José Vigil 2026
MADE IN GRANADA

José Vigil is one of the most sought-after guitar makers in the world today ,quite possibly the most sought-after of all Spanish luthiers. Why? His instruments’ level of quality is simply exceptional. He combines Granada’s long tradition with the design and sound of a modern-traditional guitar: the kind of instrument professional guitarists are looking for right now, players who still prefer all-wood, traditionally built guitars for their pure, beautiful sound, while also wanting the projection, balance, and excellent playability that today’s demands call for.

This is paired with an aesthetic that strives for perfection in every part of the guitar, an unmatched level of craftsmanship, and something that matters enormously in a guitar maker: through his own building method, Vigil has achieved an extremely high level of consistency across all his guitars, something very difficult to pull off.

Here we have a guitar that I personally selected the woods together with Vigil, built to the highest standard for MaderaGuitarras.com. You can see an exceptional, strikingly beautiful piece of Brazilian rosewood. That alone is a quality worth highlighting in this guitar, since wood of this caliber and beauty is extremely hard to find in Brazilian rosewood today. We chose the sapwood section of the rosewood to create a gorgeous balance and relationship between the back/sides and the headstock, as you can see in the photos. Those details, together with the sound and the guitar’s other qualities, gives it such a special character and a truly unique personality.

We’ve already commissioned several guitars from our friend José Vigil, and it’s always a privilege to have a new one of his instruments here for our clients.

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”