Archtop Guitars

Strung with flatwound strings it's perfect for jazz. Strung with bronze round wound strings it becomes a very versatile guitar covering the span from Maybelle Carter to rock-a-billy and anything you would play on a steel string. Strung with electric guitar strings it becomes a great blues or a rock guitar.

The archtop is a class of steel-stringed guitar, acoustic or electric, with an arched top similar to a violin’s. Often sporting a pair of f-holes instead of a single, round sound hole, archtops were popular with jazz, blues, and country musicians, and are widely associated with music of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s.

Mention Gibson guitars to a layman, and most will think of the Les Paul and SG solidbodies or flatop acoustics such as the J-45 or J-50. Classics these certainly are, but archtop acoustics and semi-acoustics are a key part of Gibson’s history and heritage. The “thinline” semi-acoustics introduced in the 1950s – the ES-335, ES-345 and ES-355 – remain the big sellers, but Gibson’s big-bodied “jazz” archtops also have a remarkable history.

Handmade archtop guitars by Dale Unger. They are one of the finest guitars handcrafted today!

We here at Fine Archtops just love custom jazz guitars . And we love to share our knowledge about these beautiful instruments.

Looking for custom jazz archtop guitars? Connect with professional luthiers to get the guitar you have always wanted. Call Fine Archtops for more information!

Orville Gibson invented the carved-top guitar in the 1890s. The Gibson company refined the design with the addition of f-holes in 1922, and brought the concept to full potential in the mid ’30s with larger-bodied archtops. • While Gibson inarguably blazed the trail in the industry when it came to archtop design, that trail had at least one wrong turn, exemplified by this month’s featured guitar – essentially an f-hole version of the company’s 133/4″ roundhole archtop L-3.

The Evolution of Archtop Guitars.

An archtop guitar is a hollow steel-stringed acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with jazz, blues, rockabilly and psychobilly guitarists.

Are you interested in learning more about archtop guitars? Read our story about custom jazz guitars and the archtop guitar.

“The archtop guitar, with its many subtleties of sound, became a dominant instrument in the new bebop and cool jazz styles.”

We can connect you to a luthier that specializes in electric archtops and custom made guitars.