Custom Archtops in the Making

Born in 1856, Gibson was an obsessive, eccentric genius in the great American poetic tradition of Stephen Crane, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. He worked around Kalamazoo, Mich., in a number of odd jobs, but his skills as an archtop luthier and woodworker were such that he tried his hand at building musical instruments. His contempt for other instrument makers was immense, as was his belief in himself and his conviction that the sonority and projection of arched tops, backs and rims carved from solid pieces of unstressed tone woods was inherently superior to that of instruments formed from flat sheets and bent strips of tone wood.
In effect, Gibson adapted European violin-making techniques to the construction of mandolins and custom archtop guitars—where the top acted, the back reacted and the chamber resonated. “I don’t necessarily see one as having an advantage over another,” opines Seattle luthier Steve Andersen, whose archtop guitar and flattop designs have been championed by the likes of Bill Frisell and cartoonist-collector Gary Larson. “I started out building a traditional flattop, and in the last 10-12 years I really focused on the custom archtops. To me they’re both very valid instruments.”
“What the archtop guitar does best is make the sound of each string very clear, punchy, powerful and focused,” explains Stephen Grimes, a master luthier operating out of Hawaii who has built custom archtop guitars for George Benson, and is currently collaborating with the jazz guitar legend on new signature models for Ibanez. “The flattop guitar is a very full sounding guitar without a whole lot of projection. If you were to stand 100 feet away and listen to them both, you’d hear the distinct notes of each string on the archtop guitar, whereas the flattop would be little more than mush.”
By today’s standards, Orville’s original instruments, such as the classic Style O archtop guitar, were built like tanks. Orville experimented with different styles of internal bracing, various tone woods and huge hollow necks, trying to enhance the overall sonority and resonance of his instruments until each note could be plainly heard. Ultimately he selected spruce for the top because it was light, malleable and lively—it transmitted vibrations directly across the grain. He used maple for the back and rims because it was hard, dense and stable—it could reflect and sustain tone. Starting with a thick quarter-sawn board, Gibson would sketch a silhouette of the instrument, saw away excess wood, scallop out the insides and shave down the outsides to form a flexible arched diaphragm, graduating the tops and backs by shaving and sanding, tapping the wood as he went along, until he’d achieved the optimum shape, thickness, sonority and sensitivity.
To get in touch with archtop guitar luthier, visit Fine Archtops at www.FineArchtops.com.