Manouche is a word for a tribe of gypsies in France. Latcho Drom means “safe home.” It’s a farewell in the Manouche language and what they all want. These guitars are hand made in a little shop in China by craftsmen following the standards established for the Selmer Maccaferri guitar. Most of the production from this shop is sold under the Altamira name. It is claimed that this shop makes the best Selmer copies in China. Altamira makes guitars for Dell’Arte and ships them to the U.S. There, an expensive DR (Django Reinhardt) tailpiece from the Dupont shop in France is installed. The cheap tuners with plastic tuning posts are removed, the holes are redrilled, and higher quality tuners with brass posts are installed. Also, the guitar is set up so the frets are flat and the action low. Unlike most guitars, this one is ready to play.

This guitar has a koa laminate on the sides and back. It’s the only koa Dell’Arte I’ve seen. Much fancier than most. (The Selmer guitar is what Django Reinhardt usually played because it was about the loudest acoustic guitar available, and he needed volume. He also liked the characteristic treble-heavy sound for cutting through the band. Nearly all of these used multiply hardwoods for the sides and back for tonal reasons, and this is still the case today.)

I bought this new last May for about $1400. Then a friend repaid a loan unexpectedly, and a couple weeks later I spent $10,000 on a couple extremely fine gypsy jazz guitars made by French luthiers, one of which is also for sale here. So this guitar has been played maybe five hours. It was made in 2016. It comes with an inexpensive but usable gig bag with shoulder straps. (I joined 250 gypsy jazz guitarists at a workshop last June, and probably half of them used gig bags for their expensive guitars.) I’m not going to pretend that this sounds as good as a $7,000 guitar—it doesn’t—but it’s very loud, with the trebly, cutting tone Django preferred. It’s a good solo instrument, probably better than most of the gypsy jazz guitars being sold here. It’s also very easy to play and beautiful.