As a collector of European archtops I can recommend the recently published ‘German Jazz Guitars: The Archtop Guitar in Post-War Central Europe’. Written by Cameron Brown and Stefan Lob and published by Unicorn, UK. It is beautifully illustrated.

This sent me down a rabbit hole buying up vintage Harmony flattops. And my experience confirms the hypothesis. A Harmony H1260 Sovereign really does have similar qualities to not only its archtop Harmony equivalent H1310 Brilliant, but to the Gibson L-50 and L-75 as well. Which brings me to my second point:

Notwithstanding the David Rawlings effect, players who are archtop curious have very few affordable options for new guitars, particularly for purely acoustic instruments. Stated differently, Gibson has wholly abandoned the market they were founded upon. And no one has filled the role Harmony, Regal, and Kay once did. The Loar brand is in financial trouble; Eastman (unless something changed very recently) stopped making acoustic only archtops, as did Godin. And while Gibson launched the Epiphone Masterbilt line about a decade ago, the marketing team pushed the plugged in sound of these guitars. And not even a traditional pickup like a DeArmond, but a piezo setup. These guitars suffered from the neither fish nor fowl syndrome: Unconvincing as purely acoustic instruments to archtop veterans; and inferior as piezo amplified guitars when compared to equivalent flattops.

The bottom line is that someone not already familiar with archtops but curious about them face the prospect of buying used—always a risk with vintage instruments if you’re inexperienced (and sometimes even if you are)—or buying an expensive luthier built instrument.

I think there’s a gap in the market for purely acoustic archtops of the kind once cranked out by Harmony, solid wood but pressed and not carved tops and backs. Epiphone indeed took this approach 10 years ago, but as mentioned, they treated the acoustic tone as an afterthought.

That said, Guild currently offers the A150 Savoy, which features just that construction and a DeArmond Rhythm Chief pickup. They also have their line of laminate arched back/solid top flattops, as does Taylor. Either company should be able to use the same tooling to cost effectively build archtop guitars. Indeed, Guild describes on their website that they came up with the arched back flattops directly from their archtop guitars.

I would love to see Guild offer the A150 in purely acoustic form, and to offer at least one such instrument to their line. For similar reasons, and again they already have the tooling, Taylor could fill that gap in the market.

Anyway, just a pet rant from an archtop player. Thanks for sharing this article!

My first was an Epiphone Olympic that had been around the block many times, with severely divoted frets. I refretted it myself with great result but sold it later to pursue a flattop I wanted at the time. No problem with the refretting but I realized I had too many other interests to get into repair or building.

I later bought a used Steve Andersen Vanguard that was apparently modified for hard rock playing: a hot Stuart Duncan humbucker and stuffed with acoustic foam, apparently to reduce feedback. It sounds great with a PAF Humbucker an I still have it.

In 2017 Andersen built me a custom Model 16 that is fantastic. I love playing it and it’s a work of art as well.

I do love archtops!