Marchione

Marchione Electric Guitars — The Finest in Houston, Texas

Stephen Marchione spent six hours a day playing guitar in high school before he ever picked up a chisel. A jazz devotee from Houston, he went on to earn a degree in music before finding his way to lutherie through an apprenticeship at Pensa-Suhr Guitars in New York City, where he trained alongside John Suhr and Mas Hino and acquired a reputation as an expert craftsman almost immediately. He opened Marchione Guitars on 20th Street in Manhattan in 1993. After September 11, 2001, he moved back home to Houston, setting up his studio in the city's Montrose arts district where he has built every guitar he has made since.

Chamber Music America called him the finest young guitar maker working today. That was years ago. He has only gotten better.

Since beginning his career in 1989, Stephen has built more than three hundred guitars for some of the finest players in the world, including jazz virtuoso Mark Whitfield, with whom he has collaborated on five different archtop designs, and guitarist Mike Moreno, whose playing directly inspired the creation of the Marchione semi-hollow. He also builds the occasional violin, studying privately with Manhattan-based violin maker Guy Rabut to keep his understanding of top thicknessing, tap tuning, and surface preparation at the highest possible level. That cross-disciplinary mastery is audible in everything he makes.

What Makes a Marchione Electric

Every Marchione electric guitar begins with a hand-selected tonewood and ends with a setup so precise that players routinely describe picking one up for the first time as a revelation. The clarity of voice that runs through all of Stephen's instruments, from his archtops to his solid bodies, comes from a builder who has spent more than three decades listening to wood, understanding how it vibrates, and learning how to coax the best possible tone from every piece he works with.

Marchione solid body electrics are widely described as marvels of piano-like sustain, with a clarity and articulation that stands apart from anything else in their price range. His semi-hollow instruments achieve something rarer still: the singing, airy resonance of a fine hollow body guitar married seamlessly to the focus and projection of an electric, with feedback resistance that makes them genuinely practical for working players at any volume level.

Premium tonewoods including Engelman spruce, figured maple, mahogany, and ebony are selected by hand. Pickups come from Tone Specific, with configurations tailored to each model and build. Every instrument is finished in nitrocellulose lacquer and set up by Stephen himself before it leaves the studio.

The Electric Models

Carve Top Solid Body — The pinnacle of Marchione's solid body work, featuring a hand-carved arched top that brings acoustic resonance principles directly into the solid body format. The carve top is not decorative. It is a structural and tonal decision, one that gives the instrument a harmonic complexity and touch sensitivity that a flat-topped solid body simply cannot replicate. Each one is built entirely to order, with your choice of tonewoods, pickups, finish, and appointments.

Neck Through Solid Body — A single-piece neck that runs the full length of the instrument, providing the maximum possible transfer of vibration between the strings and the body. The neck-through construction gives this model exceptional sustain and a remarkably even response from the first fret to the last, making it a favorite among players who spend a great deal of time in the upper register.

Set Neck — Marchione's interpretation of the classic glued-neck single-cut format, refined to a degree that makes the instruments it is most commonly compared to feel like rough drafts. The set neck design delivers the warm, full-bodied resonance that the format is famous for, while Stephen's hand-voicing and meticulous construction push its tonal complexity well beyond what most players expect from a guitar of this type.

Vintage Tremolo Solid Body — Built around the classic American offset body format with a hand-built vibrato system designed for smooth, expressive pitch variation and exceptional tuning stability. The Vintage Tremolo is the Marchione electric for players who want everything this builder does at a slightly more accessible starting price point, without a single compromise in craftsmanship, materials, or playability.

Master Burst — Stephen's most ambitious single-cut design, and the instrument that most clearly demonstrates how far beyond the instruments that inspired it he is willing to go. The Master Burst is emphatically not a Les Paul clone. It draws on that lineage the way a master chef draws on a classic recipe: as a starting point, not a destination. The result is a single-cut electric with finely tuned resonance and presence, a tone that has been described as sweetly EQ'd from the factory, with transient highs and midrange clarity that make it an extraordinary instrument for any style of playing.

Semi-Hollow — Born from a conversation Stephen had with guitarist Mike Moreno after watching him play a concert, and the conviction that Moreno deserved a better instrument than the one he was playing. The Marchione Semi-Hollow is centered around a hand-carved and voiced spruce top, the same stock Stephen uses on his elite archtops, giving it a warmth, presence, and expressive capacity that sets it apart from every other semi-hollow on the market. Available in Standard and 59 Burst configurations.

A Guitar That Needs to Be Played

There are instruments you can appreciate intellectually, and there are instruments that change you the moment you play them. A Marchione electric is firmly in the second category. Whether you are a working jazz musician, a studio professional, or a collector who understands that the finest handbuilt guitars are among the most rewarding instruments a player can own, a Marchione rewards you every single time you pick it up.

Browse our available Marchione electric guitars, and reach out to discuss a custom commission with us directly.