ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

  A MONSTER ARCHTOP. I got this monster made-in-China Farida 18" archtop from a friend in the UK relocating to Hong Kong and wanting to get rid of excess baggage. Farida is more well-known for their acoustic guitars, this archtop is no longer in production. You can gauge how huge this thing is by comparing with the '68 Morris copy of a Gibson ES175 (Left) which has a lower bout of 16.75 ", and the '78 Yamaha copy of a 17" Gibson L5-CES (Right) The Farida is heavy and won't fit into any standard archtop gig carrying-case. It is very well-made with an Ebony fingerboard, and very loud when played unplugged. And has an old-fashioned sound like those rhythm guitars in a 1930s big band going comp comp comp before electric guitars were invented. Looking at the tail-bridge, it's a copy of the 1939 D' Angelico New Yorker which probably has a valuation today of at least $50,000. Walking Down an Aisle with Eighty-Eight Guitars on the Celiing At the Hard Rock ...

The type of guitar on which a person plays jazz is usually an Archtop, a big hollow-bodied guitar that gives the fat, mellow tone typical of a jazz guitar. [for picture of an archtop, see my previous article on Eastman:Made-in-China jazz guitars]. Although no one can argue that archtops give a superlative tone for jazz, they do have one problem: feedback. That hollow body is very prone to feedback, and makes an expensive archtop [those with the carved instead of laminated top] become like an uncontrollable thoroughbred horse when playing in a live band situation. Trying to do some inspired playing while that big wooden body is vibrating underneath you, and could at any moment suddenly turn into a howling monster is impossible. Also, archtops are great when you are playing alone or in a very quiet small band setting. At open jamming sessions, in noisy clubs, and playing with drums and horns, archtop tones, though sweet, cannot cut through the noise. A Fender Telecaster, on the other ha...

"The Electric Guitar Sourcebook, by Dave Hunter [Backbeat books 2006] is a new book on what makes a guitar sound the way it sounds. Dave tells you that every part that goes into the making of a guitar contributes in some way to the total tone of the guitar. From all important factors like wood and design, to seemingly inconsequential factors like it's bridge, nut, scale length, and frets. The problem is that all these components inter-act in a non-linear way to give the total effect such that the whole tone is more than the sum of it's parts. This would seem to explain what many guitarists already know-that no two guitars will sound exactly the same. Or more importantly for them, why they must have a particular guitar. In an interview with Fender Custom Shop Master Builder, Chris Fleming, Hunter's question was " How much difference is made by the mere fact of a guitar having been played or not played over the years ?" Chris Fleming: That makes a difference, p...

The extraordinary powers that musicians have still mystifies me. For example, the fingerboard of the violin is only a few inches long. Each note is only a millimeter or less away from the next. So when you consider that an accomplished violinist can play at great speed and his fingers must always be in the correct position within 0.5 mm for him to play each note pitch accurately [note out by half a tone is still discernible as out-of- tune by the human ear], it is really a wondrous feat. But this is just a technical feat. Even more interesting is our ability to 'feel' the chord changes in a song. In a simple song with a Root chord, a 4th and a Dominant Seventh,[e.g. in C key, it is C, F and G7 chords it is usually no problem for an average musician to know when to change ]. But ask most musicians and they can't explain how they know when to change. It is just a 'feeling' and it's quite unerring in it's accuracy. Folk songs, church songs, country songs ...