Based in Clinton, Mass., Old Truck Guitars is Zac and Steve—hosts of the "Best of the Week" podcast. These guys spend their time hunting down vintage catalog guitars, especially old wall-hangers that will need work before they're playable. With the right parts, clever ideas, and a little know-how, Old Truck brings these old axes back to life.
This Old Truck Archmaster started out as a late-'60s Harmony H6415 Archtop. Old Truck reinforced an old repaired crack spanning much of the treble side, and they reset the neck and refretted the fingerboard. From there, the Archmaster is rigged up with USA-made Fender Jazzmaster pickup (AVRI '62) with a single volume control.
This Archmaster is a fun repurposed old clunker. The action runs on the high side because the pickup sits pretty high on the guitars top (the high E gets pinched past the 15th fret), but it's still lot of fun to play. It's especially fun for slide, too. Its acoustic tone is pretty nice, but it definitely brings more to the table as an electric guitar. Plugged into an amp, the Archmaster will growl and bark like any good archtop, and the Jazzmaster pickup gives it a nice dynamic feel and the ability to push an amp into creamy saturation.
Guitars are meant to be fun, and this Old Truck Archmmaster has a lot of charm. We love how they dropped pearloid dots into the stripped fingerboard—a small detail that only makes the Archmaster more fun to play!