Blue & Arches
I am partially color blind. The only color that I see well is blue. If I design traffic lights, the red light would be blue. Blue is important to me, as you can imagine.
I am fascinated by the usage of arches and domes in nature, architecture, and engineered products for their weight-to-strength ratio and simple beauty.
A guitar shape is full of arches. An archtop guitar especially. I am fascinated by acoustic archtop guitars. Their domed plates function as stiffening and strengthening agents to deal with the enormous force that strings exert on guitar structure. These domed plates vibrate in a very different and, in my opinion much more controlled way than flat plates of flattop guitars.The acoustic archtop guitar is not a finished design. Its development stopped when archtop went electric. Plates’ ability to resonate started to be a problem, as it caused feedback. Today, archtops are experiencing a renaissance. The Acoustic archtop guitar can and will develop to its full potential.
The greatest collection of archtop guitars is definitely the Blue Archtop Collection (BAC) commissioned by Scott Chinery. It all started with Blue Centura Deluxe by Jimmy D’Aquisto. I was always fascinated by Jimmy’s focus on optimizing variables influencing archtop performance. Blue Centura is a real marvel. Many guitars in the blue collection were built by my luthier idols. I have enormous respect and feel extremely grateful to Mr. Chinery and participating luthiers to create BAC and now the Archtop Foundation to preserve the coolest guitars that exist! As a sign of respect and recognition for work that started with Jimmy and Scott, all my guitars have blue stripes of purfling arches surrounding the domed plates.
