Julian Lage plays Dark Matter, an archtop guitar I made in 2023.

In the spring of 2024, the Archtop Foundation, best known for acquiring Scott Chinery’s collection of blue archtop guitars, ‪@theblueguitars‬, had a great new initiative. On Wednesday, May 15, the Foundation invited over 20 great guitarists from New York City to the Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn and offered them the opportunity to borrow guitars from the Archtop Foundation’s collection for a long term, a year or more. The Soapbox Gallery featured over 40 incredible and important guitars, both flattops and archtops, from 1921-2024. What an incredible collection! In March of this year, the Archtop Foundation acquired with the help of Craig Snyder of ‪@CRGuitars‬ one of my guitars - Dark Matter. That guitar was also available for loan. That's how my guitar ended up among the Martins and Gibsons of the best era, Lloyd Loar's Gibson L5, alongside guitars by Jimmy D'Aquisto, Linda Manzer, Ken Parker, Mitchie Matsuda, Steve Klein, John D'Angelico, John Monteleone, Zeidler, Ribecke, Fender, Benedetto, Sadowsky, D'Arcy, Yanuziello... The crème de la crème. And in between, my guitar. 😲
Each musician could vote for six guitars, ranking their availability for loan from 1 to 6. Of course, there was some chaos, because on the one hand everyone tried the guitars, and on the other hand they talked, because most of them knew each other well. After about an hour and a half, the most important moment came, when Ty Danco and Doug Baumoel from the Archtop Foundation started announcing the results of the algorithm processing the votes. The most important thing for me is that my guitar, Dark Matter, was chosen by Julian Lage ‪@JulianLageofficial‬🥳. I couldn't be happier, especially since Julian had the opportunity to try Dark Matter for a few weeks before the event at Soapbox Gallery, so the choice was not blind at all. Maybe I'll say it again, because I had a hard time believing it myself. Out of over 40 guitars from one of the best collections in the US, Julian chose my guitar. I'm honored. Maybe that's why I had fever after returning from the US? 🙃

Julian recorded this video during his US tour in March 2024, just after receiving Dark Matter from the Archtop Foundation. The video quality is poor, but the music is important here, right?

This is pure acoustic recording, but Dark Matter is equipped with very low impedance humbucker of my design.

Julian gra na Dark Matter 18 03 2024 Portsmouth, NH