A particularly enticing vintage Larrivée L-09 that was built in the later Victoria years, this instrument features master-grade tonewoods and craftsmanship and is further adorned by Wendy Larrivée’s Mucha headstock inlay. It remains in near-perfection condition, plays better-than-new on new frets care of our shop, and sounds uniquely beguiling among the many American-made vintage guitars we’re normally surrounded by at our shop.

The Larrivée L-size is a 16” body in the shape of a classical guitar. It features X bracing with a pair of parallel tone bars that are perpendicular to the guitar’s center-line, similar to those in a vintage Gibson J-200 or a ladder-braced guitar. This combination of large 16” body with hybrid X-Ladder bracing is part of what gives Larrivée guitars their unique voices.

This guitar has a fairly thin top with quite minuscule finger braces and is measurably stiffer towards the bridge. As such, the entire top moves much more like a loudspeaker cone than most other flat-top guitar tops do. The resulting tone is one with a well-developed, deep, clear and strong low end, a clean and fundamentally present mid range, and trebles that are both muscular and shiny. It’s a large guitar that’s great for fingerstyle as much as it is for strumming.

Rosewood and Sitka with rosewood bindings and mitred purflings; mosaic rosette, bound ebony fretboard and ebony bridge. The headstock features Wendy Larrivée’s “Mucha” inlay, which is her interpretation in pearl of Alphonse Mucha’s “Precious Stones: Amethyst” Art Nouveau painting from 1900.

This Larrivée has a rather comfortable neck with a much rounder and deeper carve than the norm. The nut width measures 44mm (1-23/32 or so), the scale is 650mm (25.6”), and the string spread at the saddle is 55mm (2-1/8” or so). The neck measures .868” deep at the 1st fret. Set up with 12-53 strings and an action of 5-6 64ths.

With hardshell case.