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IMHO the archtop guitar is designed to be a bright, brash instrument that can cut through a big band on stage. The dark, smoky and/or thunky archtop jazz guitar sound that we tend to think of is a recent anomaly resulting from the options present in amplification such as rolling down the treble, the fact that most guitar speakers don't reproduce any signal above 5000 Hz, etc. It is the opposite of what the instrument was intended for. The early electric jazz guitarists such as Charlie Christian, George Barnes and beboppers like Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel, etc., all had bright tones. The dark, smoky thing is really more post-bop. I trace it to Jim Hall and maybe Kenny Burrell, for the most part.
When recorded acoustically and strung with acoustic guitar strings, this becomes evident. It replaced the banjo in big bands, after all. The archtop is inherently a bright beast.
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01-04-2022 11:20 PM
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Welcome to the party - I feel like winning over someone from the nickel flatwound side is a real coup! A couple things:
Originally Posted by Stringswinger
1) Every guitar and every player is different, so there's no "right" answer as far as brand, just experimentation.
2) I'm in the seemingly smaller group of people that thing that 80/20 sound "normal", and PB sound thin and shrill. 80/20 or 85/15 have been pretty much the standard bronze formulations until the 1970's and phosphor bronze. Perhaps that historical rational was enough to convince my brain, but I'm pretty sure I always found PB strings to be artificial sounding even before I knew that factoid. But, yeah, always 80/20 for me.
3) round / hex - almost every brand is hex, so going with round core is definitely harder. I've tried both, but I never felt like I appreciated the benefits of round core enough to warrant the effort. And availability/scarcity/effort/fungibility all lead to my next point:
4) I've been using Martin SP 80/20 for over a decade now - they're great, they're cheap, and they're available almost every where.
I tried experimenting with DR strings, and dug them, but they had some serious quality control issues, and the particular variety I was using weren't sold in a single store in the Los Angeles-area, so they were basically mail-order only. I also tried the Phillipe Bossett strings Juan mentioned, but the challenge/expensive of getting them was not enough to warrant ordering a 3rd and 4th pack. I've got some GHS strings I tried, and many others...
But even I liked X brand of boutique strings, I seem to always come back to the Martins, and when I put them on, they sound great. Trust me, I'm nerd-enough that I would probably LOVE to find a brand/style of strings that I can't live with out... (I'm stuck playing Blue Chip picks because I can't go back to anything else...)
Besides just sounding good... the Martin SP 80/20 strings are really inexpensive and widely available, even worldwide. I think they might have gotten up to $7/set retail, but online they're often as cheap as $5/set. But the real killer... I buy them in bulk-sets of 25 from stringsandbeyond.com - it's pretty much 12-18 months of string changes among the 2-3 guitars I put them on (both L-5's, 1932 and 1939, and my Waterloo WL-14). And at that rate, they're UNDER $4/set. Unbeatable. And I'm somebody that really prefers a fresh set of strings - the minute that strings start to feel like they're not resonating to the best of their ability, I love to put a fresh set on. At that price, I never hesitate about a string change. And then I keep several individual packs in all of my various guitar cases in case I ever break a string or need a string change while I'm on the road. And even if I somehow was out of spare strings, they're so widely available, if there's a guitar store open, there's a great chance they've got EXACTLY what I'd want anyway.
Anyway, I could go on and on about how much I love Martin SP 80/20 strings on their own terms, and for all of those practical reasons, but it comes down to the player and the guitar. And although a 12 and 16 sound anemic to me on almost any acoustic archtop (and why I buy bulk 14's and 18's to swap in), I use the rest of a set of 12's myself, because I don't think either of my L-5's really quite that much tension to resonate fully.
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I really like Newtone Heritage strings on my 1940 Epi Deluxe. Although the string gauges I favor seem pretty heavy - .013 thru .055 - these are low tension (round core) strings and aren't difficult to play. You do have to order them directly from Newtone in England, but that wasn't much of a hassle. They arrived in a reasonable amount of time; even though I ordered them in the busy shipping season just before Christmas, I received them shortly after the holiday.
On my Eastman 910, I've been happy using Philippe Bosset Soft Brass 80-20 Light gauge strings.
Lot's of choices out there these days though, and I admit I haven't done a lot of experimenting...
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Originally Posted by campusfive
My only counterargument to your Martin SP position is that the Philippe Bosset strings are coated and tend to last longer, so the annualized price difference is not 1:1 with the cost difference of a set of strings. But I do see your point about being able to hop in and grab a set of Martins if you are in a pinch. Fortunately, the Martin and Philippe Bosset strings are the exact same gauges and feel like they are the same tension to me, so I can also grab Martins at the nearest Guitar center if need be. (Even though I always have a spare set of strings in the case). The same cannot be said for more specialized strings like the Newtone Double Wounds, which have a very different tension from most other strings I've played. If those were my primary set and I had no backup, switching to a more common set in a pinch would mean a very uncomfortable setup temporarily.
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I am basically in line with Jonathan and the 80/20 just sounds most natural to me, with the monel or pure nickel being 2nd place. Not a fan of coated strings. The martins are good, but I really like the GHS true mediums, which are similar in the idea of thicker high E and B strings and basically a light gauge set for the rest. I like to get cheap strings and change them often.
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You are certainly quite right re the historical origin, intended function and development of the archtop guitar - and I'd like to add this to the discussion: Originally Posted by Cunamara
When I use the word "bright" I do not mean the brightness of say in your typical Wes recording (watching this clip is a lot of fun : )
- no, I mean the inherent brightness of a guitar that is then exaggerated by the use of extra bright strings. When we listen to Bucky Pizzarelly, Freddy Green, Allan Reuss, Johnson, McDonough, Cress, Lang or today's Matt Munisteri or Whit Smith we hear a clear sound that is normally not drowned out by the rest of the band and it's the midrange frequencies that cut through, not the upper parts of the spectrum, right ?
Also interesting : how many medium/big bands feature a guitarist who has the opportunity to employ an acoustic archtop guitar to it's full advantage ? The guy in the Nighthawks comes to mind, James Chirillo of NYC, Jonathan Stout, who else ? Not too many I guess.
These are a few examples that illustrate what I mean by a more balanced, non-exaggerated archtop tone:
Matt Munisteri on his L5, solo :
Anthony Wilson on 4 Monteleone guitars :
I'm pretty sure that the guitars we see and hear in these clips are strung with new-ish strings but the extreme high end is attenuated and not over-bearing....
Re your comment on the tones of the first generation of electrified archtop players (after WW II) my observation is this : the tones I hear from Billy Bauer, Oscar Moore, Mundell Lowe, Chuck Wayne and countless others are anything but bright in the sense as mentioned earlier - it might have sounded brighter in the recording studio but what I hear in these vintage recordings is a smooth and more or less subdued tone, not all due to the less sophisticated machinery of the day. Grant Green had a brighter sound, as did Kessel, Ellis - my guess is that these players simply didn't turn down the tone pot on their guitars - plus : when comping most of the time a dark sound is not as practical....
Please excuse this digression from the original theme - this thing with the brightness of modern archtops is simply something that has been on my mind a lot lately. I've played a few gigs last fall where I've used my John Morton (R.I.P.) resonator guitar instead of the banjo and despite the somewhat darker tone of that instrument it was absolutely successful, not only to my own ears but my fellow musicians appreciated it also. It proved to me that the "presence" of a guitar in a band context does not necessarily depend on the amount of sizzle but more on it sitting in a frequency-window that is not so densely occupied by the other instruments.
End of monologue.
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To follow up on this, I currently have the Martin Retro 11-52s on my 17" carved top and also my flattop dreadnought. On the former they feel stiff; I am liking the amplified tone as that guitar and amp tend to be rather bassy; the reduced electric bass response is helpful. I'm not convinced yet on the acoustic sound. On the other hand, on the flattop I have been really quite delighted with the strings. And for some reason they feel a lot less stiff on that instrument than on the archtop. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
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@stringswinger - Hi Marc, I'm interested if you have come to any decisions regarding Bronze/Brass strings and your acoustic archtop guitars. Thanks, Joe
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I have. The winner for my ears and fingers are D'Addario 80/20 strings. I am sticking with TI flats on my electric archtops. HTH Originally Posted by losaltosjoe
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Most electric guitarists know, and will tell you, if you want to cut through the mix, jack up the mids, not the treble.
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After years of using PB on my acoustic archtops, I’ve switched to 80/20(after trying a set of boutique brass strings(maker’s name I don’t remember)). I liked the brass strings, but they were pricey, and the Martin 80/20s are close enough, and inexpensive. I mostly use medium gauge, 13-56.
Does anyone know what strings Matt Munisteri uses on his L-5?Last edited by daverepair; 10-06-2022 at 07:37 PM.
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My archtop has seen:
- Earthwood silk&steel (brass-wound over a hex-core with some silk in between; very good strings indeed)
- TI Spectrum AC112
- Pyramid Black Tape Nylon, custom-made with a brass inner winding
- The AC112 again
- TI Plectrum in a hand-picked mix of gauges that is closest to the tensions in the AC112 set
Usually I prefer brass-wounds in steel strings, because brass mellows out quicker and much more than phosphor bronze (PB). I also find that the lower strings sound livelier higher up with brass winding, and for some reason I find the alloy feels smoother and is less fingernoisy. Could be the fact it is less hard.
The TI Plectrums don't have the usual rosey tint of all other PB strings so I'm guessing they use a slightly different formula, which has less of the properties I don't like.
I put on a Plectrum G when my Spectrum G was toast (flat-winding...). This Plectrum set had already been broken in and lost its twang on another guitar, so it was a bit of a revelation to hear that this string matched better with the sound of the plain wire B string, and really sang way up high. The other strings followed one by one. I have yet to make a proper recording though so the final jury is still out.
NB: I'm just out to get the nicest acoustic sound out of my archtop, not the best vintage sound.
I've tried Newtone's double-wounds before, and wasn't really thrilled. They were not as much lighter than standard steel strings of the same gauge as the Earthwood silk&steels I used back then, and fingernoise wasn't that much less either. The worse thing for me was the intonation hunting in the 2 lowest strings though.
But: these can be made to order with 2 different alloys, e.g. brass (or PB) over pure nickel. That makes them an interesting equivalent to the DR Zebras.
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I love the Dogal Nightclub, but they have a very peculiar sound that not everybody may like:
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[QUOTE=RJVB;1223792]
- Pyramid Black Tape Nylon, custom-made with a brass inner winding
/QUOTE]
Very interesting! Was it expensive to do? Did the cover treble B & E too?
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[QUOTE=mrwoland;1223937]
No, I think they asked about the same price as a normal production set. They don't cover the trebles though. Galli have a similar set where this is the case (but they're much more expensive, probably nickel-wound underneath, and they include a set of plain trebles for when the wrapped ones break). Originally Posted by RJVB
I loved the sound of these strings, but they're weird in terms of the required compensation, very sensitive to going sharp if you fret too hard, and in the end I found their tension/stiffness more than I could handle for chords. Pyramid sent me tension numbers that had been calculated in the 60s for their stock version with nickel underwrap, and those numbers were in the same range if not higher than those of a Plectrum AC112 set. Which is hard to believe, but apparently correct.
Thomastik make nylon tape-wound trebles for classical guitar, which are pretty resistant; it should be possible to create a heavier version of those but I am not certain if they do custom orders. Pyramid will only do custom orders where they change the wrap alloy or combine different gauges that they already produce.
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Listening on my small laptop's speakers they almost sound like classical strings, which is indeed a bit peculiar for steel strings Originally Posted by mrwoland
I have a hunch more people will dislike their price (over 40€ for a set, I don't think even pure sterling-silver wound classicals cost that much
)
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I like using Flatwound strings which sound even mellower than 80/20 Bronze or Phosphor Bronze & they're Stainless Steel (sometimes nickel) so they're less likely to corrode than those Bronze strings. In my case they're special Phosphor Bronze Flatwounds
Last edited by s11141827; 01-12-2023 at 02:47 PM. Reason: Figured it out
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That looks more like half-rounds to me! Originally Posted by s11141827
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From the Magma website:
FLAT PB: are made of phosphor bronze round wound and then they are flattened. This process provides higher volume, brilliance and sustain than the traditional flat strings.
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LaBella make classical brass-wound strings that way, precision ground to look and feel like flexible brass wire. Great under the fingers, but they're still duller than round-wounds. Originally Posted by sgosnell
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Yes but if you take them out of the package they're not really half-rounds (aka semi-flats), they're true Phosphor Bronze Flatwounds. They have a brighter sound than normal Flatwound strings: so they're great for recording. Originally Posted by RJVB
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The Magma Phosphor Bronze Flatwounds on the other hand are designed to sound more like Regular Strings but w/ the finger squeak. Originally Posted by RJVB
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Philippe Bosset strings for me. Best I’ve tried, and not expensive.
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Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
The Magma Phosphor Bronze Flatwounds I use aren't that expensive either & actually each string comes in its own labeled envelope w/ the gauge & they use a lot of plastic packaging to protect them.
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^You’ve asked for a Friend Request, but I don’t do that with people who don’t first tell me who they are. Just a precaution. Nothing personal.
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