Prince in one of his last concerts with Gus Guitars Purple Special
Simon Farmer - Gus Guitars creator
Simon Farmer stumbled into guitar building by way of being a student and studying design in art school. He eventually received a masters degree in product design at Walter Hampton University.
He had already built his first electric guitars and basses during in his early teen years and went to art school with the intent of designing guitars.
Furniture maker bending metal frame
Farmer states he took his inspiration from a variety of artisans; jewelry makers, furniture makers and other artists. In fact the tubular design of his guitars was influenced from furniture makers that saw using bent chromed steel and aluminum to construct chairs.
While in University he made a series of instruments that he called Git-tubes which were tubes shaped into frames for the guitar/bass bodies. The artist Seal, a bass player and singer, used one of his basses in a video.
While in school Farmer took a break and for a holiday he traveled to California to visit such luthiers as Steve Klein, John Page of Fender and others to get their insights on the guitar building process.
These interactions lead him away from the Git-tube design as he realized these instruments were more sculptural pieces than stringed electric instruments. He faced the reality that the git-tubes did not have the sound he was looking for in a guitar or bass.
He then that he turned his attention to carbon fiber as a basis of a body. To do this Simon Farmer made use of a spectrum analyzer which allowed him to view the frequencies of differing materials.
His most popular mode, the G1, uses tubular shaped pickups that he creates in his shop using alnico magnets and piezo transducers in the bridge/saddle.. In fact all the parts on his Gus guitars are hand made on his lathe, including the knobs, bridge and vibrato. He does not like “switches” so he utilizes a rotary selector instead of the usual Switchcraft style toggle or lever.
One unique feature on this guitar is the switching system that can turn these twin humbuckers into three single coil pickups. We've discussed the body already. The neck is topped with a Cocobolo fretboard which has 22 frets. The position markers are of Farmer's own unique design and made of white resin. The fretboard includes LED's embedded in the position markers..
The guitar has a unique switching system that uses a rotary switch instead of the usual toggle. And this guitar sounds excellent. The connection input is found on the guitars backside and is molded into the body.
The G1 V (vibrato) has the same unique body design, but comes with three GUS single coil pickups encased in metal tubes. The vibrato unit is made by Farmer in his shop and is his own design.
The G1 MIDI ( musical instrument digital interface) guitar combines all the features of the G1 along with RMC piezo pickups that connect to the 13-pin MIDI connector on the guitar's backside next to the input jack.
This enables the player to run through a Roland GR-33 or other guitar synthesizer module.
The G1 piezo combines the features found on the G1-V with piezo elements in the guitars bridge that run on a built-in preamp. This guitar enables the player to use a Y-cable to send the piezo feed to one amplifier and the magnetic feed to another.
Perhaps the pinnacle Simon Farmers work is The Purple Special guitar. This is a one-off guitar that Simon Farmer designed especially for Prince. All of the hardware is gold-plated.
The inlaid position markers are made of holographic gold carbon fiber. This guitar has one single coil pickup in the neck position and one humbucking pickup in the bridge position. There is a piezo pickup in the bridge, but no preamp.
The controls feature a single volume and tone control and a three-way toggle switch. The tuners are gold-plated Gotoh non-locking machines. Prince only got to use this guitar once in concert. He had planned on having a second guitar built. It is a gorgeous instrument.
The Purple Special guitar comes with a GUS guitar designed custom made molded purple case with a gold-plated aluminum handle and a plush interior.
Simon Farmer with a Gus G3 Five Bass
The GUS bass guitar series is made in a similar fashion, but with a different body shape. The aluminum tubular structures the make up the horns do not encircle the body, but jut out from the upper portion of the instrument.
This system allows the pickups to function has humbuckers (in tandem) or in as single coil pickups. The guitar has an in-shop designed hard tail bridge/saddle that has piezo elements to give an even fuller sound.. It comes with single volume and tone controls. The fretboard is made of cocobola with white resin position markers that contain LED's. The machine heads are Gotoh model 510's.
Five aircraft grade aluminum bridge pieces clamp to a 1/4" bridge plate to anchor the strings and increase this basses sustain. The bridge saddles also contain piezo elements for a bigger sound. Both the G3 Four and Five can be ordered with an active three-band EQ system to achieve even more bass sounds. Instead of just a tone control these bass guitars come with stacked switches to enable the user can get active treble, mid-range and bass sounds along with the volume and four-way rotary control.
Simon Farmer also offers a baritone version of the GUS G3 bass. This is a six string instrument that is tuned A to A.
It comes with all the accouterments of the standard G3, including two single coil alnico tube pickups. piezo bridge pickups and the four-way rotary control.
The G3 MIDI bass combines all the aspects of the G3 bass with the added feature of piezo pickups that are connected to a 13-pin MIDI output. This enables the bass to be hooked up to a MIDI synth unit to achieve a myriad of bass sounds, or any other sort of sound that the synth unit can produce .
Incredible look and sound and concept. I can't get over how well these guitars fuse together super modern style and functionality. It would make art students and engineers equally happy.
In summary, anything that you have to put together is probably not going to get played as much as you think when you consider that you are traveling to far away places to see people and places...so the least hassle to playing the guitar, the better.
7 comments:
Never saw these guitars before. Nice looking and very unique. I especially like the look of the bass guitars though I'm not a bass guitarist.
They sound nice too. Thanks for stopping by.
~Marc
Incredible look and sound and concept. I can't get over how well these guitars fuse together super modern style and functionality. It would make art students and engineers equally happy.
In summary, anything that you have to put together is probably not going to get played as much as you think when you consider that you are traveling to far away places to see people and places...so the least hassle to playing the guitar, the better.
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such a creative mind and dedication. will place an order for sure. the only problem is, which G1 should I get...
Pickups are actually made by Kent Armstrong, not Simon
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