About Us

SVL Guitars is based in the leafy countryside of Gloucestershire, a small operation based on great customer service and a quest for the perfect tone.

Simon Law set up SVL Guitars after having worked as a professional guitar repairman and amp tech for 16 years he became more disappointed with the so called ‘custom shop’ and ‘boutique’ guitars he was working on day to day.

“They all seemed too hung up on looking the part and being very pretty than actually playing well and sounding incredible, from all my years of working on prized vintage guitars, the one thing that set them apart was their outstanding tone and feel, a really great guitar should inspire the player and even help evoke one’s individuality”

“I took the inspiration from these great vintage instruments and I hope an SVL guitar gives the player the same tangible feel and great tone”

Each guitar is built one at a time from the very finest sustainable tone woods, every guitar is sprayed from the wood up with ultra thin coats of nitro cellulose, this helps the wood to breath and remain very resonant, absolutely no poly finish is used on the guitars at all, the necks are finished the same way, and then treated to a proprietary finishing process to give them a beautiful played in feel.

Each SVL model is named the year of the classic ’St’ or ’Te’ that inspired it, the SVL 61 for instance is inspired by a classic slab board ’St’ from 1961, the SVL 57 is inspired by a custom colour 'St' from 1957, and so on..

The guitars are not reliced in any way, SVL Guitars doesn’t really believe in it..

“My finishes are so lovely and thin and they will age fairly quickly anyway giving a much more natural graceful age to the guitar, I will ‘de-shine’ the hardware if required, however that is the choice of the customer”

Only the very best hardware and custom wound pickups are used, electronics come from CTS, CRL, Sprague, Mallory and Switchcraft.

Top nuts are cut by hand from horn and vintage bone, once again depending on the customer, Curt Mangan strings are fitted to every guitar because of their outstanding performance and tone.

Please check our specification section for full details.