Talk about any genre, and there is a big chance that genre would highly involve guitars, in one way or another. Rock and Roll, Heavy Metal, Jazz, Fusion, Country, Blues, Alternative, Speed Metal, Hardcore Metal, Pop, Flamenco, and even Classical, just name it - choose your genre and surely you will find guitars to be in the mix. With origins dating back to 5000 years ago, the guitar has contributed a profound influence on modern popular culture, defining its status amongst the most popular musical instruments in the world today.
Each of these genres has one or several types of guitars most suited for it. The archtop guitar type is mostly used by Blues or Jazz players.
An archtop guitar is, as its name indicates, a guitar with its body arched, violin-style. Typically, it will be an acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar, and it will have "f-shaped" holes, making it strongly resembling the violin. The archtop guitar will also have steel strings, which are usually thicker than the regular acoustic guitars, and humbucker pickups.
Although the first archtop guitars were pure acoustic guitars, since Gibson guitars introduced in 1951 the first semi-acoustic archtop guitar, most archtop guitars today are acoustic-electric, and include humpbucker pickups. Their hollow body make them suitable to playing in both ways
(acoustic and electric), and give them a distinct rich sound.Archtop guitars are manufactured today, besides by the big guitar companies, also by many small private manufacturers. Their special carved look makes them popular to make by many guitar artists.
Although archtop guitars are normally hollow, in the last few years some guitar manufacturers refer to their solid-body guitars with carved belly as “archtop guitars”, in order to distinguish them from the regular flat-belly solid body guitars.
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