Guitar talk, and easy guitar lessons from beginner to jazz with Birdsnake Brown
Here’s a video about my newest Eastman Archtop. At the time of this writing I’ve been playing it for 6 months and I still love it!
It’s a fantastic guitar with a carved spruce top, and maple back and sides. It has a floating pickup so when you play it unplugged the top and beautifully resonant.
After having the Eastman 503 and discovering how much I love playing the archtop unplugged I decided that I would really benefit from a deeper all solid archtop.
I was sure that I needed and archtop, and I was right. It has been so inspiring to have a guitar with “the sound”.
I guess it’s sort of like when you want to play like Hendrix you get a Strat. Well, when you want to sound like jazz guitar, you get a jazz guitar.
I was really impressed with the quality. I did my research and everything pointed to these guitars being well made, good sounding archtops, but when you order a guitar without trying it at the store, it’s always a risk.
It came with a good setup. The frets were perfect which is always a concern. A lot of times when you get a new guitar it needs to have fretwork before it will play optimally, but with this Eastman archtop that was not the case. I did do some minor adjustments to get it exactly how I like it by adding a little bit of tension to the neck and lowering the action.
I went with the Eastman 503CE because it has the solid carved top, but laminate back and sides. I play quite a few gigs with a full volume drummer and electric bass player, so I wanted something that wouldn’t have feedback issues, so the laminate back and sides help with that.
Eastman AR503CE on amazon: https://amzn.to/3i8lTuf
Before I got my archtop I was convinced that I needed and archtop to get the jazz guitar voice that I have in my head. With a lot of gear and guitars, it’s more about wanting something than needing something. I was sure that an archtop was something that I needed.
It’s true that you can play jazz on just about any guitar, and there have been some great players that used a Telecaster and even a Stratocaster, but most of my favorite guitarists played an archtop.
After I made this video I did get an archtop guitar, and I can say with confidence that it does have the voice, it has been inspiring, and I did need an archtop.