Bent Wood Construction
The “Arch de Lutan” features a top made much in the same way as bent-top violin instruments of the Renaissance period. Five thin strips of spruce are used for the top of the guitar, each heated and hand-bent to a different contour.
These bent strips are then joined together, producing a very strong and virtually seamless plate with the characteristic shape of the archtop guitar.
The resulting top is then carefully hand-carved to its final dimensions. This is not a laminate top - as found on less desireable archtops - but a true solid spruce top.
This is a departure from traditional archtop construction, where tops and backs are carved from a thick plank of wood. The plank (often 1-1/8 inch thick) is made from two pieces of wood - maple or spruce - glued together. A lot of carving is required, removing a large amount of "waste" wood to finally get a roughly contoured top that is about 1/4 inch thick.
The bent wood approach starts with 1/4 inch strips of wood - again, bent to shape and joined to form the rough top - and allows the maker to concentrate primarily on the fine carving process of thicknessing the top to its final dimensions.
Advantages
Advantages of the bent wood method include:
- Very large sound for a 17" archtop. (The prototype model with 5-piece top has discernibly more volume than my traditional 2-piece carved archtop, and a very strong, focused mid-range.)
- More grain integrity in the spruce sound plate (hand bending the top to shape lessens the amount of wood removal, minimizing grain disruption known as “run-out”)
- Added strength (thin sections of wood assembled like the arch of a bridge produce a very strong structure)
- Allows the customer to choose from a wide variety of woods – maples to exotics – for back plate construction, creating a very personalized instrument
- Less wood waste compared to carving a thick billet of spruce (traditional archtop carving)
The Arch de Lutan is a "first" in jazz guitar construction, using an old-world approach to open a new world of archtop possibilities.
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