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Michel Pellerin Grand Auditorium CW - Sinker Cedar & Ebony #2660326
Serial: 2660326
Weight: 4 lbs 15 oz
Add to Cart$19,950.00
Pellerin Acoustic Guitars — Quebec's Master of Sonic Possibility
Michel Pellerin received his first guitar at fifteen, an inexpensive electric he could not put down. He slept with it. He only stopped playing when his fingers hurt. That obsession eventually led him to the Ecole Nationale de Lutherie in Quebec, where he graduated in 1998, and then to mentorships under Mario Beauregard and, in 2011, a training with Ervin Somogyi that he describes as having never stopped influencing his work. Today he builds from his workshop in Thetford Mines, Quebec, alongside his longtime collaborator François C. Paradis, a multi-instrumentalist with perfect pitch who has worked beside Michel for nearly fifteen years. Together they have produced more than 250 instruments, each one documented in the meticulous build records Michel has kept since the beginning.
Mario Beauregard, one of the most celebrated luthiers in Canada, has called Michel definitively one of the leaders of the new generation of guitar builders. Linda Manzer, whose instruments have been played by Pat Metheny and Bruce Cockburn, goes further: Michel is one of the most exciting new innovative builders on the scene. I love what he does and always keep an eye on what he comes up with.
The current waiting list runs twenty-six months (as of March 2026).
The Builder Is the Chef
Michel describes his philosophy with characteristic directness: the builder is the key. The wood helps for the tone, but the main thing is the chef who manipulates all the ingredients. Before every commission begins, he spends at least two hours in conversation with the player, learning their musical background, their playing style, their main tuning, their preferred string gauge, and exactly what they are searching for sonically and aesthetically. The goal is a guitar that does not simply serve as a tool for music but as a living, breathing extension of the player.
His approach to every instrument is framed around four acoustic priorities: balanced registers across low, mid, and high frequencies; grandiose projection; long sustained notes; and a melodious decline of sound that enriches everything the player does, whether pianissimo or mezzo forte. He has been pursuing that standard since 1998 and recording data on every guitar he builds to ensure that each one is better than the last.
Salvaged Tops, World-Class Voice
One of the most distinctive aspects of the Pellerin operation is Michel's exclusive use of salvaged tonewoods for his soundboards. Sitka spruce, Western Red Cedar, and Alaskan Yellow Cedar recovered from forests where trees have been left, sometimes for fifty years or more, have naturally aged in ways that kiln-dried commercial tonewoods never can: cells emptied of water, resins slowly crystallized, stiffness and acoustic responsiveness dramatically enhanced. The result is a top that performs like an instrument decades older than it actually is, with a tonal immediacy and harmonic complexity that fresh-cut wood cannot approach.
Back and sides draw on a premium palette including flamed sapele, figured koa, Indian rosewood, Malaysian blackwood, and figured maple, each one selected for the acoustic character it brings to a specific build.
The Models
Pellerin builds across a range of body styles including Jumbo, Grand Auditorium, OM, and parlor configurations, all available in standard and cutaway formats with optional Manzer wedge for ergonomic comfort, side soundport for player intimacy, and arm bevel. Every instrument is built to individual commission, and no two are alike.
The Grand Auditorium Scoop CW represents one of the most fully realized expressions of the Pellerin aesthetic, featuring an Adirondack spruce soundboard, flamed sapele back and sides, Gaboon ebony fingerboard and bridge, EVO Gold frets, Gotoh 510 tuners with ebony buttons, maple burl and segmented flame maple rosette with abalone accents, ebony body binding, and a Manzer wedge cutaway that makes it among the most ergonomically comfortable instruments available. At under five pounds, it has been described as featherlight yet deeply resonant, a balance few instruments ever achieve.
The Harp Guitar series, for which Pellerin has built a global reputation, extends the lineup into 12, 13, and 21-string configurations, with the 21-string model featuring sharping levers that allow the player to access nine different modes without retuning, in a fully custom instrument that represents the outer limit of what one workshop in Quebec can produce.
Browse our available Pellerin inventory, and reach out to discuss placement on the commission waitlist.