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• maccaferi New

  September 2016 Posts: 6

  Individual images
  
• plexi69 New

  September 2016 Posts: 79

  Do you know what years this "golden period" consists of? Thanks.
• maccaferi New

  September 2016 Posts: 6

  I can't say exactly up to what year he stopped building them entirely himself but I've always heard it's when he stopped using the rectangular label inside the guitar.
• MichaelHorowitz SeattleAdministrator

  September 2016 edited September 2016 Posts: 6,200

  plexi69 wrote: »

  Do you know what years this "golden period" consists of? Thanks.

  
  I'm probably guilty of a little salesmanship here. There certainly are people that place value on the 90s era Duponts that Maurice made himself. But that has more to do with this nostalgic idea of Maurice building in his early days. The guitars were slightly different then, but overall his designs were fairly dialed in at that point and really haven't changed much. Soundwise the differences have more to do with age as these 90s guitars are now 20 years or so old and are starting to take on some of the coveted qualities of fine vintage guitars.
  
  Personally, I think the Duponts built over the last five years represent the pinnacle of his work. First off, the quality control is second to none. A few times over the years I ordered a guitar from Maurice and once it was done he said "we finished the guitar but we determined it wasn't up to our standards so we'll build you another one." I was flabbergasted as that never happens in this business. Most luthiers have to sell everything they make, so they'll just look the other way when something turns out to be a dud and hope no one notices.
  
  Also, the luthiers Maurice has working for him are among the very best in France. Keep in mind, Maurice is the only active luthier (with the exception of JP Favino) with an apostolistic link back to Selmer, Maccaferri, and Django as he did his apprenticeship with Jacques Favino who in turn had worked with Busato. So Maurice learned firsthand all the nuances of building Selmer style guitars whereas everyone else had to reverse engineer the process through trial and error. This knowledge has been passed on to Dupont's employees, most notably Mathias who builds the Vieille Reserves and other top models and could easily go off on his own and build world class instruments under his own name.
  
  Anyway, the takeaway here is you can't really determine how a Dupont will sound by when they were made. You can be assured that nearly every Dupont will be in the top 5%, but finding the ones in the top 1% requires a lot of dedication and they can be from any year.
  
  Michael
  
  

  
• Matteo Sweden✭✭✭✭ JWC Modele Jazz, Lottonen "Selmer-Maccaferri"

  September 2016 Posts: 393

  (with the exception of JP Favino)

  
  And Castelluccia(?)
• plexi69 New

  September 2016 Posts: 79

  Thank you Michael for the input. It is reassuring to think that perhaps the best is yet to come. I have heard and played several Dupont's made from 2000-2010 that I felt were incredible sounding. I had wondered how the "Golden Era's" could surpass them. It does seem that it is an individuality per instrument rather then a timeline or era, that is what we hear.