Stephen Marchione Mahogany 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.

This is the very first Stephen Marchione VT with a one piece light weight mahogany body and neck to arrive at our shop. It is truly spectacular. The color is a transparent vintage cherry nitro hand rubbed to glass-like sheen. When Stephen and I spoke about choosing a color we decided on a shade thats reminiscent of a vintage Gibson SG. Because of the mahogany body and neck we thought it would be quite unique on a S style guitar. As you can see from the pictures the result is simply awesome!

One of the extra benefits of working with Stephen is that since the guitar is totally handmade I am able to be very particular about how I want the neck to feel. He really nailed it for me here. It's a wonderfully contoured medium C that is so elegantly shaped I can't put it down. Because of the cured gloss nitro finish on the figured mahogany neck the feel is very warm and elegant, just like a fine archtop guitar. The Indian rosewood fingerboard is lovely to look at - a perfect tonal match with a mahogany - and it's topped with very fine precision fretwork. The stainless steel frets are so highly polished that bending strings is effortless. 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 sweet zing and aliveness to them with a buttery rich midrange that is fitting for a mahogany  guitar. This lightweight (6.5lb) beauty reminds me of a vintage guitar that has already "opened up" with years of playing.

The tonal spectrum is complete from top to bottom, with a wonderful bloom and just the right amount of compression.

Bottom line: 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.