The Archtop

The Vienna is built for the most passionate archtop guitar lovers. The architectural purity of the design gives the guitar a clean shape that presents the essence of the sound. All design details enhance the beauty and the basic shape of the guitar. All the proportions are perfectly balanced creating a very dynamic powerful elegance. Yet this is done without any extrovert features that would distract the eye.

VIENNA OPUS

For the Vienna I started to use topplates that I bought from the widow of A. Lang. This old stock I must have bought in 1990 or so. Lang was a well-known German guitarmaker living in Garmisch Partenkirchen, Germany and died in 1975.
Although some of the woods may have minor visual flaws, it is acoustically far-out
superior to any new wood due to the extreme age. The roughly pre-cut tops do sound
like a bell. I estimate that they have been stored to dry in the workshop of Lang
for more the 40 years. The wood itself would therefore surely be more then 250 years
old. In the time Lang bought his wood, the supply of high quality was no problem.

Mostly I use a bicolour partial gold-plated tailpiece: originally designed and only
available on SCHARPACHArchtops. The tailpiece is cut from a solid block of a specially
selected brass, and is not cast. This method, although considerably more time
consuming and labour intensive, creates a superior quality piece. It takes about
8-10 hours for each part of the tailpiece to be cut, after which it is hand-polished.
It is then is heavily gold-plated using fine jeweller’s techniques as opposed to
industrial plating. The tailpiece also features the engraved bird which symbols the
"S" in Scharpach. The inlays are of massive silver.

The guitar has a powerful and well-balanced acoustic sound and is very easy to play.
It produces just enough bass and strong fat punchy trebles, still with rich harmonics.
The guitar does not have the midrange sound that sometimes is typical for Archtops,
nevertheless it still cuts through. It uses the custom floating Scharpach Jazz
Humbucker with Alnico 3 magnets.

Finishes are:

Vienna Sunset: A custom sunburst Vienna.
Vienna Golden: No shades but a beautiful mellow golden yellow.
Vienna Golden Shade: Golden yellow with orange running into brown shades.
Vienna Traditional Brown: inspired by the beautiful browns used by the Cremona Makers
Vienna Natural Blonde: Simply a natural blond with the slightest tint.