Stephen Marchione Uni-Body Carve Top, 2018

Condition: This stunning Stephen Marchione Uni-Body came straight out of a collection. It's in excellent-plus condition. There are light pick scratches and fingernail marks around the neck and middle pickup. Apart from that, the rest of the guitar shows virtually no signs of playing wear.

Stephen's Uni-body guitar model is an extraordinary piece of guitar craftsmanship. It is not something that can be custom-ordered. The reason is that Marchione only builds this rare model when he finds a perfect piece of wood. And I mean perfect in every way. It is rare to find a single piece of wood perfect enough to be carved into a complete guitar.

Moreover, there is no room for error when crafting a uni-body. Even a tiny mistake can ruin the entire build project. As Bill Evans writes about a particular kind of Japanese calligraphy in the liner notes to "Kind of Blue," there is no room for erasures, no room for error, no going back." This guitar is exactly like that. As Stephens says, it takes his 30 years of luthier skills to birth one of these beauties. In the last ten years, he has only made six of them.

It's a stunning piece of work. Poplar is an excellent tonewood, particularly when torrefied, giving it additional stability and a sweet vintage tone. There is no compromise to its resonance because of any glue joints. Why? Because it doesn't have any. Other than the ebony fingerboard, this exceptional guitar is crafted from one beautiful, superbly carved, and finished singular piece of wood.

In Stephen's words, "There is no energy loss. Every note you play rings true, like when you play baseball, and the bat hits the ball perfectly. You know it's a homer on impact. It's a beautiful thing."

From the custom electronics to the finely carved vintage feeling neck, this guitar is rare, beautiful, tone-full, and alive. If you are into fine boutique S-style electrics, this Uni-Body is next-level; there are no fancy inlays here, no crazy colors, just outstanding wood and superb craftsmanship. Extraordinary indeed!

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.