Beauregard Roberto-Venn 50th Anniv Legacy Archtop

I've known Mario for years, and my respect for him runs deep as a luthier, as an artist, and as a person. He is one of a very small handful of builders whose flattops, archtops, and original MB electrics are equally coveted. That breadth is genuinely rare. Fellow luthier Michel Pellerin, one of Quebec's most celebrated makers, has called Mario definitively one of the leaders of the new generation of guitar builders. That's a peer talking, someone who knows exactly what the standard requires. The Music Emporium has noted that the ability to excel at both flattop and archtop construction is possessed by very few luthiers in the world.

This guitar grew out of something meaningful. The back and sides are South American rosewood, wood that the founder of the Roberto-Venn School of Lutherie brought back from Nicaragua in 1972, before CITES made such material impossible to source. It sat in private storage for half a century. When Roberto-Venn marked its 50th anniversary, that original stash became the heart of a Legacy Collection project, with a select group of the world's top builders each given a portion to work with. Mario was one of them. That's the provenance of this instrument.

The wood choice shapes everything about how this guitar sounds. Rosewood back and sides on an archtop is rare. Most archtops are maple, which gives that bright, focused, projecting quality. Rosewood brings warmth and depth, a certain bloom to the low mids. The result here is something I find genuinely distinctive: it's fully and unmistakably an archtop, but there's a steel-string quality in the perfume of the sound, an organic woody warmth you don't often encounter in this form. Mario's deep roots in both traditions make him exactly the right person to have built it.

The 15" body with full depth is wonderfully comfortable to play, not as imposing as a larger archtop but fully present acoustically. The German spruce top in ebony black is elegant without announcing itself. The Japanese stone truss rod cover inlaid with gold and copper wire is a small thing, but it's the kind of quiet personal detail that tells you who you're dealing with. The Memesis pickup, originally designed for Martin Taylor, completes the picture on the electric side.

The inspired use of incredible aged tonewoods, the master craftsmanship, and the glorious finish and detailing make this an instrument you must consider.

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.