Hasta La Ideas

Bruce Jacob‘s pioneering instrument fuses his two passions—guitars and computer system engineering—to create Coil Guitars. Coil revolutionizes electric guitar customization, allowing guitarists to engineer their favorite tones without having to open up (and potentially damage) their instrument’s circuitry. We spoke to Bruce to find out more about what makes Coils a must-have for the discerning guitarist.

There are a multitude of different guitar production agencies and designers in the field today. What were these lacking that inspired you to create your own line of guitars? What elements distinguish your products from other guitar designers and manufacturers?
I grew up playing guitars that had a wide palette of sounds, not by choice but by luck. My first electric (an Electra Outlaw) was simply what they were carrying at the place I took lessons. My second (an Ibanex Roadstar) I got when I heard my band member’s Ibanez and thought, “Wow, I need that sound.” Those were my only two electrics for almost 20 years. Both have very wide ranges of tones they produce and when I bought a new guitar in 2003 (off the net), it was the first time I played a guitar with what I would consider a limited palette. It felt black and white, compared to full color.

So I looked into why I felt dissatisfied with that guitar (which was really expensive and should have been a home run by all accounts). After some research, I figured out how to get a huge range of tonal possibilities and then a student of mine pointed out that my experimental set-up was actually the product. So I decided to see if other people are as crazy about lots of tones as I am.

The bottom line is that we give guitarists way more sounds than they will get in other guitars, at a fraction of the price of guitars with similar specs. We give end-users the ability to experiment with different tones in a non-destructive way (e.g. one of our switches lets you fully customize all the settings of the guitar, without having to rewire anything). And, most importantly, we do it in a way that is simple and easy at performance time—one or two switches on the front of the guitar and that is all. I don’t know many guitarists that want to fiddle with a half dozen knobs, levers, and push/pull pots to get their sound. That works fine in the studio, where the atmosphere is relaxed and you can make mistakes. Playing live is a different matter; the guitar has to be dead simple. I think we’ve achieved the best of both worlds: dead simple, with the widest possible range of sounds.

The Angel, Ronin, and Shogun body designs all hail from very familiar construction shapes. What are the functional and acoustic qualities that you are able to achieve from the Hammer’s (pictured below) more atypical design?

Read more from Bruce and see additional images after the jump.