Godin

Robert Godin founded his first guitar company in La Patrie, Quebec in 1972, and what followed became something unusual in the guitar industry: a fully vertically integrated North American manufacturer that controls its own wood supply, builds necks and bodies in-house, and supplies components to other builders — including the Godin necks used on the Vox USA Korg-era reissues documented elsewhere on this site.

The Godin name itself covers a range of electric and acoustic-electric instruments built in Quebec and in Berlin, New Hampshire. The broader Godin group also includes Seagull, Simon & Patrick, Norman, Art & Lutherie, and La Patrie — separate brands targeting different price points and styles, all manufactured in the same facilities. The integration is the point: Godin's ability to control quality from raw wood through finished instrument is what distinguishes the company from most guitar brands operating at similar price points.

Within the Godin electric line, the Multiac series — thin semi-hollow bodies with onboard MIDI and piezo systems — occupies genuinely unusual territory: instruments designed from the ground up for players who need acoustic tone onstage without feedback. John McLaughlin is among the players who have made them a serious working tool. The Glissentar, an 11-string fretless guitar developed for non-Western musical contexts, is the more eccentric end of the catalog. The Session, LG, and Freeway Classic represent the more conventional electric side.