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Anyone know anything about these?
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04-22-2025 02:45 PM
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There’s about 6 pages of comments over on DjangoBooks (not read yet)
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I'm a Dupont owner interested in this, I can save you reading through 6 pages of comments. Seems the "new" Selmers are going to be built by ALD guitars in France as a special edition and will be priced in the 15K range.
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Yep if they can get a premium price for D'Angelico replicas made by Ric MCurdy, it seems to reason that they would do the same for Selmer guitars. Buy an ALD if you want a Selmer copy and buy a Ric MCurdy build if you want a DA replica and you will save a lot of money.
My 2 cents for what it may be worth....
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Unfortunately not the best timing for launching a high-end product in France or Europe…
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They are on the Selmer page now, €15400, 60 pieces to be made, by ALD indeed
Lots of fancy engraving and cosmetic upgrades - while the only people more conservative in their taste than archtop players, are traditional gypsy players
I kind of agree with Marc - ALD is in the 2500 range and soundwise will be the same thing basically
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Blinking heck, I'll buy three.
It always seems to me that good quality Selmer style guitars are pretty affordable compared to say, archtops. No idea if there's a market for this type of thing, but I suspect they'll find buyers somewhere.
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Why not just buy a Dupont and save about $10K? 2000 Dupont MD50 - DjangoBooks.com
Keith
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Here's the link:
The return of the iconic SELMER guitar in a limited edition
– Henri SELMER Paris
Can't wait to see one of the these around the campfire with a Gitane ciggie wedged behind the nut.
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Unless live you live in France or Europe.
Originally Posted by cmajor9
Prolly 80% of people buying Gypsy guitars are there already so...
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Why not by a Gitane instead of a Dupont and save and additional $3k? Originally Posted by floatingpickup
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There are many luthiers in France that will make you an amazing hand made gypsy guitar for 3-4 k. Same in Spain (mostly Grenada) for classical and Flamenco. Let alone buying used from there, if so inclined. Then you find the same guitars being sold for 10-15 k in other places of the world, shops etc..
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Play a Dupont and play a Gitane. If you cannot tell the difference, buy the Gitane. Originally Posted by pawlowski6132
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If it doesn't come with this sound hole pickup contraption I'm not interested.
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ok Originally Posted by Django Johnson
If it doesn't come with this sound hole pickup contraption I'm not interested.
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I have two Duponts -- an MD-50R (laminated rosewood B/S) and an MD-20 (solid flame maple B/S). While both sound in the GJ realm, within that realm they have very different voices. I think I prefer the maple two-thirds of the time. Both are exquisitely-made guitars that I can't find fault with. But that's not the topic here. I have little doubt that this Selmer guitar #503 reissue, Django's last Selmer, will play and sound better than either of my excellent Duponts. Selmer has commissioned a painstaking and precise reproduction of a specific guitar, highly-select Indian rosewood / mahogany body lamination and Carpathian spruce soundboard & braces, as per original. Every brace is a precise reproduction, as are the forms. They refined the neck angle for more modern action and playability, and for the neck, they incorporated Selmer's two-piece head/neck join, which is extra labor itself. Then there is the machined quality of all the brass hardware, including hand-made tuning machines set into ball bearings. And, I suspect that if the custom case was offered as a separate item, it would retail for $1,500, maybe more.
A corporation can't do this level of handcrafting at four or five-thousand Dollars/GBPs/Euros unless they want to use predatory pricing to disrupt a market. But building 60 guitars, Selmer isn't trying to put Dupont out of business. They have to instead commemorate their past with a limited-production project that they can clear a justifiable profit from. It's Gibson, not Campellone. Now, is this Selmer going to be 3-times better than either of my Duponts? Not nearly, and we all already know that. We know that ever-smaller improvements in results cost disproportionately more. We know that what we feel and hear when we encounter a new guitar option is highly subjective and conclusions resist quantification. Who hasn't paid twice as much for a subjectively 15% better guitar?
Before I bought my Duponts, I had two John Kinnard-built US-production Dell'Arte guitars. Both were rosewood, one an oval hole and one a D-hole. I bought those circa 2004. My Duponts are both 2014, bought used. I thought the Dell"Arte guitars were exceptional in playability, sound and workmanship. I sold them as part of an adverse-circumstances sale a few years ago, couldn't find them again to buy them back and dove into the world of Dupont last year. I can't say that Dupont craftsmanship is better than John Kinnard's was, but the Duponts sound even better, and are palpably more engaging instruments in all the ways we tend to feel but cannot adequately explain. And they cost more.
I fully expect that one of these new Selmers would make the same impression of being an upgrade from a production Dupont. It's not going to be a turkey. Whether that's worth 15,000 against ~4,000 - 5000 of any currency depends on you. I think they will have no trouble finding 60 buyers. But this guitar is ~€15,000 before VAT for all the same economic reasons that Heritage's new H-717 archtop is $13,000 instead of the Campellone price many here think it should be. Selmer's deal here seems like a Gibson move but I don't begrudge it. You won't be able to get a 61st. It will be interesting to see how much the first few go for on the used market.
The Gypsy Jazz guitar world is every bit as instrument obsessive and vintage-worshipping as us archtop aficionados. In the dweeb forums the pricing of this Selmer is controversial, but it would be internet-anomalous if it wasn't.
Phil
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You can buy a modern Stimer reissue pickup on Djangobooks.com, here: Originally Posted by Django Johnson
Maurice Dupont / Stimer reissue ST48 - DjangoBooks.com
Surely, if you can afford the guitar, $360 more can be found.
Phil
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I wasn’t referring so much to tariffs (although that’s a factor for US buyers) so much as the ongoing destruction of European economies. Originally Posted by pawlowski6132
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I have owned a Dupont Stimer reissue and a vintage Stimer. They are not the same. Originally Posted by 213Cobra
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