Acoustic Guitar Live Mic

badjazz

Colin Perry wrote:

I had a 33 L-12 for a while that was not nearly as good as that L-5.

It's interesting, I have a 1935 L-10 (on sale now at archtop.com--shameless plug) and a 1936 L-5, and even though they use basically the same materials, are about the same age, and have essentially the same design, while the L-10 is a great guitar (& my main guitar for the last 6 years) the L-5 is vastly superior. I wonder exactly what they did different in the lesser models that seem to be the same as the fancy ones. Anyway, like you the best archtop that I have ever played was a L-5 from the 1920's. I played it at mandolin bros. on staten island a couple years ago. I've played a bunch of other fancy and not so fancy archtops, but nothing has been close to that one. I wish I had the $$ back then; I can still hear that thing in my mind. I've been looking at the one at elderly instruments just about every day.

nwilkins

is that the L-5 at elderly for $35000?

re bracing - in the mid 30s Gibson did do x bracing for a couple of years (your L-10 and L-5 are both probably xbraced), but apart from those years all their archtops were parallel braced. I assume Gibson was just trying to make the reissue more popular since x-bracing is all the rage these days.

I really need to try an Eastman since I have received only bad to mediocre reviews from people I know personally who have tried them - this was a few years ago so maybe Eastman has improved the guitars since then?

BTW if anyone is interested in owning something that looks like it would be EXTREMELY similar to a 20s L-5 there is a 1929 L-12 on ebay right now:

http://cgi.ebay.com/544-SUPER-NICE-1929 ... dZViewItem

I guess Gibson did make a few L-12s before the line was officially introduced. There's another on this page:

http://www.vintageinstruments.com/archtops.html

badjazz

nwilkins wrote:

is that the L-5 at elderly for $35000?

that's the one, although I bet the $9500 they have would be pretty good, too.

nwilkins wrote:

your L-10 and L-5 are both probably xbraced

yes, mine are both X-braced. My guitar sounds like Dick McDonough's, but I'd like one that sounds like Eddie Lang. At least that's the idea.

nwilkins wrote:

I really need to try an Eastman since I have received only bad to mediocre reviews from people I know personally who have tried them - this was a few years ago so maybe Eastman has improved the guitars since then?

I would say it may be that even though they are great acoustic guitars, they come set up as electric guitars, and have crappy pickups on them.

nwilkins wrote:

BTW if anyone is interested in owning something that looks like it would be EXTREMELY similar to a 20s L-5 there is a 1929 L-12 on ebay right now

my offer was one of the rejected ones.

nwilkins

Campusfive wrote:

Trenier is making a 16" like an older Epi Broadway, which I've heard is really good also, but not exactly an L-5.

I was intrigued by this so I looked it up on archtop.com but I found their write up kind of odd - they compare it to pre-war Epi Broadways but the Trenier lacks the feature that archtop.com uses as the Broadway's selling point. In descriptions of the pre-war Broadways on archtop.com they always note that the guitar has outstanding projection, due to walnut back and sides (and also presumably parallel bracing). However, the Trenier has maple back and sides and x-bracing. So it looks like the only similarities are really the name and the body dimensions.

badjazz

I think if you do some digging on Trenier's website, you could get the parallel bracing and walnut body as a no additional cost option. The archtop.com writeup is a little inconsistent in the manner that you've stated.

I got the mics today, and campusfive is exactly right. The rode nt3 sounds very natural and has an even response and doesn't seem to pick up too much sound from off to the sides. The shure beta 57a sounds ok, but as campusfive said, to get a good sound you need to be right up in it, which makes the bass boomy and prone to feedback. Also, with the shure, I had to have the gain turned up significantly louder. The rode sounds very transparent, so I am going to keep it and return the shure.

Campusfive

I'm glad you like the Rode.

I didn't notice the Broadway on archtop.com had maple and X-bracing. The previous on they had was parallel and walnut.

Given that a 16" Eastman noncut can be had for under $1500 street, I'd say its worth getting rid of the pickup and raising the action. Also, taking of the pickguard helps with the aesthetics. I put a 16" L-7 style guard on mine from archtop.com and it looks a lot better and doesn't touch the top. Oh and 16" is really, really loud, even for being X-braced. Actually, come to think of it, my 17" cutaway is pretty damn loud too. A real bargain.

nwilkins

cool to know about the Trenier - I guess the maple x braced versions sold on archtop.com have just suffered from the website's using the same write up as for the walnut models.

I'd like to try an Eastman some time - although I suspect that no matter how good it sounds I will always prefer the "vibe" of vintage archtops. Still waiting to walk into a garage sale and find a 1939 Epi Deluxe in the corner for $100.

Ken Bloom

That sort of happened to me. I have a 1941 Epiphone Emperor. Not perfect but very playable and has "that sound". Yes, I paid $50.00 for it. I think you you're permitted one of these opportunities once in a lifetime. The fellow I got it from told me " you don't have to give me the whole $50.00 all at once". A this was 1989 but still....................................

Colin Perry

Here's another shameless plug: My 1933 Epiphone Broadway is still for sale. I was asking $3800, but I am willing to neogtiate the price. You can hear it here:

www.myspace.com/houserentserenaders


Nick--If you get a chance to try an Eastman, I'd really like to know what you think about them. I suspect I will probably get one when my epiphone sells, but there are no dealers here.

badjazz

one more on this, for anybody who may care:
I got the heavy strings (GHS bright bronze 80/20 .060-.014 from justrings.com) today, put them on, and played a gig. They made a huge difference as far as the fullness of the rhythm sound. A couple songs had my forearm burning (any tangos were murder for some reason), but not too much. If you have a vintage archtop, I'd recommend at least giving heavy strings a try, it feels like the guitar was probably built with roughly this gauge in mind--it chunk-chunks perfectly with these. With the guitar now audible I was able to force the band to actually play in rhythm, which was pretty satisfying. It's amazing how much having somebody lay the rhythm down authoritatively can open up everybody else's playing.

Solos may be a bit different with the heavy strings, but I hope it will get me to be less note-y, anyway. This may be sacrilegious to say on a gypsy jazz site, but I always have had an affinity for solos that sound good without a lot of gymnastics.

BTW I saw Colin's guitar is ebay now, for anybody interested.