Carlos Funes Vitanza was born in Honduras near San Pedro Sula in 1908. Of Hondurian and Italian descent, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1967 to settle in California. Carlos completed his first instrument, a cello, at age fourteen with no assistance. After his initial success with this project, he went on to construct a viola, a violin, a guitar, and another cello - all in the same high school wood-shop.

Upon finishing school, he decided to travel to Italy to study the fine art of violin-making in the Cremonese tradition. In 1979 he entered the International School for Violin Construction in Cremona, where he studied with masters Riccardo Bergonzi, Giorgio Scolari, and Stefano
Conia. During his seven years in Cremona, Vitanza made over thirty instruments, selling them to musicians in Germany, Sweden, Finland, Italy, and the United States.

Carlos returned to the United States in 1986, and was immediately hired by Roland Feller Violins of San Francisco. There he has been working full-time for over thirty years, repairing an restoring precious instruments, He also continues crafting new instruments by hand in his own workshop in Albany, California.