This 2010 Viteri archtop is an absolutely beautifully made guitar with great attention to fit and finish. The builder, Michael Viteri, is not especially well known, but is a very fine builder of archtop and Macaferri style guitars. This one is certainly no exception. This guitar with a carved spruce top, solid flamed maple side, carved flamed maple back, 5-piece flamed maple neck, and ebony fretboard, despite being built as an electric guitar, has a surprising acoustic voice. Not as loud as a completely acoustic built guitar, but much louder than one would expect for a guitar with these electronics. The acoustic tone is also very nice, on the punchier side of things with faster decay, as would typically be expected for a parallel braced guitar such as this. The Lollar Charlie Christian pickup sound lush with great clarity, and is a nice approximation of the classic Gibson blade pickup on which the aesthetic design is based.
The guitar has the appearance of a guitar made in tribute to the ES-350 that the great Barney Kessel played for the majority of his life that had been modified to have a vintage Charlie Christian pickup, rather than its original P90. It can also be seen in the gallery on the builder's website.
The guitar plays beautifully with light fret wear, with light flattening of spots on the first three frets, and otherwise largely unnoticeable. The neck is a fairly chunky C-shape, but not overly large with a fairly wide nut at 1.77". This is a great fit for someone that prefers a larger neck.
Cosmetically, it is in beautiful, near mint condition with very few signs of wear. There are some very light surface scratches in the clear coat, but little else other than the light fret wear to show its playing time.
Weight - 6.6 pounds
Nut width - 1.77 inches
1st fret depth - 0.92 inches
10th fret depth - 0.97 inches
Scale length - 25.5 inches
The guitar comes with a nice TKL hard shell case.
Ships free in the United States, and for reasonable rates worldwide.
About the builder:
Born in Temple, Texas to an artisitic family, Michael showed his talents at an early age. By the age of 7 he had already won a city wide art competetion and expressed a deep fascination with guitars and woodworking. At 9 years old his family moved to Houston and he started studying the guitar. Out of curiosity, he disassembled his elctric guitar and became obsessed with the idea of making a guitar of his own someday. At 14 he got his break: Jr. High shop class. There he made his first guitar and "caught the bug" for building more and would build and restore guitars from parts or old thrown out guitars. It wasn't until college, however, that he built his own guitar from scratch. A Gibson L5 copy that he used professionally for years after. It was then that Michael decided that he wanted to be a luthier. Little by little he sought out the advice of other luthiers, collected tools, and studied highly sought after vintage guitars, while building his own archtops and Selmer Maccaferri copies as a means of study. He has since made them the focus of his production.
When he's not building fine guitars, Michael can be found performing in one the several jazz groups local to Houston, or performing with his longtime friends in France.