D'Angelico New Yorker
Gibson invented the archtop guitar but D'Angelico made it into an art-deco masterpiece.
Traditions affect many products and musical instruments are probably as bound by tradition as any product on earth. The archtop guitar itself was a product which combined the traditions of the guitar and the archtop mandolin which itself was a hybrid of mandolin and the violin traditions. I think it's no accident that many of the great luthiers of the 20th century came from Italian families and were exposed to mandolin music from an early age.
John D'Angelico was one such fellow. He grew up in a family where music was important. His maternal great uncle made and repaired both violins and mandolins and employed him as an apprentice which allowed D'Angelico to learn these arts the old fashioned way. Through hands-on instruction and by experience he came to acquire great skill and in 1932 he went off on his own, renting a small storefront at 40 Kenmare St in Manhattan. His store became both a place to display merchandise and a place to create it.
The first D'Angelicos were very similar to the Gibson L-5. At
the time the L-5 was pretty much the best guitar out there and held a
lot of bragging rights among guitarists. D'Angelico built his
guitars for acoustic performance first and then appearance. The
earliest models looked very much like mid-line Gibsons but the Excel
model upped the ante. When the New Yorker was released the level
of ornamentation had reached new heights and the guitars sounded better
than ever.
D'Angelico continued to make guitars by hand until his death in 1964. At the time a D'Angelico cost little more than an equivalent Gibson and used D'Angelicos were not at all costly. Since his death the price as risen steadily and a good New Yorker or Excel can cost more than a house.
Even though D'Angelico had taken the archtop to new levels of beauty and surpassed anything ever to come out of Kalamazoo Gibson wasn't out of the game by any means. They had something up their sleeves that is still amazing to contemplate, the Super 400.
