Sometimes people ask us why they should buy a Trevisol guitar instead of, say, a Fender (sorry, we try not to say the F-word around here). This is a good question, because at first blush, a Trevisol guitar may cost more than a standard American-made guitar (though often it doesn’t). However, there are several reasons why this comparison isn’t valid.

What Makes Us Different

A mass-produced guitar simply can’t be compared to a one-of-a-kind custom guitar. The differences start at the very beginning. When we begin a customer’s guitar, we select the wood for the guitar by hand, taking into account the kind of finish the guitar will receive. We consider grain patterns, presence of knots, overall resonance, and weight when selecting wood. We then bookmatch the pieces of wood properly, making sure that the guitar our customer receives is as beautiful as it can be. When we shape the body of each guitar, we take our time, and take our clients’ wishes into consideration when adding forearm contours, tummy cuts, and other shaping concerns.

You can’t ask a CNC Machine to think about the depth of a tummy cut as it’s making it, and you certainly can’t ask it to care about whether the curvature of the tummy cut matches the forearm cutaway to create a smooth, fluid curve. When we create your guitar, we think about these things. We don’t break up the process of creating a guitar into measurable and mechanical tasks. We always keep the overall goal of creating the perfect guitar in mind throughout the process. It’s this care, this love from start to finish that really sets us apart.

There’s Love In There

When either of us would ask Nana Trevisol why her spaghetti sauce was so good, she would always say, “There’s love in there.” And it was true; her sauce always had slightly different ingredients, but it always was delicious – and you could always tell it was her sauce. We bring this philosophy to creating guitars. We could talk about our superior wood choices, the use of nitro-cellulose lacquer for an unparalleled shine and resonance, or the design principles that go into creating our designs, but at the end of the day, those are the secondary.

We can’t really say that those things set us apart from other guitar makers. If money is no object, you can get other companies’ Custom Shops to use quality wood, to craft your guitar by hand (to a degree) and even give you a pure Nitro finish. You can’t, however, ask them to love what they’re doing. We don’t make guitars because we get paid to (heck, we have day jobs!), we make guitars because we love to make guitars. And we’d love to make your next guitar.