EJIMA ARCHTOP GUITARS

Archtop Jazz Guitar All Handmade in Japan.

I’ve been playing archtop guitar for more than 40 years. It was late 70’s soon after I got my first archtop guitar by Guild, I brought it to a craftsman Nobuyuki Ohta for refretting and setup. Later he opened a workshop called Sharwood Guitar Workshop in a suburb of Tokyo and many professional guitarists depend on his expertise as guitar craftsman. At that time he owned a handmade archtop guitar by Carl Albanus Johnson which has a characteristic star inlay on the headstock. Whenever I visited him, he took out the Albanus and let me play jazz tunes and enjoyed listening its tone. I was astonished at warm and loud acoustic sound of the Albanus. It was my first experience of handmade archtop guitar. In contrast to today's information amount via internet, it was hard in 70’s to find information about handmade archtop in Tokyo. Only information occasionally appeared on music magazines was D’Angelico and D'Aquist since Jim Hall started to use D’Aquist as his main guitar around that time and some famous jazz player played D’Angelico. Handmade archtop guitar was dream guitar for young jazz player.

My major is chemistry. After graduating from a post graduate school in Tokyo, I entered a German chemical company and worked over 30 years. I was involved in the business of several chemicals and metals, such as dyestuffs, pigments, coating binders, plastics and rare metals used for electric parts and cutting tools. These experiences are very much useful for guitar building in terms of material and processing.

Although I was busy with the job and had limited time to enjoy playing guitar, my interest about archtop guitar never had dropped. I played number of guitars from high-end model by major US manufacturer to hand crafted archtop by American luthiers as my collection increased. Besides playing guitar, I also learned by myself repair work as maintenance of my guitars and tube amplifiers. Consequently I opened my own workshop in 2015 and started archtop guitar building.

My archtop guitar is built based on my unique knowledge and technology accumulated from my long experience in playing guitar as well as in chemical engineering.

Toshihiro Ejima 2018

Features and designs from the viewpoint of player

Relatively small body for easy handling

Both 17’’ and 16’’ models have actually smaller body size by 1/2’’ at lower bout, namely 16.5’’ and 15.5’’ respectively.

Three-piece neck as standard

From my own experience, three-piece neck is more stable against daily changes in atmospheric conditions compared with two-piece or one-piece neck. It requires less frequent truss rod adjustment.

Asymmetric neck heal

Neck heal is made thinner at high note side to improve playability at high positions.

Concealed tone pot

Disk type potentiometer is installed underneath the finger rest for tone control to refrain from interfering picking.

Strings grounding

Though traditional tail gut type tailpiece is employed, strings are grounded directly on the output jack to reduce noise when amplified.

Nitrocellulose lacquer finish

Nitrocellulose lacquer is popular finish for guitars even today. Main reason seems that it often used in vintage instruments rather than its primary property of thin and stiff film. In my opinion, nitrocellulose has hygroscopic property and fits very well with human skins. German nitrocellulose resin used to be used for toothbrush handle because of this property before replaceable synthetic plastic was developed. In my guitar building, only nitrocellulose lacquer is used for top coating regardless of middle and base coating material.

Models

Model 17

Model 16

Model 15