Archtop Guitar News, Winter 2013

Good news for all you lovers of Jazz box, archtop hollow body guitars. Several companies have recently announced renewed production of classic archtop designs.

D’Angelico. I had included some D’Angelico models in my review of small jazz boxes. These were reproductions of D’Angelico designs but were not high end luthier built guitars as made by D’Angelico but low to mid priced versions made overseas with the famous name of the late luthier. Still they seemed to be nice guitars and a good value. Then they disappeared. The website disappeared. Online searches only found used or “new” old stock available. Well, the guitars are back. But the selection so far is limited to 17 inch archtops. The new D’Angelico website is terrible but take a look to see what else is available (or soon will be).

Guild. I included Guild among my list of great American guitar companies. At the time I last wrote about Guild, they had become a subsidiary of Fender and production of all the classic Guild electric guitars had stopped. Guild had become a source of acoustic instruments for Fender. That has changed. Fender/Guild announced a new collection of classic Guild electric guitars. Most (but not all) are archtops. See the Newark St. Collection such as the X-175 Manhattan. They also are again making the Starfire III (single cutaway) and Starfire IV (double cutaway) semi solid thinline guitars. Great for blues.

Ibanez. I included an extensive list of Ibanez Archtops in my 2012 series on Archtops. The good news is Ibanez is continuing their commitment to Archtops and has announced updated models at the Winter 2013 Namm. See their Artstar collection for some really nice small jazz guitars (15 3/4 inch lower bout width).

Epiphone. I recently mentioned the reissue of the Epiphone Sorrento, a thinline single cutaway similar to a Gibson ES-125. They also re-issued a great reproduction of the Sheraton, much more authentic than the Sheraton II. But there is also bad news from Epiphone for archtop lovers. They have discontinued the ES-175 re-issue. This was a nice inexpensive reproduction of the classic Gibson guitar. Epiphone still makes the Joe Pass Emporer II and the Broadway archtop models but it is sad to see the ES-175 out of production.