VIGIER EXPERT CLASSIC ROCK & EXCALIBUR SUPRAA £2,275 & £2,406
‘Vigier’ might well be the French word for perfection. These two modern bolt-ons not only illustrate that point but offer truly modern-vintage design
Reading back through reviews of these French masterpieces, they’re peppered with words and phrases such as ‘stupidly well built’ and ‘perfection’. And while it’s been a couple of years since we last had our hands on one, nothing has changed in that regard. Actually, that’s not quite right. They’ve got even better.
Vigier certainly isn’t the only maker out there creating its own take on the Stratocaster, but marry these quality levels with the prices, and despite a recent price increase – in line with virtually every other brand – we’ve barely got this Expert Classic Rock out of its Hiscox case and we’re already wondering how we can keep it.
On the one hand, the Expert follows the basic Fender blend: alder body with maple bolt-on neck/fingerboard, three single coils and vibrato. But the two-piece French alder body is given a more modern, sleeker outline, especially the horns, while its depth is slightly thinner than Fender at 42mm. It’s beautifully shaped, not a line – or rather curve – out of place. Strapped on, it says ‘old lightweight Fender’, too.
That observation continues to the onepiece neck, except again it’s been through Patrice Vigier’s stylistic mangle. The ‘skunk stripe’ on the back of the subtly flamed quarter-sawn neck is graphite – there’s no truss rod, but this 10/90 construction is well proven. The face has a 300mm (11.8inch) camber, flatter than most bolt-ons but virtually identical, of course, to Gibson’s 305mm (12-inch) standard.
Frets are classed as medium-gauge stainless steel but edge into the jumbo category at approximately 2.38mm by 1.2mm. Each fret stops just before the curved fingerboard edge and the ends of each slot are filled. The hardened zero fret is actually six pieces: should any wear occur, which can cause slight ‘pings’ as you heavily bend in lower positions or use the vibrato, you can simply replace the individual piece, not the whole fret. Behind that is a Teflon ‘nut’ that’s really a string guide, and above that is a furry black ‘caterpillar’ that reduces any dead-string resonance that can cause issues at high gains and volume levels. Then there are the two string trees – the top two
strings loop through what are string ballends. Ridiculous ‘Heston Blumenthal’-like detail, to use a recipe analogy.
Similar detail is applied to the vibrato, which pivots on two ball-bearing loaded posts. The saddles lock in place once intonated and the break-point under each string is a steel ‘roller’, which doesn’t rotate. The arm, like a Floyd Rose, pushes in and is screwed in place with a threaded collar. Tuners have dual-height string posts, the low E and A higher than the other four, with over-sized knurled locks on the rear.
A trio of the German boutique Amber single coils replaces the DiMarzios offered on the other Expert models, and these have a contemporary magnet stagger, while the middle-placed pickup is much lower than either the neck or bridge. Controls are simple – master volume and tone – but the five-way switch (a Schaller Mega switch) differs from the Fender standard by offering neck and bridge pickups in parallel in the centre position, not the usual solo middle pickup. A final detail is the Neutrik locking jack output socket placed on the treble-side base. Whip the scratchplate off and you see another level of detail. The cavity routing is perfect and coated with copper conductive paint. As your grandma would say, “You could eat your dinner off that.”
The Excalibur, Vigier’s other bolt-on, is unbelievably almost 26 years old and is the platform on which the Expert is based. It’s a 24-fret design and that necessitates slightly deeper cutaways along with thinner, less retro-y offset horns. There’s no question of the siblings’ similarities, though. Here we have a thin rosewood slab ’board and HSH Amber pickups – hence the extra ‘a’ at the end of the name (the Supra is DiMarzioequipped). Like the Expert, there are minute details: the over-sanded edges of the headstock; the fact that the strap buttons bolt into threaded metal inserts; even those black scratchplate screws are properly recessed below the face of the plastic.
Again, via a Schaller Mega switch, the wiring is a little more complex. The outer
patrice Vigier’s Expert is his most strat-like dish, but its taste has a note of modernism, perfect function, intonation and some slightly different sonic flavours
positions offer each full humbucker then positions two, three and four all offer single-coil combinations: bridge (slug coil) and middle; bridge (screw coil) and neck (slug coil); and neck (slug coil) and middle.
Sounds
We’re beginning to believe that the darker the fingerboard looks, then the thinner the neck feels. We had the same perception with the quite darkly tinted all-maple neck on a John Page Classic Special compared with the untinted version, and here the Excalibur neck does feel slightly slimmer. Okay, it is very, very slightly, but not as much as it feels: the Excalibur measures 20.02mm at the 1st fret, 23mm at the 12th; the Expert measures 20.04mm and 24mm. Both, however, feel quite superb with their satin backs – what Vigier calls a ‘D’ profile but with trim shoulders that again add to the perception of being actually slimmer depth’d than they are.
As supplied with what feels like 0.009s (and keeping it that way) and that unusual middle pickup height, we’re keen to get an idea of the Vigier’s take on the Stratocaster. Plugging in the Expert, there’s little doubt what you’re listening to. There are plenty of highs – it’s a new guitar – although kicking into a driven Vox you can almost hear the sweat dripping off the club walls. It’s anything but modern and the volume alone does a nice job of sweetening the highs as you just pull it back a shade. We all drive our Strats differently and if you rely on different tone control combinations you don’t get that here – observation, not criticism. To our ears, and in our setup, the high string-response seems a little soft, certainly more than our reference Fender, but it’s not unique in that regard. The neck
pickup is beautifully vocal; the bridge oozes bluesy grind. Back off the gain and plug into a cleaner Fender and we’d happily take this one out. Of course, if you use your middle single coil solo then you’ll have to get out the soldering iron, but the more Tele-like bridge and middle mix is a very credible voice, although the low placement of the middle pickup does seem to over-egg the bite for that bridge and middle mix and pull down the volume a little on the neck and middle. Great if you’re moving from lead to rhythm, less so if you use the guitar in a perhaps more vintage-y setting.
Plugging in the Supraa into the same clean setup with the neck pickup selected, it’s quite a surprise because you don’t really expect such a vintage-y voice. Compared with a couple of similar guitars, we would prefer just a little more clarity, but this style of pickup can be very genre-hopping and it’s probably not going to be used for your jazz solo set. The mixes pull the level down, again in that rhythm/lead fashion of the Expert, yet here they’re more subtle in terms of the differences – probably due to the closer proximity of the voiced coils. Yet again for rhythm duties with some rich reverb and modulation, they pretty much all sound superbly ‘super session LA’.
A third ‘flavour’, then, is provided by the bridge pickup, which is big, beefy and set to stun, and seems to lap up every gained amp voice we can summon up. Yes, a tapped voicing here would certainly help for those more classic rock sounds, but, as is, the Supraa is not only very versatile, it’s almost like three guitars in one.
Verdict
Ask a group of top chefs to create a classic recipe and each would add their own taste and spice. We might prefer one dish over another; your taste may differ. And then there’s the cost of that dish: it might taste amazing, but it also might be a once-in-a-lifetime supper rather than an everyday experience.
Well, super-chef Patrice Vigier can certainly cook. Yes, his Expert is his most Strat-like dish – it uses the same ingredients – but its taste, while richly imbued with classic references, has a note of modernism, perfect function and intonation, and some slightly different sonic flavours. The Excalibur certainly moves further away into a more modernistic, virtuoso dish, not least with its sleeker look, a punchdrunk bridge pickup and surprisingly vintage-y flavour at the neck with single-coil undercurrents perfectly balanced. While not an everyday supper, both are sonically filling. Chez Vigier definitely deserves a visit!