1930s ViVi-Tone Archtop Guitar

After the famous acoustical engineer Lloyd Loar left Gibson, he pursued his new projects under the ViVi-Tone brand name. This archtop is roughly 0-size and completely strange in its features, though after a lot of repair fussing, it sure does sound good -- punchy, round, and firm in tone with lots of volume.

Its top has its dogbone-shaped soundhole under the bridge and the back has two small f-holes. On this particular guitar, both the top and back are solid spruce and feature tonebar bracing. The top is carved and the back is flattish. It has thick, laminated sides and the back simply rests with a little glue on a routed-out "shelf" of the side material. The sides extend lower-down from the back so that the back is isolated from the player's belly and thus acoustically active when played (rather than damped). It thus becomes a "second soundboard" as opposed to a rigid reflector like most guitar backs are designed to be. This is a really smart design and it results in better tone (especially for a smaller archtop) to my ears. This thing sounds more like a 16" Epiphone from the '40s than a smaller-bodied archtop from the '30s.

The next weirdo design feature is a strange neck -- wide, with a 14" board radius, super-wide nut width, and elevated fretboard extension. It also has ginormous frets. They're medium in width but super tall. The feel is not quite "sitar" but it's getting closer to it. You can't be a "neck squeezer" with these frets so accurate playing is useful on them. The benefit of these tall frets is their mass, though -- and it's very-much true that the more mass you have in your frets the better your sustain and, I think, tone in general. I'm a big fan of big old frets because of that, though these guys are extreme.

Work included a level/dress of the frets (quite the chore), repair of various cracks and loose back/side/top seams, fitting of a replacement bridge (provided by the owner), replacement binding for the treble side of the fretboard, cleaning, and setup work. It already came with the replacement tuners, but aside from those and the bridge, it's otherwise completely original and has labels in the interior. It plays beautifully but the neck shape, size, and frets are so odd that I think the average player would feel awkward on it no matter what.