I've been listening to VM Bhatt and Ry Cooder's
A Meeting by the River. Bhatt is a lap steeler, so when you see shots of him playing it's easy to conclude that he's playing an archtop guitar.
Not so.
He plays a
Mohan Veena. Indeed he invented the instrument. It is based on an archtop guitar, but when you see one tilted to face the viewer/camera you can see it's not just a guitar that he's laid on his lap
Firstly it's got a raised nut and a high action, as you'd expect. Then it has strings that run from the nut to the bridge as usual: Three melody strings and three to five drone strings.
But note the machine heads along the side of the instrument. There are 20 sympathetic strings that can be tuned. These run between the fingerboard and the strings that you actually play.
Now check this
Each of the sympathetic strings is routed via a little post/bridge set into the fingerboard. The other end of the string is beneath the saddle.
Why shouldn't you try this at home? String tension. There can be as many as 20 sympathetic strings, so there is non-trivial tension on the neck.