News
B&M launches the world’s first online guitar design project
Rob Hughes Jul 10 2009, 1:11pm
Comments (3)
Internet guru’s signature guitar designed by fans and future owners
Barnes & Mullins has announced the world’s first social network-driven guitar design project – the ML1.
The project was undertaken in partnership with guitarist Rob Chapman, named ‘The YouTube Guitar Guru’ by Eddie Kramer, legendary producer/engineer of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. Chapman is known as 'The Monkey Lord' to his many online fans and is regularly ranked in YouTube's top five most viewed musicians in the UK, with millions of hits since he began posting guitar videos.
Chapman caught the attention of Barnes & Mullins when it noticed that his videos were receiving 10,000 views per day from his loyal social network following. It was at the LIMS show that B&M director Bruce Perrin first saw Chapman at work.
“I was amazed that almost everyone recognised him,” recalled Perrin. “He was followed to the Faith Guitars stand by dozens of his fans as his crew filmed him. I realised there and then that we needed to work together to mutual benefit and the Rob Chapman Signature guitar was born.”
Chapman then decided to allow his online following to help design his signature guitar.
“I wanted the ML1 to be two thirds mine and a third the people's,” Chapman explained. “After all, they will be buying it, so it just made perfect sense to have them involved in the design. I came up with an initial concept and then let the fans tell me how they wanted it to be specified, eventually narrowing it down to four basic concepts, which they voted on in a huge surge that actually put my forum out of action.
In the first 30 minutes the thread had 14 pages of new members all putting forward suggestions and voting.”
At the time of writing – less than 24 hours after the online launch of the concept – Barnes & Mullins have received over 75 registrations of purchase intent for the ML1 guitar, even though the guitar has only been displayed in conceptual form. The official pre-order payment process will go live once the initial samples are approved.
“This is really quite a big deal,” said Alex Mew, B&M’s marketing manager. “It’s incredibly exciting to be involved in this project, as social networking has been a very powerful influence for quite some time now with people of all ages using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In this age of genuine people power, there is no excuse for not delivering exactly what the people want. After all, all you have to do is ask them – and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
The ML1 Rob Chapman Signature guitar will be released under the Chapman by Gould brand and is expected to be released by Christmas 2009. It will be sold through selected online retail partners that have not yet been announced.
The progress of Rob’s ML1 guitar can be followed from the end of July at: www.themonkeylord.com. Chapman can be found on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/robchappers.
Comments
“Fender trademark headstocks”
Posted by: Steve Robinson - Jul 10, 2:39pm
I hate to be a party pooper but isn't the Tele headstock shape a Fender trademark?
“Re: Fender trademark headstocks”
Posted by: Betamax - Jul 10, 2:53pm
Maybe, but I'd say this one is sufficiently distinct to be considered perfectly acceptable. It would have to be identical within miniscule tolerances to be an infringement and, even if it were, courts haven't tended to rule in favour of Fender in 'shape' cases of late.
“Re: Re: Fender trademark headstocks”
Posted by: alex - Jul 10, 3:29pm
dont worry. this is an artists impression so once the actual guitar is in production, it will be sufficiently different.. in the same way that every non-fender strat or tele is normally.