Guildelicious said:
Also, what strings do you guys use on archtop to cut down on the brightness....or maybe I am missing the point of archtop and they are supposed to have that bright echo tone!
I don't know that you are missing the point, but let me suggest a frame of reference to better answer your question.
Why don't you tell us how your friend's L7 is:
1) set-up- size and type of strings, action height,
2) what year it is (which has to do with how it's
built, carved back vs. laminate back, etc.) and
3) what model- cutaway or full bodied.
Once you get all that sorted, then people who both like and have experience with acoustic archtops could have an idea of what you actually listened to, i.e., did your buddy put rock and roll strings on an archtop, which wouldn't fully load and/or move the top, or is it that you haven't listened to a lot of acoustic archtops and are still developing your ear for them, etc.?
Also, let me give you some information that might help you develop a perspective on archtop guitars.
It starts with the question, 'why do they have archtops, anyway?'
The modern archtop guitar was developed by Gibson as part of their Mastertone Series in the early '20's. The Mastertone 'idea' was to have guitars, mandolin-family instruments and b@nj*s, that were superior, solo-style instruments and a 'step above' the rest of the pack.
The Gibson L-5 was hatched, with a carved, arched top, bracing like a violin family instrument and a neck and finger-board that didn't significantly dampen the top. Like a lot of new designs, some people liked it and others didn't. The detractors thought that the instruments were too bright and tinny (sound like a familiar complaint, Guildelicious?).
[The same went for the new Gibson mandolin, called the F-5, but that's a different story]
Fortunately for Gibson, it soon turned out that there was an immediate use for the new archtop guitar; in the 1920's-era jazz orchestra 'big band' setting.
By the '20's, the Banjo Craze that started in WWI was waning and people were tired of hearing the darn things! As well, the popular Rag-Time and New Orleans-style bands (which featured the banjo) were evolving into something new; jazz orchestras, a 'bigger' band!
'Bigger' bands meant that there was a postive need for a chordal instrument to sit across from the horn and reed sections on stage and 'feed' the chord to those players so they could play in tune.
The bands needed an instrument with a strong, cutting mid-range sound, because the chord had to 'cut through' the loudness of...well, a big band!
Guess what sounds like that? A 16" 'wide-body' Gibson L-5 (most guitars were 14" wide, or less, back then)! Okay, the bass and treble isn't as prominent on an L-5 as on a flat-top guit-box, but you can hear strong, hard mids all day. It worked perfectly and became a popular choice.
Soon, Gibson was making a lot more archtop models at different price points. Epiphone joined in the fray and began producing a splendid line of archtop guitars in direct competition to Gibson (remember, too, a lot of Epi ideas and employees came over to Guild after Epi began to fold in the '50's).
Acoustic archtop guitars continued to evolve over the next 10-15 years. The guitar bodies became larger, in response to the need for more volume for even 'bigger' big bands. 17" and 18" bodied guitars showed up by 1934. Cutaway guitars began to be built in the late '30's, so the players could more easily reach the highest notes on their instruments. Oh, a cutaway design might reduce the overall volume by 5% or so, but electrically amplified instruments had shown up in the early-mid '30's and people wanted to hear the sound of the whole guitar in a solo, single-string context.
With the advent of pickups and amplification, guitarists started using archtops for more than just chords. Guitarist George Barnes (note: Guild content, the G. Barnes Acousti-Lectric guitar!) put a phonograph needle and preamp in his guitar top and had his brother build an amplifier so he could play the horn lines that he was learning/creating as he studied and later played with clarinetist, Jimmy Noone, in Chicago (Benny Goodman's teacher, too!). Charlie Christian popularized the Gibson Electric guitar, so much so, that the guitar, pickup and amp he used are forever associated with his name.
When the Electric Sound happened, the design of some acoustic archtops began to change subtly to allow the instruments to play louder without 'feeding back'. Guitars like the Artist Award, with a small D'Armond pickup, featured thicker tops than acoustic-only guitars (it's just a guess, so don't shoot me if I'm wrong, guys. That's the way AAs sound to me). Certainly, Gibson L-5 and Super 400 electrics had thicker tops than their acoustic counterparts (thicker bracing, too. And no, that ain't a guess!).
As time went on, more and more archtop electric guitars were made with laminate tops and bodies, to allow the instruments to play as loud as possible before 'feeding back'; X-500s, X-350s, X-175s, Epiphone electrics (the Zephyr series), later Gibsons like the ES-350s, 225s, 175s, 150s (you know, the first 150 model, the 'Charlie Christian', had a solid, carved top), 125s, etc.
Finally, getting back to guitars like the Artist Award and the Guild A-350s, Guitar companies and private builders started making guitars that would feature a softer, warmer sound than the classic 'acoustic-only' archtop sound. A good example of this would be the difference between a D'Angelico and a D'Aquisto. D'Aquisto was looking for a different sound than his mentor D'Angelico and found it in the way he carved the top, the use of large-ish ebony bridges and ebony tailpieces, stuff like that.
Other present-day builders seem to focus on a similar sort of sound, either for the same reason, or because the people who buy most of these very expensive instruments nowadays are used to flat-top guitars and want a different sound than the classic archtop sound (the Customer is always Right!).
Anyway, that's my two cents worth. Good luck figuring out what you like. I hope this post will give
you a perspective with which to evaluate archtop guitars.
Wonderful bit of a history lesson for us all. Thanks gilded!
