The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
  1. #1
    I'm new to the forum and quite sure this question has been asked over and over, but here we go again. I'm primarily a flat topped acoustic guitar builder and player and have built flat topped guitars from a variety of woods, shapes and bracing. I've settled on coated phosphor bronze strings for most of my acoustics - I'm satisfied with the compromise of tone, life and cost.

    Last winter I built a carved topped 16 inch acoustic archtop, and unfortunately am having trouble bonding with it. The guitar is brutally shrill and very loud. It is X braced rather than parallel because I wanted warmth over power. I've tried both PB and 80/20 strings, coated and uncoated. My preference right now is Elixer nanoweb PB's, light gauge but they are still much brighter that I would really like. I use flatwound nickels on my hollow body electric but think they are the wrong string for an acoustic. The archtop also really enhances string squeak, the coated strings help here.

    The guitar is 9 months old now so it has had a chance to open up a little (and I think it has). And obviously it could just be the guitar, as I said my background is flattops.

    However I would appreciate any help and advice because I'm rapidly reaching the point where I don't want to play it.

    String recommendations for an acoustic archtop-img_7382-1-jpg

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  3. #2

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    I am a player of vintage acoustic archtops, although I still sometimes play my flattops(and I'm a luthier, doing mostly repair, and have built a few successful flattops, but no archtops yet). I'm curious, on what did you base your archtop build? Was there a particular make and or model you used as a guide or template? It certainly looks lovely! Also, had you played many archtops prior to your build, to have an goal for tone? I ask, only because flattops and archtops are so different(many/most of my flattop playing friends don't like the tone of my vintage Epiphones, Gibsons, or others).

    I plan to hopefully build an archtop too, probably base it as closely as I can on one of my favorites, a 1946 Epiphone Spartan(tone-bar, not x-braced). But I've not yet been able to play any x-braced archtops for comparison.

    If PB or 80/20 don't help with the shrillness, maybe try nickel or Monel. But those of course are a different sound than bronze(and not my preference). Perhaps you should consider, after nine months, removing the back and rebracing and/ or re-graduating the top? Or re-topping it? I've done that myself with one of my flattop builds, and it was a complete improvement. If the tone is disappointing, what's to lose?

    Best of luck with it!

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by daverepair
    I am a player of vintage acoustic archtops, although I still sometimes play my flattops(and I'm a luthier, doing mostly repair, and have built a few successful flattops, but no archtops yet). I'm curious, on what did you base your archtop build? Was there a particular make and or model you used as a guide or template? It certainly looks lovely! Also, had you played many archtops prior to your build, to have an goal for tone? I ask, only because flattops and archtops are so different(many/most of my flattop playing friends don't like the tone of my vintage Epiphones, Gibsons, or others).

    I plan to hopefully build an archtop too, probably base it as closely as I can on one of my favorites, a 1946 Epiphone Spartan(tone-bar, not x-braced). But I've not yet been able to play any x-braced archtops for comparison.

    If PB or 80/20 don't help with the shrillness, maybe try nickel or Monel. But those of course are a different sound than bronze(and not my preference). Perhaps you should consider, after nine months, removing the back and rebracing and/ or re-graduating the top? Or re-topping it? I've done that myself with one of my flattop builds, and it was a complete improvement. If the tone is disappointing, what's to lose?

    Best of luck with it!
    Thanks Dave. Quick background, I am an amateur builder (and player) who has built 30 guitars of various shapes and sizes, mostly flat top acoustics but a few others also. My flat tops have all been more or less successful, I've kept some, given some away. I've built a few electrics, both solid and hollow bodies, and one carved topped F style mandolin. I don't play classical or jazz, noodle a bit maybe, but my roots are seating in roots music - Kottke, Fahey, yadda yadda.

    I think I have played a true carved acoustic archtop twice and really can't remember much about either.

    As I approach the end of my lutherie career I know that a carved arched topped acoustic is the one guitar I haven't built (well, a Sel-Mac but I really don't want one) and I have a bunch of wood in the basement so that was last winter's challenge. Because I had a sixteen inch back plate and mahogany sides that kind of dictated the size, besides the early L5's are such an icon. I simply scaled Benedetto's seventeen incher down by an inch, eliminated the cut and shortened his scale to 24-7/5. The arching is basically the same as his only the drilling lines moved a hair closer. The top thickness is very similar to his, 1/4 in the center going to about 1/8 on the recurve. F-holes are pretty normal size so they should weaken the top what you would expect,'

    I used a dial indicator thickness gauge as I was carving and since I'm still learning this whole game I make a habit of tapping and bonking on every guitar I make. I have no idea what I'm hearing in spite of taking seminars from Siminoff and Greven and Bourgois, but I also cheat - I've got a cool beta copy of some software that does FFT transformations of bonks so I can see the frequency spectrum. I'd be a fool if I said I know what to do with this but it seems to validate what my ears are hearing. And even more important, I can watch the change in resonate frequencies as I carve and they were exactly what Benedetto said would happen. (If you want to see any of this stuff I did a fairly long build thread at another forum and its got all sorts of 8 by 10 glossy photographs with circles and arrows all over them.

    A couple of other things - as I was building I read about everything I could about archtop design and construction, Benedetto of course but also several articles and a panel discussion in the GAL literature. On my flat tops I have experiment with different bracing schemes and kind of know what to expect - with archtops it seemed like most people feel that parallel bracing makes them loud, X bracing a bit more mellow. Thicker tops and lower break angles are also said to bring out warmth vs volume. Since I wasn't concerned with volume I used X bracing and left the top thickness a hair on the thicker side. Here is the carved braced top

    String recommendations for an acoustic archtop-img_7073-1-jpg

    The rest of it is pretty normal construction. Commercial bridge and tailpiece, I put a couple of CF beams in the neck and floated the fretboard extension over the top. Here is the spectrum for the closed box, you can see a dramatic resonance at 118 hz - that was not there before the back was glued on and is, of course, the air chamber. Interesting to me that it was about what you would see for an OM or 000 which tells me the body and f-holes are about right


    Anyway, if you are still with me, I finished this last spring and was immediately disappointed with it. However I have heard other archtop builders say they were disappointed with a new guitar and I thought I would just keep working with it to see what happened. It has definitely changed for the better in that time period and at least with the string sets I've tried the phosphor bronze are much better sounding. I has just stumbled across this forum looking for something else and thought I would ask what other archtop players were using. Here is one shot of my hollow body laminated (ES style) electric guitar with the little acoustic, the electric gets expensive flat wound nickels and sounds great, still looking for answers on the acoustic

    String recommendations for an acoustic archtop-img_7412-jpg

    Any advice would be appreciated, but I'm not taking the back off LOL

    ps - it looks like an extra image snuck in here and I can't see how to remove it. Still learning forum software
    Attached Images Attached Images String recommendations for an acoustic archtop-img_7414-jpg 

  5. #4

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    Hi Freeman: your approach to building an archtop was certainly thorough. You note that you've only played an acoustic archtop perhaps twice, and that your own style of playing is roots music(the fingerstyle of Kottke and Fahey, two of the finest).

    For myself, while mostly playing flatpicked and fingerstyle roots & blues, I also loved the sound of swing(i.e. Freddy Green of the Count Basie Orchestra, or Bob Wills & His Playboys, etc). When I first picked up a friend's '50's Gibson L-50 years ago(wanting very much to like it), it was disappointing: it just sounded so thin! Granted, a '50's L-50 is not the acme of acoustic archtops, but still, they can be decent sounding.

    In 2013 or so, determined to buy an archtop, I by chance bought a '39 Epiphone Zenith, one of their entry level guitars, built during their 'Golden Era'(Epiphone being at that time an independent company, whose instruments rivaled Gibson in quality and tone). My new purchase needed a neck reset & a fret job, but most importantly, I needed to learn how best to play it: it simply did not do strumming or fingerpicking as well as a good flattop, but it excelled at swing-style comping rhythm, and it sounded very good when doing that. I had to learn how to play it.

    I have, since then, owned & repaired(or repaired for customers) at least 25 vintage Epiphones, Gibsons, Vegas, Regals, etc. Only a very few could 'cover all the bases' as I think of it: be used for swing comping, as well as strumming or fingerstyle(I'm thinking of a '46 Epi Spartan(16-3/8") I owned, a '35 Epi Zenith(14-3/4") I still have, and my '48 Gibson built 'National' branded guitar(17"), in effect an L-7. These are all tone-bar braced. Why do they work so well, for different styles of playing? I don't really understand it(they're built so differently, in the details), but I hear it. Even so, they are still not like a good flattop for certain styles...then I reach for my flattop.

    It just might be the case, that your own acoustic archtop might perform very well, if used for swing-style guitar, strung with mediums(13-56) and played with (as I use) an 'extra-heavy' flatpick. Yes, it's x-braced, but perhaps. Do you know any such players of that style, who could try it out, and give you their opinion?

    My own approach to building an archtop will be to take apart the very, very, ragged circa- '45 Epiphone Spartan I currently own, and measure everything about it, especially the top & back arching and graduations, and copy those. I do have Benedetto's book, and it has been very helpful over the years, even for my flattop builds, but I do believe the advice I was given 22 years ago, by Joe Konkoly(formally in repairs at Elderly), when I was beginning my first build: for a beginner, find a guitar one likes the sound of, and copy it exactly as one can. I believe it's a good way to learn.

    Whew, there's a ramble.

    Dave

  6. #5

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    Take the guitar to a jazz guitarist with experience on archtops. Let them evaluate the guitar before you do another thing. Your evaluation as you mention is not covered in years of archtop experience.

    You might find a completely different opinion and it might be good.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by deacon Mark
    Take the guitar to a jazz guitarist with experience on archtops. Let them evaluate the guitar before you do another thing. Your evaluation as you mention is not covered in years of archtop experience.

    You might find a completely different opinion and it might be good.
    You are right and there are two possible outcomes

    One that its a decent guitar and I just don't know what a good archtop should sound like which is very possible

    Or that its a bad guitar........

    I did play it again last night after really trimming my nails, it does sound better the more flesh I use. I have a couple of jazz playing friends, I'll see what they say.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Freeman Keller
    You are right and there are two possible outcomes

    One that its a decent guitar and I just don't know what a good archtop should sound like which is very possible

    Or that its a bad guitar........

    I did play it again last night after really trimming my nails, it does sound better the more flesh I use. I have a couple of jazz playing friends, I'll see what they say.
    Frankly, I think archtops sound best with a proper plectrum (IMO, that means Tortoise, nylon or delrin) and for me, 80/20 strings work best for an acoustic archtop. PB are too bright and Monel are too muddy.

    Every piece of wood is different. Some spruce tops are just bright. If you want a warmer guitar, sometimes the best solution is to get/build a different guitar.

  9. #8

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    This might seem left field, but try it with flatwounds, preferably .013-.056. I find that D'Addario Chromes in that gauge work well on my L50 (a 1960).

  10. #9
    Since I posted the original question I decided to try monels, but there was nothing in town. Put a set of D'Addario nickel bronze on it, they are supposed to be similar to monel and they sound reasonably good. A little more string squeak than I like but I can live with that. I'll stick with these for a while and see how they develop with some age.

    Thanks all