I think I finally figured it out Ken - that is, what it is about the way you come across that has got me so enthusiastic and completely hooked (albeit on a subject I’ve been interested in for years) … I think it’s because, even though you’ve got about half a century’s worth of experience and considerable skill, you appear as enthusiastic as the day you began and yet still so humble about your opinions and achievements. That tell tale little laugh and smile as you talk, especially when you talk about your ‘first guitar’, is rather infectious. Even though that first guitar is clearly a very different animal to what you now aim for (and so it should be), I’m blown away by how incredible it still looks and, whatever your current misgivings may be about it’s design, I think most people would be proud to own it, let alone say that it was something they made 🙌
I've looked and looked, and haven't ever found anyone addressing the important design issues of the carved guitar. Please do let me know if you come across anything useful, and thanks for your praise.
Check out Kilngspor, they have everything, and if they don't, they'll make it for you. I think all the white-ish colored paper is stearated, but I'm not certain about that.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Will do. It would really be interesting to see your concepts applied to a round hole archtop or an instrument with an internal resonator, a la grand bouche Maccaferri.
Merci Ken ! Une fois de plus, votre expérience et vos connaissances en matière d'Archtops sont à la mesure de votre gentillesse et de votre humilité...
These videos are invaluable! And I'm not even a builder, just a player trying to better understand this crazy instrument. Thanks a million for so generously sharing your knowledge! Topic suggestion for a future video: neck joints. Given the revolutionary uniqueness of the Parker archtop's neck joint, I'd love to learn about your views on the various types of conventional joints--varieties of glued-in mortise/tenon, fender-style bolt-on, neck-through, etc.
You're right: I was hedging my bets. I've owned many through the years. A 1938 L5 that was fan-braced ( I guess a Gibson experiment). I have another 1938 L5 that was made with a plectrum 26" scale. The best acoustic archtops that gibson ever made were pre-war, before jazz guitar transitioned to electric. Old professionally-played instruments lived hard lives. Enjoy your videos much.
Wow! You seem to have found some very interesting one offs! I never did hear of any Gibson brace styles except "rail" and "X" How does the long-scale one sound? Fascinating to hear of these! I agree that the old guitars in use really took a beating. I always liked that, way back when I was repairing quite a number of them. I replaced a lot of fingerboards that were just plain worn out, and I can assure you that Gibson proved that Brazilian rosewood was way too soft for the job. Some boards looked like they were dug out with tiny excavators! Others had big plates of thick pearl that wore out slowly, surrounded with rosewood that wore out quickly, leading to some very strange fingerboard micro-topography! The pre-war Gibson L-5 story is strange, and includes some chapters that most aficionados don't understand, but then there were so few of these extravagantly high-priced guitars made, it's a little hard to understand what the designers were aiming at, and what forces shaped their decision making. Music was changing, and the early L-5 was fully formed before the swing/big band era got started. In a way, it's amazing that the archtop survived at all!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 ua-cam.com/video/VJGyQF5CMqE/v-deo.htmlsi=m72Iu2oKW0CRX_d2 I still have the long scale '38. Made the video with it years. Not great fidelity.im 73, and have been trading and collecting since I was 15. Another interesting Gibson I had was a '39 ES-150 which had no top bracing at all. Top surface was arched, inside was flat.
You're so Metrically welcome! When I was seven, we learned the "new" metric system in school, and were told that "before very long", pounds, inches and miles would be retired, and we would join the rest of the base 10 world using units derived from reality. Oh well.
As always, thank you for sharing your knowledge in such detail! I feel like every video saves a new (but not young) builder like myself a lot of time and mistakes.
I am enjoying this very well thought out presentation on arched guitars. I am a violinist and student/collector of violins. You have obviously read the book by Sacconi. Can you please comment on why arched top guitars do not have a sound post? Thank you.
Having fitted a soundpost in an archtop, I'll just say that it seems quite obvious that it doesn't seem to apply well to plucked instruments. (understatement) Please have a look here, where I explore the behavior of bowed vs plucked bridges, studio.ua-cam.com/users/videoGeSTwjA3GSA/edit I love violins, violas, cellos and big basses, but apart from the bass, these are rarely plucked, and almost always rely on the bow to drive the strings. The soundpost helps make the system work beautifully by coupling the plates, and allowing the string to drive the whole structure in a powerful way.
I make two size bodies, 15.9" original flavor (non-cutaway) and 16.3" newfangled cutaway. Loft for most archtops seems to vary between 5/8" - 1 1/8" ish. Like many, I'm attracted to the bold look of the high arch, but it seems to me that the lower end of this range works better. Currently, I'm using a loft of around 3/4". I'm told that Antonio Stradivari morphed from higher loft to lower over his career, so maybe there's something to consider. Just enough, never too much, as they say.
I started on Violins many years ago and these days I'm making Mandolins. I know that stiffness varies in proportion to the cube of the thickness but I'm still excited by that 'moment' when the plate just yields. Physics is great but we all know that humans give music its feel.
Has anyone tried a footed bridge on one which now has a solid contact bridge just to hear if there is a difference? And what is incorrect about the fiddle type construction?? please.
I suspect that the subtleties of bridge design has been an area of interest and experimentation for all of us who build archtops, so let's just say yes to your question. As I try to explain in this segment, kenparkerarchtops.com/etude-fitting-the-bridge the archtop bridge has seen various design iterations, in several different styles. Interestingly, there seem to be two styles of 2 footed bridges, one, a rigid type as seen on the 1918 Gibson L-3 in the above video, and another style in which the connecting material between the two feet is very thin so as to be easily flexible, and thereby enable the feet of the bridge to conform as best they can to the top's shape without hand fitting. This seems to me like one of those manufacturing "improvements" that really was designed to reduce the amount of time needed to assemble the guitar and send it on its way, and not in the service of a better sounding instrument. As you probably know, there is nothing "wrong" with the violin family bridge design. In the above video, I try to explain my understanding of the nature of the forces that move the bridge, and drive the top to create sound. The huge, obvious differences between the behavior of the bridges of bowed vs. plucked instruments is the point. Just to be clear, I have no argument with others who think differently, it's just that I consider bridge design a wonderful playground for an archexplorer like me. There's always more to learn!
17:55 "Stiffness varies with the cube of it's thickness." I just finished the E. Somogyi books and this is pretty much the basis of everything he teaches. Once he gets the top thicknessed the way he wants, he does everything in his power to protect it throughout the build so he doesn't even sand it before finish.
The application of this relationship is darn near everything, of course. I always say there are no secrets in guitarmaking, but here's the most important one in plain sight!
Thanks so much for that! I'm aware that some (many?) flat-top builders thin the edges of the top. Gore&Gilet describe this in their book. For a Sitka Spruce top on a steel-string, depending on the piece of wood, they might thickness the flat panel to 2.8 mm, then once the top is braced and glued to the sides, they reduce the outer 60 mm to about 2.0 mm. They say this allows greater vibratory excursions and so makes the guitar louder. And also reduces the natural frequency, T(1,1)2, of the top by 5-10 Hz. This only works if the braces don't go all the way to the edges, of course. This sounds like the same effect you're describing here. I'm wondering if the recurve is really necessary, or if just thinning the edges would give the desired effect?
Good observations, good question! The recurve is a weaker shape, of course, and many of us feel it contributes to the successful behavior of the top. It's all a complex stew of interacting surfaces and varying thicknesses. Experiment!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 My plan is to take a flat panel (solid 3.2mm of Engelmann Spruce) and heat-bend it in a mold to give it a radius (segment of a cylinder, i.e. like a fretboard), attach it to the sides (no bracing yet), string it up, and see what I get for the main mode frequency. I'll measure the top's deflection before I string it up, to see if it would collapse without the braces. With the frequency and deflection, I can also calculate the monopole mobility of the top, which indicates how loud and responsive the top will be. I'm thinking of trying a 3/8" (10mm) loft across a 15.5" (394 mm) lower bout--a radius of 76". The only reason I chose that loft is because that's the loft on an Ibanez archtop I have. I can always bend it some more. I think stiffness will be very sensitive to the radius of the top, so it would be easy to bend it too much. Finally, I'll brace it. I'm thinking a symmetrical falcate plan that doesn't cross the center. Then put it back on the sides and measure everything again. At that point, depending on the measurements, I may thin the outer 60mm of the top, and see how it affects frequency and loudness.
I wonder if that curve on the outter edge (surround), was considered when designing the Fly. It has a similar concave (surround) around most of the outter edge. 🤔 I imagine it would not have nearly the same impact on tone (if any) as it does for hollow body guitars, but it would atleast give reason for the design.
Nice wondering! My original idea for the fly was that it was an archtop top without any other body components. Early studies were all made of spruce, cedar or redwood. One of these solidbody pre-Fly prototypes from the early 80's averaged 10mm 0r 3/8" thickness, and weighed less than 2 pounds. I used an exaggerated swoopy recurvey edge treatment on the treble side of the body to echo the carved top of an acoustic archtop. Completely agree that the impact on tone doesn't exist, it was just a visual frolic with a message.
Oh man...that second to last guitar [the modern style arch top] is spectacular!! I would love to own and play that instrument but would be scared to know what it is worth and what body parts i would have to sell to afford it. I think i just found my new UA-cam series!!
30's "advanced" (X, then parallel braced) Gibson archtops had a flat-centered arch, and were some of the better sounding archtops, I believe. Many held up okay.
Yeah, it's hard to see what drove this odd "flat-in-the-middle" model?!?!? The other side of your generous "Many held up okay" is that many didn't, and deformed into ugly shapes that can hardly be seen as optimal. You damn with faint praise, I fear. Gibson did make many nice-sounding guitars, as you assert, but it's my opinion that they could have been noticeably better had they been better designed. A lot of folks romanticize the post - war Gibson archies, and that's OK, but I feel that they could have been so much better had they had the services of a passionate and curious aficionado in the design department. It's not too late for the archtop, but maybe it's too late for Gibson, who has abandoned the project entirely now.
Thank you, Ken. I'm on my way to build my own archtop for myself, and I'm learning a lot from your videos. God bless you. ❤
YOu're very welcome. Glad it's helping. Don't give up!
The D’Aquisto’s F-hole detail & inside binding are mesmerizingly beautiful. I have stopped your video many times to just marvel at that.
So much to admire, what a gift.
What valuable information this is. Thank you so much for sharing your years of knowledge and experience, it very much appreciated. Hats off to you
It's my pleasure to do Archtoppery, and you're most welcome!
Ken you are an EXCELLENT TEACHER!
Thanks, I'm doing my best, having a blast, glad it's working for you!
I think I finally figured it out Ken - that is, what it is about the way you come across that has got me so enthusiastic and completely hooked (albeit on a subject I’ve been interested in for years) … I think it’s because, even though you’ve got about half a century’s worth of experience and considerable skill, you appear as enthusiastic as the day you began and yet still so humble about your opinions and achievements. That tell tale little laugh and smile as you talk, especially when you talk about your ‘first guitar’, is rather infectious. Even though that first guitar is clearly a very different animal to what you now aim for (and so it should be), I’m blown away by how incredible it still looks and, whatever your current misgivings may be about it’s design, I think most people would be proud to own it, let alone say that it was something they made 🙌
How nice, Thanks! Still loving the journey. It's so fun to make stuff.
Thanks, Ken! This is an outstanding video with concepts heretofore not treated by any other publications of which I’ve encountered.
I've looked and looked, and haven't ever found anyone addressing the important design issues of the carved guitar.
Please do let me know if you come across anything useful, and thanks for your praise.
Check out Kilngspor, they have everything, and if they don't, they'll make it for you.
I think all the white-ish colored paper is stearated, but I'm not certain about that.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Will do. It would really be interesting to see your concepts applied to a round hole archtop or an instrument with an internal resonator, a la grand bouche Maccaferri.
Sir, allowing access of this nature to your knowledge and experience is extremely generous. Many thanks and I look forward to this journey.
You are most welcome
Love your videos! 😊 Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
You are so welcome!
Merci Ken ! Une fois de plus, votre expérience et vos connaissances en matière d'Archtops sont à la mesure de votre gentillesse et de votre humilité...
Aw shucks, merci pour vos gentils mots! Ces't mon plaisir!
Thank you so much for sharing this and also all your videos, they are great!
Glad you like them!
These videos are invaluable! And I'm not even a builder, just a player trying to better understand this crazy instrument. Thanks a million for so generously sharing your knowledge! Topic suggestion for a future video: neck joints. Given the revolutionary uniqueness of the Parker archtop's neck joint, I'd love to learn about your views on the various types of conventional joints--varieties of glued-in mortise/tenon, fender-style bolt-on, neck-through, etc.
We'll get there, important stuff!
Thank you so much for these videos. I'm really looking forward to the next one.
Thanks!
You're right: I was hedging my bets. I've owned many through the years. A 1938 L5 that was fan-braced ( I guess a Gibson experiment). I have another 1938 L5 that was made with a plectrum 26" scale. The best acoustic archtops that gibson ever made were pre-war, before jazz guitar transitioned to electric. Old professionally-played instruments lived hard lives. Enjoy your videos much.
Wow! You seem to have found some very interesting one offs! I never did hear of any Gibson brace styles except "rail" and "X" How does the long-scale one sound? Fascinating to hear of these! I agree that the old guitars in use really took a beating. I always liked that, way back when I was repairing quite a number of them. I replaced a lot of fingerboards that were just plain worn out, and I can assure you that Gibson proved that Brazilian rosewood was way too soft for the job. Some boards looked like they were dug out with tiny excavators! Others had big plates of thick pearl that wore out slowly, surrounded with rosewood that wore out quickly, leading to some very strange fingerboard micro-topography!
The pre-war Gibson L-5 story is strange, and includes some chapters that most aficionados don't understand, but then there were so few of these extravagantly high-priced guitars made, it's a little hard to understand what the designers were aiming at, and what forces shaped their decision making. Music was changing, and the early L-5 was fully formed before the swing/big band era got started. In a way, it's amazing that the archtop survived at all!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 ua-cam.com/video/VJGyQF5CMqE/v-deo.htmlsi=m72Iu2oKW0CRX_d2
I still have the long scale '38. Made the video with it years. Not great fidelity.im 73, and have been trading and collecting since I was 15. Another interesting Gibson I had was a '39 ES-150 which had no top bracing at all. Top surface was arched, inside was flat.
Appreciate all of your video's so much! (and thank you for also mentioning measurements in metric!)
You're so Metrically welcome!
When I was seven, we learned the "new" metric system in school, and were told that "before very long", pounds, inches and miles would be retired, and we would join the rest of the base 10 world using units derived from reality. Oh well.
As always, thank you for sharing your knowledge in such detail! I feel like every video saves a new (but not young) builder like myself a lot of time and mistakes.
You're very welcome!
For the very first archtop made this is spectacular!
Even for "not the first at all"
Thanks!
Great videos!
Glad you like them!
Wow! Really mind blowing
Thank you! Cheers!
Its always fun, thanx Ken!
Glad you enjoyed it
I am enjoying this very well thought out presentation on arched guitars. I am a violinist and student/collector of violins. You have obviously read the book by Sacconi. Can you please comment on why arched top guitars do not have a sound post? Thank you.
Having fitted a soundpost in an archtop, I'll just say that it seems quite obvious that it doesn't seem to apply well to plucked instruments. (understatement) Please have a look here, where I explore the behavior of bowed vs plucked bridges,
studio.ua-cam.com/users/videoGeSTwjA3GSA/edit
I love violins, violas, cellos and big basses, but apart from the bass, these are rarely plucked, and almost always rely on the bow to drive the strings. The soundpost helps make the system work beautifully by coupling the plates, and allowing the string to drive the whole structure in a powerful way.
How much loft (relative to the edge) is typical for this size archtop? And what is this size? I think I read that your cut-away guitars are 16.3"?
I make two size bodies, 15.9" original flavor (non-cutaway) and 16.3" newfangled cutaway.
Loft for most archtops seems to vary between 5/8" - 1 1/8" ish. Like many, I'm attracted to the bold look of the high arch, but it seems to me that the lower end of this range works better. Currently, I'm using a loft of around 3/4". I'm told that Antonio Stradivari morphed from higher loft to lower over his career, so maybe there's something to consider. Just enough, never too much, as they say.
I started on Violins many years ago and these days I'm making Mandolins. I know that stiffness varies in proportion to the cube of the thickness but I'm still excited by that 'moment' when the plate just yields. Physics is great but we all know that humans give music its feel.
Nicely put. The numbers are interesting, but they forget to tell you when to stop removing material.
Has anyone tried a footed bridge on one which now has a solid contact bridge just to hear if there is a difference?
And what is incorrect about the fiddle type construction?? please.
I suspect that the subtleties of bridge design has been an area of interest and experimentation for all of us who build archtops, so let's just say yes to your question.
As I try to explain in this segment,
kenparkerarchtops.com/etude-fitting-the-bridge
the archtop bridge has seen various design iterations, in several different styles.
Interestingly, there seem to be two styles of 2 footed bridges, one, a rigid type as seen on the 1918 Gibson L-3 in the above video, and another style in which the connecting material between the two feet is very thin so as to be easily flexible, and thereby enable the feet of the bridge to conform as best they can to the top's shape without hand fitting. This seems to me like one of those manufacturing "improvements" that really was designed to reduce the amount of time needed to assemble the guitar and send it on its way, and not in the service of a better sounding instrument.
As you probably know, there is nothing "wrong" with the violin family bridge design. In the above video, I try to explain my understanding of the nature of the forces that move the bridge, and drive the top to create sound.
The huge, obvious differences between the behavior of the bridges of bowed vs. plucked instruments is the point.
Just to be clear, I have no argument with others who think differently, it's just that I consider bridge design a wonderful playground for an archexplorer like me. There's always more to learn!
17:55 "Stiffness varies with the cube of it's thickness." I just finished the E. Somogyi books and this is pretty much the basis of everything he teaches. Once he gets the top thicknessed the way he wants, he does everything in his power to protect it throughout the build so he doesn't even sand it before finish.
The application of this relationship is darn near everything, of course. I always say there are no secrets in guitarmaking, but here's the most important one in plain sight!
Thanks so much for that!
I'm aware that some (many?) flat-top builders thin the edges of the top. Gore&Gilet describe this in their book. For a Sitka Spruce top on a steel-string, depending on the piece of wood, they might thickness the flat panel to 2.8 mm, then once the top is braced and glued to the sides, they reduce the outer 60 mm to about 2.0 mm. They say this allows greater vibratory excursions and so makes the guitar louder. And also reduces the natural frequency, T(1,1)2, of the top by 5-10 Hz. This only works if the braces don't go all the way to the edges, of course.
This sounds like the same effect you're describing here. I'm wondering if the recurve is really necessary, or if just thinning the edges would give the desired effect?
Good observations, good question! The recurve is a weaker shape, of course, and many of us feel it contributes to the successful behavior of the top. It's all a complex stew of interacting surfaces and varying thicknesses. Experiment!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 My plan is to take a flat panel (solid 3.2mm of Engelmann Spruce) and heat-bend it in a mold to give it a radius (segment of a cylinder, i.e. like a fretboard), attach it to the sides (no bracing yet), string it up, and see what I get for the main mode frequency. I'll measure the top's deflection before I string it up, to see if it would collapse without the braces. With the frequency and deflection, I can also calculate the monopole mobility of the top, which indicates how loud and responsive the top will be.
I'm thinking of trying a 3/8" (10mm) loft across a 15.5" (394 mm) lower bout--a radius of 76". The only reason I chose that loft is because that's the loft on an Ibanez archtop I have. I can always bend it some more. I think stiffness will be very sensitive to the radius of the top, so it would be easy to bend it too much.
Finally, I'll brace it. I'm thinking a symmetrical falcate plan that doesn't cross the center. Then put it back on the sides and measure everything again.
At that point, depending on the measurements, I may thin the outer 60mm of the top, and see how it affects frequency and loudness.
I wonder if that curve on the outter edge (surround), was considered when designing the Fly. It has a similar concave (surround) around most of the outter edge. 🤔
I imagine it would not have nearly the same impact on tone (if any) as it does for hollow body guitars, but it would atleast give reason for the design.
Nice wondering! My original idea for the fly was that it was an archtop top without any other body components. Early studies were all made of spruce, cedar or redwood. One of these solidbody pre-Fly prototypes from the early 80's averaged 10mm 0r 3/8" thickness, and weighed less than 2 pounds. I used an exaggerated swoopy recurvey edge treatment on the treble side of the body to echo the carved top of an acoustic archtop. Completely agree that the impact on tone doesn't exist, it was just a visual frolic with a message.
For the CAD oriented people, the software Solidworks has a "command" called dome that allows you to model this sort of geometries very easily 😀
Sure, but it's hard to listen to it.
Gotta watch Ken's history of the archtop talk...
Oh man...that second to last guitar [the modern style arch top] is spectacular!! I would love to own and play that instrument but would be scared to know what it is worth and what body parts i would have to sell to afford it. I think i just found my new UA-cam series!!
YOYO is a great guitar all right! Thanks for your kind words.
30's "advanced" (X, then parallel braced) Gibson archtops had a flat-centered arch, and were some of the better sounding archtops, I believe. Many held up okay.
Yeah, it's hard to see what drove this odd "flat-in-the-middle" model?!?!? The other side of your generous "Many held up okay" is that many didn't, and deformed into ugly shapes that can hardly be seen as optimal. You damn with faint praise, I fear.
Gibson did make many nice-sounding guitars, as you assert, but it's my opinion that they could have been noticeably better had they been better designed. A lot of folks romanticize the post - war Gibson archies, and that's OK, but I feel that they could have been so much better had they had the services of a passionate and curious aficionado in the design department. It's not too late for the archtop, but maybe it's too late for Gibson, who has abandoned the project entirely now.
That 10+ year old Parker looks pretty good...really good, actually!😏
Dude, YOYO is a Hero!