As a manufacturers of electric custom guitars at Vlahopol Guitars we feel it is an important factor to answer the question, "Why should I get a custom made guitar?"

Before we explain we can tell you form experience there are only three types of players in the world:

- Players that want to sound like everybody else

- Players that want to sound like somebody else

- Players that want to sound like themselves

As a brand, Vlahopol Guitars is here for the last category.

Vlahopol Guitars? - Well, we started in 1985 under very peculiar conditions.

In 1984 - 1985 Mike Vlahopol got a 7 string acoustic Russian guitar instead of a drum set - at that time they were ridiculously expansive.

After some time he was encouraged by some of the best musicians of the time to start a band. Seeing all the guitars that all the bigger bands had, he's got an idea.. to build a guitar instead of buying one.

Studying industrial design he thought to do something "crazy".He went on and started to measure the guitars from all the big players he knew and decided to start to innovate as much as possible. He soon realized it was impossible to get all the materials to make a guitar from top to bottom so I had to settle for a little less.

- CUSTOM GUITARS vs CUSTOMIZED GUITARS.

I started to buy regular electric guitars from the local market, take them apart piece by piece and rebuild the most important parts like modifying the neck by making it thinner, build a new body from scratch and make his own pickups and so on.

With a brand new body and much better neck I realized I need better pickups. So I started to make pickups manually. Making so many models by hand I soon went crazy.

Imagine making 8 - 9.000 turns on a pickup coil by hand having in mind that the wire was as thin as hair. With no technology and no tools he soon discovered how hard it was to make electric guitars and he only settled to help closer friends to get a decent instruments.

After many years of trying different shapes and styles for bodies he became aware of many technical aspects and his guitars started to improve over the years, refurnishing electric guitars mostly. As time went on he also played in bigger and bigger bands, most of the times he played with handmade guitars that he built for himself and only in 1996 I actually got an original guitar as a gift - My limited edition "Red Head"!...

We are pleased to tell you that we are developing a totally new concept both, on guitars and the way they are purchased.

We know that all guitar players big or small, great or modest, professional or hobbyists wish to have the perfect guitar and that most of the time such thing does not come to easy...

If you are a guitar player with at least some experience you know that a good guitar is an expansive guitar and that we all want or at least wish for a good instrument.

Well, we have some good news for you.

When we developed the idea of Vlahopol Guitars we had in mind to have a modern guitar with a versatile sound both old and new all in one.

This was our second prototype drawing - the first one looked a little different.

Goals we wanted to achieve with this amazing guitar:

- Modern design - which will mature in time as we already have soma major changed on the body shape.

- Perfect balance - since we all know there are some expansive guitars that are not well balanced. The neck will not stay where you put it. We put it to the test and made more than one body in different shapes, thicknesses and dimensions. But we wanted a special shape at the same time so this is what came out. On the second series or lot we will have some cool changes to be done on the body.

Custom vs. Customized

It is true that some people make some confusion between the two terms.

CUSTOM - IS when one goes to a workshop of any kind and orders something (a car, shoes or a guitar), to fit and represent his wishes and technical specifications in full 100% starting with shape thickness, hardware, electronics, etc...

CUSTOMIZE - IS when one goes to a shop or workshop sees a guitar that he likes a lot but he would like to change the instrument to fit his needs, wishes and specification such as; string tension, hardware, finish of the instrument, or other things that can be altered or changed to represent the character of the player.