José Vigil 2024
MADE IN GRANADA

José Vigil is one of the most successful guitar makers in Granada today and in Spain. His guitars are in great demand all over the world and at MaderaGuitarras.com we are privileged to have one a year from him. A privilege for a guitar maker now with a 6 years waiting list.
Why so much success?. Well, I would say that first of all the progression that this guitar maker has had is exceptional and very fast. Every year, in our opinion, he makes guitars of higher quality. Consistency in quality is also something to highlight and always difficult to achieve.
His guitar has a beautiful sound, a clarity, a balance between voices and an impressive projection of trebles. The volume, the intonation, the ease of playing is also of equal quality.
If we add to this that the execution in the woodwork and the aesthetics is equally exceptional, we can come close to being able to say that we are in front of a guitar that is very close to perfection. What every guitarist dreams of having in their hands. And when you have it, it is like that. The guitar demands you to play it, to discover little by little all its personality, all its character. It’s one of those guitars that changes your interpretation of the pieces because you see notes, tones, colours that you didn’t see before and with this guitar it shows it to you ready for you to discover it.

We recommend you to watch the very interesting video interview we made at his workshop that you can see below where he explains his guitar making system and approach.

(Guitar already sold but 2025 one is still available for booking)

José Vigil was born in Avilés, Spain.

He visited Granada in 2005 and made contact with Granada guitar-makers for the first time. He returned two years later in 2007, this time to settle there and learn the craft. Little by little he gathered the material, tools, and patterns he needed to set up his workshop. He made his first guitar that year with the knowledge he could glean from books and short visits to different makers. These days José builds around ten guitars a year. He says his guitar-building took a great leap forward when he moved to the city center and became friendly with Antonio Marín, who taught him the assembly methods used in Granada.

Antonio Marín Montero even invited him to bring his work to his workshop and advised him how best to proceed. It gives a clear idea of the human dimension of this great guitar maker master and person from Granada. Cause not only did that with Vigil but he did the same with so many other young guitar makers during his whole life.

José Vigil is adamant that it is a great privilege to be able to learn guitar-making in Granada from maestros with decades of experience, who have themselves learned from previous great masters. He maintains that there are processes and methods in Granada that cannot be learned in books or from teachers who have studied in lutherie schools.

José Vigil:

“I can think of two different moments I feel when my guitar-making took a turn for the better. The first time was when I got in touch with professional guitar makers. First I tried to learn by my own. I felt I was trying to study a language reading and studying a dictionary.

And then I met some guitar makers in Granada and especially Antonio Marín Montero and José Marín Plazuelo and when I started to visit them and see them working and they explain to me the fundamentals of guitar making in Granada… it was like… learning a language traveling to the country and living in a country and spend the time there. Then you realize how much you didn’t know and how much you were doing wrong.

The second is when I started measuring more and more things about the tops I used. Up until that moment I look to the top I flex it, I thickness it, and flex it again with my hands and try to feel it, tap it… Then I started measuring; flexibility, densities, frequencies … I am not letting that part guide me on which top I am using but I am trying to complement what I thought a good top was with actual facts and actual measurements about that top. And that’s been very interesting”