Gibson Custom Shop Solid Formed 17” Venetian Cutaway Arch Top

Forward Thinking Design, Beautiful Tone and Simple Elegance.

The first guitar to be introduced in the Solid-Formed by Gibson range, the 17” Venetian Cutaway Archtop represents simple elegance in both thought and design. It starts with an Eco-Friendly proprietary construction process that requires only 1/3 of the wood of conventional carved top design for its top and back and 1/2 of the wood for its neck. These lead an impressive list of features that represent significant advancements in both tone and construction.

Continuous Grain: Full, Open Tone: Because a Solid Formed guitar’s top and back are each formed from two book-matched pieces of solid wood, the grain is redirected instead of severed, unlike traditional carving. Gibson Custom achieves this break through in Arch Top design via a proprietary process that’s been in development for several years. As a result, the Solid Formed tone is richer and more pronounced.

Redesigned Neck-Less Wood, Stronger Join, and Enhanced Tone: Every Solid Formed Arch Top features a very special neck that’s designed to use less wood yet be stronger while enhancing the guitar’s tone. The headstock is grafted to the neck shaft, which also runs in a continuous grain, insuring strength where a guitar is typically vulnerable and further enhancing the guitar’s overall sound performance. Where the neck meets the body, the heel block is precision glued to the neck shaft, and features a precision dovetail joint. The neck shaft is then glued into a matching dovetail joint in the body. Finally, to make the most of the Solid-Formed neck, a dual action truss rod insures complete flexibility in adjustment.

Tone that Lives and Breathes: To keep the acoustic properties of the generous 17” body unimpeded, a Johnny Smith mini Humbucker “hovers” above the body and is attached to the pickguard, which means there’s no dampening-essentially creating an amplified acoustic instrument. There’s also no rim jack; Gibson thoughtfully runs the input jack through the endpin, another detail that avoids dampening the guitar’s natural tone. The tone and volume controls are also mounted to the pickguard, keeping them handy without touching the guitar. The pickguard and electronics can be removed to create a completely acoustic Arch Top guitar. All of these details ensure that the lively, full, acoustic tone of the Solid-Formed 17” Venetian Cutaway is allowed to live and breath.