model 33 B&H Zenith archtop (photos added)

mr-mac

Ordered rosewood bridge as above from Germany as was cheapest place by about £10 as same bridge in UK... Will get restrung and sorted for a strap and look at where new bridge needs to be and intonation on the bridge.  Once I see what that looks like and how bridges sound I'll decide which I'll use.

got a reasonable wee stick on two sided piezo I'll use to get going at band jam and play it a little for acoustic uses.  If happy with everything I'll continue with getting proper piezo and pickups sorted

musicman100

ICBM said:

I'd be highly surprised if any of them aren't all-laminate. As far as I know all that era of German guitars are laminate, right up to the top-of-the-range Hofners - the only exception being the Golden Hofner.

They can sound very good with a Fishman Powerbridge-type piezo pickup, through a good preamp - and an electric guitar amp for proper vintage tone .

Yeah I think right regarding Hofners been laminated apart from the golden. 
Ours has a lovely sound to it

mr-mac

We'll that's a bit manly.... 25.5" scale 

ICBM

mr-mac said:

We'll that's a bit manly.... 25.5" scale 

Archtops usually are longer scales - some old jazz-era ones even went up to 26" if I remember rightly. They were designed to give as much percussive attack as possible, to compete with the other big-band instruments. Of course no-one was bending strings back then, so the action could be set very low (especially with flatwounds) and they don't seem to hard to play even with heavy strings on.

mr-mac

Bending is a bit much on 12's (shhh I play 24 3/4 on 10's usually).  And baring is just a tad harder but getting there, doesn't take long...  New bridge arrives and fitted but need to tweak intonation a little

mr-mac

Think the smaller zeniths were shorter than 25.5