Archtop guitars fall into two groups: acoustic and electric. Acoustic archtop guitars are sometimes amplified with a floating pick-up, and electric archtop guitars have pickups set into the body.
Traditionally, great archtop guitars are built around a top and back that are carved, inside and out, into thin arched surfaces, which produce exceptional volume and tone. This process takes a lot of time by a highly-skilled craftsperson. Needless to say, these great archtop luthiers don’t come cheap. It is not a coincidence that these Rolls-Royces & Bentleys of the archtop guitar world cost more than Chevrolet & Fords of the archtop guitar world.
It is time for the jazz guitar education community to acknowledge the profound influence of guitarists on modern jazz, and to embrace the universal popularity of this instrument.
Most of the custom archtop luthiers in the world of higher jazz education know that the guitar is like the disenfranchised, problem child of the jazz guitar program. There is but one chair in the big band of vocal jazz group for a guitarist. He or she “chonks” away at the chords and battles with the keyboard player for comping duties, or dukes it out with 15 horn players for solo space. Small wonder archtop guitar players often prefer to return to the garage with jam buddies for after-school sessions, with no support, guidance or interference from anyone except mom and pop, who reluctantly contributed the garage space.
There is a short of music and playing situations in schools for archtop guitarists, where the music directors are seldom guitarists themselves. To make matters worse, the archtop guitarists are likely to be interested in genres that the music director is unfamiliar with, and not have the inclination to coach classes that don’t come with a “custom built archtop” repertoire for that instrument.
Today, archtop guitars are largely built by specialized luthiers. If you're looking for a custom archtop guitar, visit Fine Archtops at www.FineArchtops.com.
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