Archtop Guitar - Various Use of The Term archtop

Various Use of The Term archtop

Although archtop normally refers to a hollow-bodied, arched top instrument, some makers of solid-bodied guitars with carved bellies also refer to these as archtop to distinguish these from flat top guitars. For example, Gibson refer to the standard Gibson Les Paul as an arch top to distinguish it from flat top models such as the Les Paul Junior and Melody Maker.

A continuum exists from these solid body, purely electric instruments to purely acoustic instruments similar to the original Orville Gibson design, including:

• Solid body instruments, such as the Les Paul standard, with a carved but non-sounding belly.
• Instruments with semi-hollow bodies constructed from plates of wood around a solid core, having no soundholes, such as the Gibson Lucille or Brian May Red Special.
• Instruments with a solid core but hollow bouts and soundholes (usually f-holes), such as the Gibson ES-335. In these, the bridge is fixed to a solid block of wood rather than to a sounding board, and the belly vibration is minimized much as in a solid body instrument.
• Thin-bodied semi-acoustic guitars, such as the Epiphone Casino. These possess both a sounding board and sound box, but the function of these is purely to modify the sound transmitted to the pickups. Such guitars are still intended purely as electric instruments, and while they do make some sound when the pickups are not used, the tone is weak and not normally considered musically useful.
• Full hollowbody semi-acoustic instruments, such as the Gibson ES-175; these have a full-size sound box, but are still intended to be played through an amplifier.
• Fully acoustic instruments with either a pressed laminate wood or hand carved top. One example in the latter category, almost cello-like in construction, is the Gibson L-5. For amplified use, these guitars are fitted with floating pickups in the neck position attached either to the base of the fingerboard or the edge of the pickguard. The finely tuned soundboard is left to vibrate freely as no hardware other than bridge posts come into contact with it. Today's carvedtops may also incorporate piezo electric pickups. These instruments have a full-size body and a powerful acoustic tone suitable both for chords and for melody work.

All of these types may be loosely described as archtop, but only the last possesses the characteristics most often associated with the type.