Guthrie Govan demos the Vigier Excalibur Surfreter

Guthrie Govan, or Mountain-Goat-Jesus, as I like to think of him, may be the most advanced and versatile guitarist on the planet at the moment. To say that he can play any given style on guitar is a massive understatement – give the man a backing track and he’ll redefine the genre for you while he’s melting your face with his insane fretboard wizardry.

I recently came upon this cool clip of Guthrie demoing the Vigier Excalibur Surfreter – which is a fretless guitar made by Vigier, an uber-boutique guitar company from France, who are known for pushing the boundaries of guitar construction to fit those cutting edge shredders like Guthrie, Bumblefoot and Stanley Jordan. Yeah, Stanley Jordan. We’ll call him a shredder.

Anyway, here’s the vid:

Is there anything that man can’t do?! Given a fretless instrument, I’m pretty sure I would be stumbling around hesitantly, or sliding around aimlessly looking for the right pitch. But, (sigh), that’s why I’m not Guthrie Govan…

You see that shiny fretboard? What the hell is that? Obviously not wood. As an engineer in my spare time (and a full-time Samurai, obviously), I’m interested in shiny metal, much like a magpie. It turns out that Vigier have taken a leaf out of the Apple marketing book, and developed a new, super secret alloy for their Surfreter, which they’ve named iMetal. No… I’m serious.

If you want to see more of Guthrie talking about the guitar (it’s the next page over in the article I’m about to post) as well as read more about the Vigier Surfreter, check out this link:

http://licklibrary.ceros.com/iguitarmag/iguitar-issue-9-steve-morse-interview/issue9/page/108