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In the late 1800s Orville Gibson in Michigan, U.S.A. believed he could improve on the design of guitars and mandolins by building them more like violins, with carved tops and backs. On some instruments he even carved the sides out of a solid block. He believed that wood would vibrate best in a perfectly relaxed “unbent” state.
Whatever the merits of his ideas and his early designs, the popularity of his instruments led to the formation of the Gibson guitar and Mandolin Company. His guitars were made with quite thick carved tops and backs, oval soundholes and a single transverse brace below the soundhole. They were bigger, louder and more expensive than most other instruments of the day. Through the popularity of the mandolin orchestra and some pretty concentrated franchise marketing, the Gibson company prospered.
In the early 1920s Lloyd Loar designed some guitars and mandolins for Gibson which showed increased volume and projection to the extent that the designs eventually superseded the rest of Gibson’s archtop models. Loar’s L5 guitar was indeed different. It had two violin-style F holes and was 16 inches across the lower bout, making it one of the widest bodies in production. It had two longitudinal braces or “tone bars” passing under the feet of the floating bridge and converging towards the neck block. It was loud enough to play in the jazz enembles of the day and began to usurp the banjo in many rhythm sections. In subsequent efforts to ingease the volume and “cutting power” as it was called Gibson and other makers increased the size of the guitar to 17 inches and then 18 inches across by the late 1930s. If you are lucky enough to have played one of these old Gibson, D’angelico, Stromberg or Epiphone archtops from the 1930s or 40s you will know just how different these guitars sound to a flat-topped steel string guitar. They have an enormous treble and mid focus, a quicker decay time and a lot of volume.
For me, the original 16” Loar archtop made the sound. The need for the huge bodies has disappeared with the advent of many types of pickups and great microphones. 16” or 17” bodies do the job very well. Modern makers sometimes use x braces insted of the tone bars to give a less mid- focussed more sustained sound. Either way the archtop guitar has enjoyed a huge renaissance. The guitars from the swing era are in demand in the modern swing revival. There are many individuals making fine guitars and generally doing a better job than the big companies. To see some of the level of the enthusiasm for the archtop, visit Joe Vinikow’s website at www.archtop.com.
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