Dale Unger (b. 1954) grew up in the area around the C.F. Martin headquarters in Nazareth, PA. He decided to specialize in archtop guitars and studied with Robert Benedetto. The famous guitar maker was then based in the little PA town of East Stroudsburg. Dale Unger set up American Archtop Guitars in 1995, and started producing his own models, some of which were built using Benedetto’s patterns and molds.

The next stage of Unger’s career began in 2001, when he approached Martin with a proposal for a new range of f-hole guitars that would blend Martin’s craftmanship with his archtop designs. Two Unger/Martin instruments, the CF-1 and the thinline CF-2, were launched in 2004.