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Two times I heard Barney Kessel Gibson in a live setting, it left a really good impression sound wise. Just about perfect electric archtop sound to me. Anyone played one of those?
In the '80s, I think, I went over to luthier Paul Gudelsky's home/workshop in Southern California. He had apprenticed for a bit with James D'Aquisto, and he was completely serious about acoustic archtops, of which he had built quite a few.
He had a collection of D'Aquistos (belive it or not!), and we sat in his room and tried at least five of D'Aquisto's finest guitars. Quite an experience! They were more rounded than, say, vintage L5. Paul thought he had come close to capturing D'Aquisto's tone in his own creations.
Sadly, sometime later Paul was apparently murdered. Paul was very young at the time. Some of his fine instruments remain and are for sale at times.
"" What's the coolest archtop you've ever played? ""
wait - the coolest ??
I'm biased, but I would say: these two. 😎
(p.s. not the flat-top in the middle)
@Buco actually Heard and played on Michael Valeanu's Barney Kessel quite a bit when he was living here in NYC. Great, great guitars!
@pdg Damn! that's an afternoon! going to go look up Paul Gudelsky right now!
@marcelodamon - Good on you! lots of great guitars! I'll have to visit someday!
Yes, actually his is one of those. I saw him with Cyrille. The other was owned by a guy I took group jazz lessons with in Chicago. They sounded very similar to each other. The look is a very much acquired taste but they sound amazing to me.
Oddly enough, I have a 60's Barney Kessel, "Ventura" guitar, made in Japan, and qualifies as a "lawsuit" guitar. I bought it for 700 bucks off of eBay, and swapped out the pickups for Gibson 57's, as well as upgraded the pots and knobs. It's a great guitar, and I agree with you, plugged into the right amp, it is the ideal archtop (electric) jazz guitar tone. I even compared it to a local Gibson BK custom that was offered for sale to me, and I declined; as the copy was just as good as the original. If you find one of these guitars, snatch it up. I gave the first one I bought to my good friend Dean Gionis, from the Hot Club of Buffalo, and found another one about a year later.
The L 7 (L 7 C, to be correct) I mentioned in my above answer had been camouflaged. A previous owner had attached a "Klira" logo to the headstock, and flower stickers to the body.
Luthier Karsten Schnoor bought it to a bargain price, and let me play it when we had a gig together. Afterwards he restored and sold it. Sob.
http://karstenschnoor.de/reparatur-restaurierung.php
Wow, only known video of Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory from the 1950s just discovered:
Its cool to see the basic machines and tools being used here. Some luthiers might still use similar ones, while others have been replaced by things like a CNC, which has much more accuracy and takes less time than these processes. Great find, Michael.
Those duplicarver things are pretty quick I bet.
There's another one from the 60s. It goes without saying that the machines seem suicidal. I'd be deaf and have COPD real quick but probably that shaper would kill me first.
There's a crazy kind of automatic shaper in some of these videos that I don't get. It seems to grab the jig and run it in circles.
https://youtu.be/3-zOaOYB120?si=yeR9cSorvcC8BL3f