Small body archtop vs mid-size

[Dioxic]

Hey everybody,

For those that have experience with small body archtops (14”-15.5”) and more traditional es-175 sized archtops (16”), do you feel there’s much of a difference in sound when plugged in?

What about with respect to the top (laminate vs solid)?

[Sam Sherry]

The short word is that there's a whole quadrant of the internet devoted to the topics you've touched-on.

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Folks disagree. IMO, generally with a set-in pickup the effect of the unamplified sound of the instrument on the amplified sound of the instrument is modest. Changing settings on the amp, or even changing the speaker, have a more profound effect on the amplified sound than construction.

With a floating pickup there are a lot more variables in the way the unamplified sound of the instrument affects the sound heading into the amp.

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But none of that touches on how you, the player, interact with the instrument. The operator is the biggest factor in the music coming out of the speaker. You almost certainly play a little (or a lot) differently depending what's in your hands.

[sgcim]

Hey everybody,

For those that have experience with small body archtops (14”-15.5”) and more traditional es-175 sized archtops (16”), do you feel there’s much of a difference in sound when plugged in?

What about with respect to the top (laminate vs solid)?

I own a 16" Borys B-120 and a 13" Borys B-222, and I emailed a thing I did on one of the guitars that a friend put up on You Tube to the luthier, and asked him if he could tell which one it was. He never got back to me...

[sgosnell]

IME there are other factors that influence the sound more than the body size. The pickup and how it's attached, the strings, and the controls probably have the most influence. It's possible to make a solid-body guitar sound very similar to an archtop with the proper EQ and tweaks. Acoustic sound and amplified sound are not necessarily very similar, depending on the amplification.

[rpjazzguitar]

Best amplified guitar tones I ever heard included an archtop into a tube amp, an archtop into a solid state amp and a Tele into an unidentified amp.

Best unamplified was a 39 L5.

Various archtops sound different, but "better" is another thing.

For me, the main thing I'd be thinking about with regard to construction is how easily the guitar feeds back. The same qualities that might make a guitar sound great unamplified might make it prone to feedback.

Anything sounds better than feedback. I couldn't deal with it, so I play a semi and a solid, not an archtop. Others seem to deal with it fine, which, somehow, eluded me.

And, another thing is physical comfort while playing. A big archtop puts my right arm in a position I don't love.