Price paid: £ 900
Purchased from: seller on gumtree.com
Features: Made in 2009 as a limited run. I have the sparkle black version. It's made of alder w/ a maple neck and rosewood fretboard. More details @ this link. Special mention to the floyd which is by far the best I've ever used. Rock solid and because of the ball bearings will in theory never wear out. The neck is amazing too and that's one less thing to worry about. // 10
Sound: I'm mostly a fusion player. I'd like to be Bill Frisell or Tim Mille but I'm more of a Nels Cline if you know what I mean! I use a Yamaha THR-10 at home and it sounds beautiful through it. Whenever I've tried other amps (mostly one of the new Mesa) it's been an incredible experience.
The guitar has a 5 way selector:
1 - full tone zone bridge humbucker. A bit too strong for most situations and in my opinion a bit too middley/bassey, would have liked a bit more treble.
2 - coil on the bridge humbucker. Usually like this better as it's strong enough for most things.
3 - both bridge and the chopper on the neck. Very well-balanced rounded sound.
4 - out of phase bridge and neck. Very trebley and thin sound. It's more versatile than you might think, but definitely usable whenever you need a sort of Vintage single coil tone.
5 - chopper on the neck. I really love this pickup. With tone all the way up it's great for rock/pop/metal (light metal that is) and if you take the tone down it does a quite convincing jazz sound. No, really.
Only reason I don't give it a 10 is because the bridge pickup is not really my style. Also bear in mind this is a guitar that retails for more than £2k so we have to take that into consideration. // 8
Action, Fit & Finish: I bought it second-hand and the previous owner had the action too high in my opinion. I've got it down to very, very low and it handles it well. Otherwise flawless as you'd expect from a guitar in this price range. // 10
Reliability & Durability: Top marks from me here. The lack of a pickguard means that it's got quite a few scratches already, but don't think any varnish in the world can handle errant pickstrokes. // 10
Impression: This is a top quality guitar which I managed to snare at a low price. If I lost it, I'd buy another Vigier if I could find a similar deal. Otherwise I'd look into the custom guitar route. I've compared it to Fender strats and a few Ibanez and I like the Vigier much more as it feels better built. As for my music, I wouldn't mind a few extra options like a piezo pickup and a few more splits/selectors onboard the instrument. // 10
- the killswitch which is quite cool for when you absolutely need to mute the guitar. Could work in some songs. The button itself is very, very small and placed near the volume know (you can't see it in most pictures). Probably not big enough to do Buckethead style stutter effects (compare to the much larger killswitch button on Bucket's signature guitar). Still a useful feature.
- the thimble. Your mileage may vary with this one. It's not useable as a regular slide since the uneven texture it won't let you place it flat on strings and slide. Well, you might pull it off on the unwound strings but it isn't great. Using it bfoot style as a tapping device does work although it requires a lot of practice to pull off anything decent. Since I sometimes "play" free jazz (think Sonny Sharrock or some Nels Cline stuff), the thimble onboard is useful to make a bit of noise and apply different textures to the music. For my other guitar I carry the thimble in my pocket