Archtop Guitar History

In 1894, Orville set up shop as O.H. Gibson, Manufacturer, Musical Instruments. Surviving examples of his workmanship—early mandolins, archtop guitars, harp guitars and such curious experimental designs as a lyre-mandolin and harp-zither—are ornate and exquisitely detailed. Now as it so happens, Kalamazoo was the epicenter of the American furniture industry, and in a whimsical fluke of destiny—like some odd confluence of Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Ford—five local businessmen decided to ground Orville Gibson’s baroque visions in the great American entrepreneurial tradition of capitalization and modern production techniques—they hoped to propagate an entire new generation of American string players. They realized that there were more efficient ways to compartmentalize the individual steps and streamline the construction of Gibson’s fretted-string designs—although handcraftsmanship remained a fundamental component.
Thus in the fall of 1902, Orville entered into an agreement with these Kalamazoo businessmen to establish the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company, Limited. In exchange for a lump sum of $2,500 and a series of monthly payments, Orville Gibson authorized the new company to make use of his name, transferred his original 1898 patent for an archtop mandolin and undertook a two-year program of tutelage. The company subsequently expanded on Orville’s best ideas while dispensing with his idiosyncrasies. Yet ultimately it was the achievements of these early Kalamazoo craftsmen and their descendants that perpetuated the Gibson name, even as the company’s marketing mavens conveyed Orville’s mystic sense of superiority with the born-again fervor of a missionary. It was the golden age of string bands.
In various incarnations, the Style O remained Gibson’s top-of-the-line model into the early ’20s, when in 1919 the brilliant composer, acoustical engineer and string player Lloyd Loar was hired to head up the Gibson design team. And though Loar didn’t actually build any archtop guitars, like a great editor or conductor, he harmonized the collective talents of his designers and archtop luthiers into a consonant whole, leading to the development of a celebrated family of Mastertone instruments (bearing his personal signature of quality): these included the famous Mastertone banjo series, the F-5 mandolin, the H-5 mandola, the K-5 mando-cello and in 1924, the trendsetting L-5—America’s first f-hole archtop guitar.
The L-5 consolidated all of the Loar team’s patented breakthroughs for fretted-string instruments for the first time in one guitar. With the invention of the truss rod in 1922 by Orville’s old crony Ted McHugh, the old triangular style necks could be streamlined and the playing action slackened. And the L-5’s elevated fingerboard, height-adjustable bridge, floating tailpiece and elevated pickguard allowed the top to resonate as freely as possible. This original L-5 had a three-piece neck, a small 16-inch body (of spruce and birch, then maple), and a 24-inch scale length (to further reduce string tension and soften the action). Popularized by Italian émigré Salvatore Massaro (better known as Eddie Lang), the archtop orchestral guitar became the preeminent rhythm and solo voice in the earliest days of recorded jazz, and its dominance as a rhythm instrument in the swing era spawned a new generation of enhanced models, beginning in 1934, when the L-5’s own body dimensions were expanded to 17 inches and its scale-length increased to its present 25 inches: the classic noncutaway design Gibson recently honored with a Custom Shop reissue.
Its pervasive influence was subsequently reflected in the work of gifted archtop luthiers such as Epi Stathopoulo, Elmer Stromberg and John D’Angelico, who expanded on the ideas of Orville Gibson and Lloyd Loar with important refinements of their own. As a result, in one form or another, Orville Gibson’s vision of an archtop guitar has endured for over a century. Even today, despite the practicality of solid-body electric icons like the Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul, semiacoustics (such as the original Gibson ES-335 and the new Paul Reed Smith Archtop Guitar and Hollowbody designs) and electric-acoustics crafted entirely from pressed laminates (such as the venerable Gibson ES-175), guitarists remain enamored with the rich sonority, depth of tone and acoustic intimacy of a handcarved archtop guitar. Thus 21st century luthiers find themselves happily occupied with adventurous custom orders from jazzmen and intrepid hobbyists, inspired to experiment with new combinations of materials and construction methods—because while the modern player hungers for something timeless, inevitably, as the music moves forward, they’re drawn to explore something new.
To get in touch with archtop guitar luthier, visit Fine Archtops at www.FineArchtops.com.