Dale Unger American Legend Carved 7 String Natural Blonde Archtop

Product Description

A Dale Unger American Legend 2000 full depth 17” x 3” Venetian cutaway Seven string Archtop guitar in near mint condition. The American Legend is hand voiced of all European solid carved aged tone woods. With its X- braced design, and Kent Armstrong floating pickup, the American Legend is built in the lineage of the great Bendetto designs. The sleek lines are accentuated by the binding-free construction, lending the instrument a clean and dramatic appearance. This example is in mint condition, with exceptionally vivid flame maple back, sides and neck. D profile neck , low action over nearly new medium frets on an ebony fingerboard. This guitar was always strung with Labella tape wounds, minimizing any fret wear when played. Never gigged, but cherished and play in the home.   Custom upgrades including the solid ebony tuner buttons. Great clarity and warmth- Clear open acoustic voice, with excellent projection, detail and sustain, enhanced with the floating Armstong humbucker.

Specifications

About Palen

Nelson Palen started building his acoustic archtop Palen Guitar in November, 1998 and finished it the last week in June, 1999. He read the book and viewed the 6-hour video by Bob Benedetto, who has been building guitars and violins for 30 years and is considered the premier archtop builder in the country. The Palen archtop is unique in that the soundboard and back are carved from wood approx. 1″ thick to a domed shape similar to that found on a violin.

Before Nelson made Palen archtops, he had been making decorative wooden bowls as shown here for approx. 12 years. His woodworking skills and attention to detail began here and from his ancestry. His dad, Benedict Palen, has been doing woodwork since the 1930’s starting out with a pedal-powered lathe. His dad’s enterprise, Artistic Woodcrafts started with a Shopsmith and then homebuilt a heavy-duty lathe capable of swinging up to 32″ diameter blanks.. The blanks for the bowls are made up of segmented rings stacked and glued. Various wood species, domestic and foreign are used. Examples are walnut, white gum, padauk, wenge, mahogany etc. Nelson Palen added a CNC desktop mill in 1998 that can be mounted on the lathe for engraving. The spindle is slowly rotated by computer command with approx. 1000:1 reduction. The basic turning operation is done with conventional hand tools.

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