Dale Unger American Archtop 2003

Hand-carved Dale Unger American Legend acoustic-electric archtop guitar: new old stock. Phenomenal instrument with a violin finish representing some of the best work by this early acolyte of Bob Benedetto. The original price two decades ago was about $7,000. Mint or near-mint condition. This guitar has resided unplayed for 20 years. Shipped in TKL case and fully insured. See details in final photo.

From jazziz magazine, August 2006: "Dale Unger handcrafts very nice and, by most standards, very expensive six- and seven-string archtop guitars. He's been doing this full time since 1996, when, after serving a two-year apprenticeship in a nearby town [of eastern Pennsylvania] with renowned archtop luthier Bob Benedetto, he went into business on his own. .... Unger, a modest, soft-spoken man who worked for 25 years with his father and brothers in the home construction and repair business, had the requisite woodworking skills for the job. He also had a longstanding desire to build guitars. In fact, by the time he struck out on his own as a luthier, he had already been building flattop guitars from scratch, on and off, for 18 years. He discovered archtop guitars in 1993, when a friend took him to ... Benedtto's house to meet the master luthier himself. Benedetto, revered by fellow luthiers since the early '70s, built nothing but archtops, mostly for jazz musicians and collectors. ... Unger's shop is well ordered: Drills, saws, routers, sanders, and a vast array of hand tools rest on shelves, hang on walls, and sit atop tables. Raw pieces of expensive wood, much of it imported from Europe, are stored in racks overhead. ....This is where Unger has spent roughly 80 hours constructing each of the 178 American Archtop guitars he's built during the last 10 years. [S]elect boards of maple, spruce, mahogany, and ebony are meticulously cut, carved, curved, sanded, buffed, routed, assembled, and covered with many coats of finely sanded lacquered. ... Were he to stop taking orders for new guitars today, he would be busy for the next 18 months filling the orders he has already."