INTRODUCTION TO THE ARCHTOPPERY SERIES

Above is the introductory video to the series.

Archtop guitars began as prototypes in the mid 19th century, and became available to musicians in the early 20th century through the innovative work of Orville Gibson. They evolved, but were slow to catch on until the late 1920’s, when they were embraced by virtuosos such as Eddie Lang, used as accompaniment by folk heroes such as Maybelle Carter, and widely adopted in early jazz bands, displacing the banjo as the preferred rhythm instrument. The one - two punch of the Great Depression in 1929 and the first successful electric archtop in 1936, the Gibson ES-150, all but ended the development of the acoustic archtop guitar.

Ken Parker, designer of the groundbreaking Parker Fly guitar, has returned to his first love, the acoustic archtop guitar, with the goal of bringing the history and future of instrument making together to create instruments of unprecedented power and versatility.

Archtoppery is a video series that shows Ken in his shop, explaining his designs and innovative problem solving approaches, and demonstrating the tools and methods he uses to create his guitars. Often, the tools required need to be devised and built, so tool design and toolmaking will be fully explored as well.

Ken has always been enthusiastic to share with other builders, and is looking forward to producing these etudes and participating in the explorations and dialog from the viewers that is sure to follow.

Your questions and comments are most welcome (see the form at the bottom of this page)!

ETUDES:

Each of the Etudes contains a monograph about the subject and a series of videos with Ken demonstrating how he accomplishes each of the steps in making his archtop guitars. Click on any of the topics below to view them.

Note, below the ETUDES, we’ve added a section called RIFFs, which are shorter videos that focus in on a specific subject. Check them out…

RIFFS:

Riffs are one-off videos covering specific subjects that don’t require entire Etudes.

INSPIRATION FROM THE MASTERS:

Ken explains what we can learn from working on a D’Aquisto archtop from the 1970s.

HELPERS:

Helpers are tools and diagrams that can be downloaded.

First is this Radius chart. Click on it to go to a downloadable PDF.

Stay tuned – more videos and archstuff is on the way!

If you want to receive a notification when new videos are posted, just fill in the form above and click “yes”.