Guitars

paradis avalon headless nylon solidbody

Rolf built many special guitars and basses, but these stand out:

1990-1995 Avalon

YOUHOU! good news! Francesco Iovinella makes new such guitars and repairs the old!

On ice, the design that summed it all up. Rolf said he dreamt it, around 1988. inspired by the mystics of the mother of his son, he called it Avalon.
the motivation was the technology they created a few years before: the clean pickup, the deep Polybass, the low D…  new was the headless nylon strings on a rather holow body. later, Rolf called it Hybrid Guitar. at the time, Chet Atkins was leading nylon solid body, but it’s pickup had audible plastic parts. so the Avalon was a sensation at the Frankfurt Musik Messe in 1991. business men convinced Rolf to set prices low for the swiss living standard, so he worked heavily for little and gave up exhausted, took a job and designed machines. Matthias was busy with the Echoplex in Brazil, so Paradis Guitarworks ceased to exist in 1995.

but we knew it: in 2005, he started again. created the company Rolf Spuler GmbH and called the instrument Paradis. he added a headstock since some customers had complained about the tuning on the back and about the “broken” or even “weapon” look of the the headless Avalon. the electronics became a lot more sophisticated, self contained, SMD, created by Philipp and others. the controls invisibly integrated into the bridge. Here are more pictures of details!

 features of Paradis guitars:

  • extremely sophisticated CNC routed body, light and mostly hollow, avoiding feedback but allowing wooden resonances
  • full rosewood neck that hardly ever bends or detunes and brings sustain without boomy bass
  • extremely sophisticated CNC routed headstock with magnetic covers and string clamping machines
  • low D additional frets and E clamp for standard tuning
  • wooden bridge with built in nicely hidden controls
  • legendary piezo pickup that mechanically and electrically separates strings well
  • sophisticated electronics that preamplify, each string and a lower octave to one of the lower 4 strings, battery saver, Roland standard DIN 13pin output, FireWire output…
  • natural or transparent color finish

since Rolf”s death in 2014 and Pino Danieles death in 2015, we think about how to go forward. many love the original headless design and its easier to build and shorter to transport and less delicate (the headstock caps are thin wood…)
so how about a new Avalon with built in Polybass and more hollow – lighter, more balanced and sound like the 2005 Paradis?
we have all production info and electronics ready for a luthier who wants to buid such an instrument!

and you can build it into any other instrument!