A self-taught luthier and a metal fingerboard.

Vigier was the work of one man. Patrice Vigier, a self-taught luthier from Les Ulis, south of Paris, began in the late 1970s by modifying his own guitars and building necks, according to English and French Wikipedia; the company’s own history says he set up as a repairman in 1978. Through a friend, Philippe Lacour of Distribution Music, he found his first customers in Montparnasse, and he built an early fretless guitar with a glass fingerboard. In a 2010 interview with the French magazine Guitar Part he named the French luthiers the Jacobacci brothers as an influence — the zero fret, he said, came “directly” from them — and said Fender and Gibson had never made him dream.

He founded the company in 1980. The French business register gives April 1980 as the creation date of a company named Vigier with its head office at Grigny, in the Essonne, where French Wikipedia says the instruments were made. His first model, the Arpege, was shown at a music fair: both Wikipedias describe a neck-through design with a metal plate under the fingerboard, active electronics and Benedetti humbuckers, and the company adds an 18-volt circuit and its own bridge. A fretless version with a metal fingerboard appeared at the same time. The Passion followed in 1983 and the Marilyn in 1985.

From 1986 Vigier also imported and distributed other makers’ products in France — Wikipedia lists Ampeg, DiMarzio, Ernie Ball, Music Man, Orange, Premier and Trace Elliot — and in 1988 that side of the business was named High Tech Distribution, to keep it apart from guitar-making. English Wikipedia says Vigier made all its instruments in France, about 500 a year, each taking three to five months.

Carbon, metal and a microprocessor.

Vigier’s reputation rested on engineering. In November 1985 the British magazine International Musician & Recording World reviewed a top-of-the-range Passion with a woven carbon-fibre neck and a plug-in “ROM Pack” of preset sounds, priced at £950, and praised its “innovative ideas and sharp design.” The company says its Nautilus of the 1980s was “the first guitar to feature on-board memory and a microprocessor”; Wikipedia describes it as a built-in equaliser with sound memory. Many Vigier fingerboards were made of Phenowood, a composite of wood fibre and phenolic resin.

The idea most associated with the brand came in 1989, the company says: a maple neck reinforced with a carbon bar — 90% wood, 10% carbon — in place of an adjustable truss rod. The company has called it both the “10/90 neck system” and the “90/10™ System”; Audiofanzine and both Wikipedias use 90/10. The company argued that the carbon stopped the neck moving with the weather or a change of string gauge, so no truss rod was needed.

The Excalibur, from 1991, became the flagship, with a Vigier/Floyd Rose vibrato pivoting on needle bearings rather than knife edges. The fretless idea returned in 1998 as the Excalibur Surfreter, given an “iMetal” fingerboard in 2012; the company calls it “the only fretless that works.” The three-pickup Expert arrived in 2000, the year the company marked its twentieth anniversary with a Surfreter set with gold, diamonds, sapphires and emeralds, valued at €30,000. Signature models followed for Shawn Lane in 2005 and for Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and Deep Purple’s Roger Glover in 2006, and in 2009 came the single-cutaway G.V., named after Patrice’s late father, Georges.

Patrice Vigier was named “luthier of the year” in the electric category in 1992, according to Guitar Part and Wikipedia, which do not say who gave the title, and in 1993 the American trade magazine The Music and Sound Retailer called the Excalibur the most innovative guitar of the year. Wikipedia says the G.V. Wood and the Excalibur Special 7 were nominated for Premier Guitar’s Premier Gear Awards in 2011 and 2013. Audiofanzine names Ron Thal, Buckethead and Geezer Butler among the players who used the instruments.

Seven boutique makers.

Boutique guitar makers often began at repair benches or larger firms. John Suhr did repairs at Rudy’s Music Stop in New York and worked at the Fender Custom Shop, Tom Anderson worked for Schecter, and Joe Knaggs spent 25 years at Paul Reed Smith before going it alone, Wikipedia and Maryland’s Times Record say.

Three of the makers in this guide are in southern California. Suhr is at Lake Elsinore and was founded in 1997 by John Suhr and Steve Smith, Wikipedia says; Guitar World called him an independent builder in 2025. Tom Anderson’s company, founded in 1984, based at Newbury Park and now called Anderson Guitarworks, has a business partner, Markus Spohn, Guitar World reported in 2026. James Tyler Guitars, whose founder died in 2024, Guitar World reported, says the work on its American line is still done in Los Angeles.

Knaggs Guitars was founded in 2009 by Joe Knaggs and Peter Wolf and works in Greensboro, Maryland, the Times Record reported in 2017. Premier Guitar profiled Bill Nash of Nash Guitars, in Olympia, Washington, in 2009.

Dennis Fano founded Fano Guitars in Pennsylvania and sold it in 2009 to the Premier Builders Guild; in January 2025 it merged with his later brand, Novo, under a British-based parent, Psonic Design Lab, with production moving from Arizona to Nashville, Guitar.com reported. Vigier, at Grigny near Paris, stayed with its founder until Audiofanzine reported in November 2024 that the workshop would close.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Forty-four years, one owner, then the workshop closed.

Vigier never changed hands. In the sources we checked there is no sale and no outside investor: it was Patrice Vigier’s company from start to finish. He told Guitar Part in 2010 that Vigier could perfectly well have had its instruments made elsewhere but chose not to, and the company’s website still says all its guitars and basses are “designed and manufactured in our factory near Paris, France.”

That sentence now describes the past. On 5 November 2024 Audiofanzine reported that, after forty-four years, the brand born in the Essonne was bowing out: Patrice Vigier would finish the guitars and basses already in progress and then close his workshop for good. French Wikipedia, citing Le Parisien of 2 November 2024, says he announced his retirement and the end of the business that month. We found no announcement of a buyer for the name. The website stays online as an information site, with manuals, a dating guide and dealer lists, and a company named Vigier is still listed as active at Grigny in the French business register, under a wholesale activity code; we found no evidence that new Vigier instruments are being made.

For a design guide, Vigier shows how a small maker can build an identity on engineering rather than heritage — carbon, metal fingerboards and needle bearings, explained at length to players. Compare Ibanez, the Japanese maker of the shred-era superstrat, and Music Man, a brand Vigier once distributed in France. For this guide we use carbon black, French navy and a brass tone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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