Ibanez – AFR Bass
in 1991, in one of his most depressed and cynic phase, Rolf received the design contract which we had worked on for years with Mike Shimada and Fritz Katoh of Ibanez – a very serious and honest company! next to 900 instruments were made during about 3 years – is not the size such a company needs. the design was ahead of time.
in 2017, Ibanez started the reissue, sent us a prototype to review and pay royalties to Rolfs son. YOUHOU !!
the AFR was one of the first basses with piezo pickups, we manufactured them for Ibanez, partly in Biel, partly Brasil. the bridge is separate for each string to optimize crosstalk between strings. Rolf patented it together with Ibanez and it is called mono-rail since and was also used in models not designed by Rolf