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Location: South Portland, ME | What exactly is an arch top guitar? How does it differ from quintard bracing??
TIA,
dstan |
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May 2002
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | dstan
You must be a youngster, arch tops were king in the 50s. They have f holes and carved tops like a Gibson ES335, but were acoustic and the size of a big Gibson jazz guitar. Theory was that their sound would cut through the band, reality was, they sounded like sh--. Every Army day room had a Harmony arch top or some such in the 50's with action in the inches and a sound like somebody pounding on a mess tray, flat tops were looked down upon as the instrument of the dreaded HILLBILLIES, like Mack Wiseman, Hank Snow, Hank Williams and other members of the lower class that knew what a guitar should sound like. Mr Kaman was part of that bunch of crackers when he decided to build a modern guitar with a flat top sound.
Bailey |
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Location: Central Oregon | 
1953 archtop Gibson ES175 |
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Location: SoCal | showoff... :p
very nice... |
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Location: Canton (Detroit), MI | Yep, that says "archtop" pretty nicely..... :)
Roger |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | Most archtops have two main braces running down the top. The quintad had 5 in roughly the same pattern but the top was flat.
Nice 53 by the way. |
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February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | Ovation have (somewhat confusingly) used the term "archtop" for at least one Celeb model which was essentialy a flatop guitar which had the top "pre-stressed" for want of a better term. The result was that from new the guitar looked like it had the kind of belly-bulge a flattop gets after several years. This is a completely different concept to a traditional "archtop" described above, and these guitars sound pretty much the same as a standard flatop. |
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December 2003
Posts: 46
Location: South Portland, ME | Thanks Paul, thats exactly what I was talking about. What are the pros/cons of this?
dstan |
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January 2004
Posts: 627
Location: Cherry Hill, NJ | One thing consistant with Arch-Tops is the way the strings are attached to the body. They usually have the strings suspended a couple of inches in lenght from the bridge to the tail piece. I don't know the reason for this, except that's the way they were originally. It may be just part of an old design.
Tommy |
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February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | dstan, one of the problems with flattop guitars is that the tops pull over time. As a consequence the action goes up & sooner or later (sooner on guitars with shallow neck-sets) there will not be enough break-angle available at the bridge saddle to adjust the action. At this point a neck re-set is needed. Most flattop guitars will take on a belly-bulge eventually, so in theory pre-stressing a slight arch into a flattop guitar when new minimises the amount of movement over time. (Note the phrase "in theory") This is not a new idea, several respected luthiers, including Stefan Sobel have used this technique for many years, but it's not common on relatively inexpensive imported production guitars such as the Celeb. |
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Posts: 280
Location: Waterloo, IL | I have always liked the sound of an archtop. Maybe one of these days Santa will be able to bring me one that I can afford. |
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arch top vs. ??