bebop, or chords way up the neck, or sound like Wes, not so much.
I've experimented with monel strings, and the tone settings on the pickup system on my DC-16, which helps, but there's no getting around the more twangy, ringing, boomy sound of a dreadnaught. I'm actually kind of conflicted about even keeping them around, because I'm more tempted to play Country Roads than Round Midnight when I pick one up.
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