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

magnet hold fine caps of the same wood as the body

full rosewood neck that hardly ever bends or detunes and brings sustain without boomy bass
extremely sophisticated CNC routed headstock with magnetic covers
custom modified Gotoh string clamping machine heads: just insert the string and start winding it up. Here is Rolf’s video manual

rose wood bridge with built in nicely hidden fader controls

this bridge would work well in other guitars. the principles are:

optimized string separation
nothing that hurts the wrist
most direct contact string-body
lutier defines string distance
light

legendary piezo pickup that mechanically and electrically separates strings well and detailed reproduction of the complete string vibration

Low D additional frets and E clamp for standard tuning

simply push button and string is locked and plays like any other guitar
push the button and the string and let the button go. the string has two more frets and is tuned in D so you can play the common drop D chords, but nothing changes for playing the higher frets. only the E needs to be pressed.

preamplifier for each string

a specially designed FET preamp avoids attack problems of the common OPAMP circuits. separate amplification improves quality of the piezo pickup because when switched parallel to mono, one is a charge for the other.

Polysubbass built in

very similar to original, but for 4 strings. switchable priority to make only the lowest played string be processed, so there is only one bass note!

ophisticated power supply

DC-DC converter 6V (4xAA) to 12V
battery saver: off when left for 1 minute and back at the first note played
LED alerts before empty when 13pin DIN feeds, batteries are switched off
4xAA holds up to 10 times more energy than a 9V block, for a similar price.

still, the guitar consumes quite a lot (it runs for a few hours) so we recommend to use rechargeable accumulators.

unfortunately some of the accumulators like Monacor are slightly thicker than the normal batteries and most of the accus. DO NOT PUSH THEM INVARDS! they may not come out easily!

the eneloop and sistech and many others work well.

13pin output

with all the GK controls in the instrument any Roland or BOSS hexaphonic equipment can be connected. with the BOSS GR-10, each string can be treated in a computer!

or you can use the connector simply to feed the instrument or use the controls in some other way…

CNC

extremely sophisticated CNC routed body, light and mostly hollow, avoiding feedback but allowing wooden resonances

(a lot more of such pictures here)

Serial Numbers

first 1 or 2 digits = year + 2 digits = month + 2 digits = continuous number
so it starts in 2005 with 50301 and Rolf’s ends 2011 with 111245. after his death, Heinz+Matthias mounted the parts stock up to 160752 (the 12 string)