Márcio Zaganin

One of the most respected luthier Brazil

Márcio Zaganin

I started my professional career as a Luthier in 1989, working at a small instruments factory in Vila Madalena neighborhood in São Paulo. However, ever since I was 12 years old I was interested in woodworking, electronics and music. Such passion was instigated by my older brother Fabio Zaganin who already played bass at this time. I automatically began to tweak his instrument and from there time went by quickly and I got a job in this instrument factory. I worked there until 1992. In 1991 I had already finished my first project– a bass to my brother. Then in 1993, I set up an atelier in my own house where I began to offer regulation, renovation, and restoration services for vintage instruments. In that same year I started to manufacture my first instruments with my new brand named M.Zaganin. Even then I was asked to provide technical assistance to important distributors in the Brazilian instrument market, working with multiple brands such as Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Yamaha, Warick, Martin, Jackson, Epiphone etc.


During the 90's, although I was busy with concerts, reforms and technical assistance all at the same time, I kept crafting instruments with only one purpose: to improve my techniques and develop advanced technology to build professional instruments with refined quality. At that time, I wasn’t searching for profit, I was solely obsessed with finishing, sound, playability, tuning and making my creations well rounded in all aspects. Such instruments didn't really exist in national manufacturing back then and that bothered me deeply. Several musician  friends of mine were “guinea pigs” during this process of trial and error and improvement, thankfully the vast majority was a success. The number of customers rapidly increased and suddenly I was no longer being asked to make guitars and bases for friends only, but also for great musicians such as Sergio Buss, Andre Cristovam, Celso Pixinga other respected musicians from Brazil and abroad. In the 2000’s, renowned artists were using the M.Zaganin brand, including Roberto Frejat and Lulu Santos, producers and acclaimed musicians Liminha, Serginho Carvalho, Alex Fornari and countless others kept coming.

When in 2004, I was introduced to Ney Nakamura, manager of the musical instruments branch and owner of Tagima. And through this encounter a new brand “N.Zaganin” was born with the idea of continuing with the same M.Zaganin concept but with added features, technology, and structure in order to further improve the instruments’ quality and serve a bigger amount of customers. And just like that, N.Zaganin continued to grow and develop while maintaining the tradition of getting orders from big names such as Djavan, Gilberto Gil, Lenine, Chico Pinheiro, Pedro Luiz, PJ-Jota Quest, Champignon, Sydney Carvalho, Thiago Espirito Santo... In 2006 I was given the opportunity to take over product development and production coordination of the Tagima brand. I became responsible for taking care of the entire Brazilian production line made currently in our factory in São Paulo as well as the Tagima Premium series, Tagima Acoustic and the Memphis series produced overseas (China).  Since then I’ve had the privilege to work with the Tagima endorsees such as :Juninho Afran, Kiko Loureiro, Eduardo Ardanuy, Marcinho Eiras, Arthur Maia, Roger Franco, Cacau Santos and others who collaborated with me in the process of creating, developing and monitoring their respective signature production lines. I am in charge of product development team which so far have created new products models such as Infinity Custom models, Millenium, Fusion and T-six, Modena and every Tagima Premium series.  I’m currently working on new releases for both N.Zaganin and Tagima, always searching for ways to offer musicians custom shop instruments or a cost beneficial instrument which reflect my perfectionism in elements I have regarded as imperative from the very start: finishing, sound, playability, tuning and making my creations well rounded in all aspects.