Blind Guitars hails from Anglet in France with luthier Virgile Pilon at the helm.
Somewhat surprisingly, for such a modern-looking guitar, Virgile’s mission is to try to recreate the sound of the acoustic blues players from the 1920s and ’30s. But he will build each commission he receives in accordance with an individual musician’s needs.
“I make each guitar according to the playing, the affinities and the taste of each musician,” he says, “with the goal of getting as close as possible to their desire while making them discover an instrument that pushes them towards new creative limits.”
As is often the case, Virgile began his path towards building by doing instrument repairs. “That was really important in my building process,” he continues, “because you get to experience a lot of the different ways of making a guitar, and you explore what works and what doesn’t work.”
Despite his aim to recreate the tones of a hitherto bygone era, a lot of the techniques Virgile employs are cutting edge, including the use of parabolic tops and a compound radius on the bracing “for a lighter construction without sacrificing strength and stability, thus creating more powerful and responsive guitars”.
The B-24L resides in the upper echelon of models that Virgile offers and comprises a who’s who of premium tonewoods with a top fashioned from Adirondack spruce and a set of old-growth Brazilian rosewood for the back and sides.
Along with a flame maple neck, the fingerboard and bridge are Amara ebony, a wood native to Indonesia and as highly prized as its Macassan equivalent for its denseness and durability. The frets are phosphor bronze, which sit in between the toughness of nickel-silver and the more modern stainless steel.
As far as finish and furnishings are concerned, the rosette is Brazilian rosewood, and bindings and headplate back are flamed koa.
The face of the headplate is a cocktail of ebony with Amara ebony decoration, and if we look under the hood we find that the braces are Alpine spruce.
With a scale length of a familiar 648mm (25.5 inches) and a nut width of a fingerstyle-friendly 45mm, the Blind B-24L is certainly a stunning instrument with workmanship only found in the topmost realms of lutherie expertise.
Smooth and refined – both sonically and aesthetically – but also deeply rooted in the workmanlike guitar designs that defined early blues, it is a vision of roots burnished to a golden glow that transcend their humble origins.
- For more information see Blind Guitars.
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