A Tribute to Jazz Archtop Guitars

 

2024 Archtop Tribute AT105 Classic with P90

The traditional sound of the jazz guitar is derived from the hollow body archtop (the wooden top of the guitar is arched) guitar that is the instrument of choice for most jazz guitarists. Musical qualities aside, IMHO hollow body archtop guitars are by themselves, one of the most beautiful objects  of art.  Here you see a Made-in-Japan Archtop Tribute ES-175 style guitar. Archtop Tribute is a brand developed by archtop fanatic Masaki Nishimura of Walkin.co.jp. Many archtop fans from all over the world make a pilgrimage to the legendary shop up three flights of stairs in the dark in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. To view his inventory of priceless vintage archtops.

Gibson USA was the pioneer of jazz archtops but due to the high cost of production (especially wages) in ghe USA, it was no longer financially viable to produce archtops which have only a limited demand from jazzers and guitar collectors. . Thus they stopped production of archtops in 2019. But another reason for the movement of archtop production to Japan, Korea, China and even Indonesia, beside the fact that wage costs are lower, is that frankly their workers are better craftsmen. This is especially true with regard to Japanese craftsmen. They produce extremely high quaility archtops with remarkable attention to detail on neck, frets and fingerboard for playability, precision of woodworking on the body and bindings, and excellent original electronics (pickups).

This devotion to excellence is not only during the vintage years of production from 1960 to 1980 but even today, a case in point being Masaki Nishimura's Archtop Tribute guitars and Westville guitars.

I have often waxed eloquently on the extreme high quality of made-in-Japan guitars. And there is no better example of this than Greco company's Super Real Project series. These guitars produced between 1977 to 1982 were so fantastic that the prices of Super Real Project Les Paul and ES335 copies are often higher than Gibson guitars of the same age. Super Real Project archtops were only produced from 1988 to 1989. I have a Greco Super real project Gibson ES-175 style guitar and I can vouch that the quality of build and the sound is better than my 1972 Gibson ES175.

Here it is:

1989 Greco Super Real Project Series FA-750