Stephen Marchione Spanish Cedar VT

To paraphrase a master car designer: "Any toaster can make toast but it takes a very special toaster to make toast that you covet." Marchione's Vintage S Style guitars are his interpretations of a familiar design platform. They are handmade with the same love and attention that Stephen gives his superb archtops. They are guitars that you want to covet and lust over. From the finest personal wood selection, body contouring, and neck shape - to the outrageously beautiful finishes and final detailing - they are the Masterbuilder's masterbuilt guitars.

In my mind, there is a spectrum of guitar builders. It ranges from assemblers to builders to craftsmen, to artisans, to artists. An artist imbues every one of his (or her) creations with a part of his or her soul. It’s something that’s hard to characterize in words, but it’s something you can feel the moment you touch the instruments. There’s no question that Stephen is a true artist.

Inspired by the spruce body guitars that Stephen has built in the past, I decided to have this VT crafted with an extremely resonant and desirable piece of Spanish cedar, a wood used in fine acoustic and classical guitars.

Everything is here. An amazing playing figured maple neck with a very seductive C shape neck profile and some of the best fret work you’ll ever see.

Plugged into my Blackface Princeton Reverb, the guitar gives up all the sounds you expect from this design and pickup layout, but now elevated to another level. The tones have a wonderful woody warmth and  aliveness to them, a kind of a mixture of spruce and light weight swamp ash. The tonal spectrum is complete from top to bottom, with a wonderful bloom and just the right amount of compression.

Bottom line: If you are looking for something really special, this Marchione is certainly worth considering. I think the real magic here is in how a single builder can conceive all the details and then execute them as a complete thought into one beautiful handmade guitar. It's all here. This Marchione needs to be experienced.

If you'd like to find out more about this item, just call or e-mail me. It would be my pleasure to talk to you about it.

ABOUT MARCHIONE GUITARS
At one time in his life, Stephen Marchione spent six hours a day playing the guitar. Now he makes them—in fact, since beginning his career as a guitar maker in 1989, Stephen has created more than three-hundred guitars for some of the best guitar players in the world. The journey from high-school jazz devotee to “the finest young guitar maker working today,” according to Chamber Music America, was a rich and complicated one. After establishing his own brand and working for several years in New York, Stephen Marchione moved to Houston, Texas, where he builds his entire family of guitars, but Marchione has also studied privately since 1994 with Manhattan-based violin maker Guy Rabut. "I try to build one violin a year to keep my chops up" Says Marchione. He feels that building classical guitars and violins broadens his understanding of top thicknessing, tap tuning, and surface preparation. On the other hand, building electric guitars has taught him the importance of the fretboard in a player's appreciation of a guitar. Marchione is considered one of a very few leading-edge pioneers in the design of guitars that combine elements of both jazz and classical construction. This well-rounded approach contributes to the magic one finds in a Marchione instrument, a magic that is at once very broad yet truly individual.