How Flat Top Guitars Work

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, my name is Jim Dufresne and I'm here to tell you about acoustic guitar amplification. Here's a guitar we're all familiar with, the dreadnought shaped. These are generally referred to as flat-top guitars, because the top is, you guessed it, flat. Although there is a slight arch. A good maker will put a slight arch into the top, and the same with the back. There's a slight arch. This is something old guilds had an even more pronounced arch. Guild's a fine guitar, excellent guitar. Flat-top guitars have been in existence for hundreds of years. Here's a classical guitar, and these date further back than the steel strings or the arch tops. It's been guessed that the guitar required its sixth string about 1790, 1800 or so. Now we know that the guitar was originally from Europe, and Spanish had a lot to do with it, but we had a maker come over from Australia, CF Martin, and Mr. Martin built little flat-tops and started a company called Martin Guitars, and they're wonderful instruments as you know. They utilize a flat-top. Now this is a classical guitar. Its design became formalized about 1860, 1870s, with the Torres design. The bodies grew a little bit bigger and standardized, the string length was standardized to about six-hundred-and-fifty millimeters, or about twenty-five inches, about that."