Those friends maintain the huge and unique work:

  • Matthias Grob – el-eng ETH, co-founder, moves between Switzerland and Brazil to maintain and solder and invent and write and talk…
  • Ursetta Mutzner – ex partner of Rolf, sends out boxes and cares for design and the good feelings and creates the Muurmeli magnet marble toy.
  • Francesco Iovinella – builds Avalons following Rolfs plans – just as good to play! also maintains the originals.
  • SynQuaNon – creator of Hex Modules and initiator of the 16pin LEMO connector, also sends out products in US!
  • Markus Baltensperger – the best client of Polybass started distributing and mounting guitars…
  • Vasilis Kotarelas – helps for decades with sites and design and photos and plays great Greek music with Avalons
  • Philipp Scheidegger – smd- and sound-engineer, creator and teacher of the most difficult electronics.
  • Heinz “Rüebli” Fässler – mech-designer, worked with Rolf in the 90ies, works on guitars and invents all kinds of tools and designs.
  • Tom Maier – full of ideas and knowledge of electronics, IT and Linux, always comes with ideas and helps
  • Loris Raimondi – care for communication, archives, Facebook group and funks with his Avalons…

Matthias Grob

Hi, this is me, Matthias. I kicked all this off with Rolf in 1984 and now create this sites content, the pickups and electronics. I try to keep track of the messages, orders, paper-work (pdf-work) and all the virtual accounts. beyond the age of 60 I slowed down and I forget more, but I do it more concentrated and calmer, and the experience brings quality to the products.
THANK YOU for supporting my mission for less sonic pollution with aggressive guitar sounds! (you can read more about such thoughts on the Philosophy page)
so yes, I am overloaded. you can help me by:
– have a look at the products and manuals to get an idea of what is possible and what information is available. my documentations are not up to date, its fine to then ask questions and come up with wishes.
– searching things in the shop and look up prices yourself. you can start an order with what you think you may need and then talk to me about it. no worries, I never send out things customers do not really want, its no fun.
– avoid bargaining. sure you get a discount if you really resell several of my products, but not if you only hope to do so. so please save us the time and energy to discuss prices. I live on the absolute minimum cost to rip off no one.

Rolf Spuler

Rolf Spuler (here with his last partner and great support Ursetta Mutzner) was the most important worker, designer and promoter at Paradis. His story deserves a separate site, we have loads of nice pictures, his annotations and memories.
He died on Good Friday (the same day Jesus died?!) 2014 after fighting with pleura lung cancer for about a year.
Rolf had an incredible energy to search for perfection, treat each part of his guitar and very rarely accept what the market already offered. He is highly respected by the best guitar makers in the world for going beyond the usual, the beautiful into the subtle, smart and realized a lot which was unknown or known as impossible or too complicated. he made his life difficult.
to live in Switzerland brings some nice confidences in quality of services nearby but also very high costs. so to survive by selling guitars to the world, he was obliged to make them more expensive and therefore more perfect. to make them more perfect costed a lot more time and more expensive even…
Rolf never managed to survive from the income he generated with his guitar. he reduced living cost to the minimum and worked all the time but still needed sometimes financial help by his family or partner. and he used to do industrial design jobs to maintain his guitar work. this was a humiliation he suffered all of his life and slowly made him bitter.
Rolf was totally aware of the quality he was producing and the problems. so he tried many contacts to guitar companies like Ibanez, Fender, Aria, Höfner, Fujigen, and many smaller guitar makers, hoping to have his inventions produced in a cheaper region or bigger scale, but apart from the AFR bass, it all failed.

Heinz Fässler

Heinz Fässler worked with Rolf on the later Avalons 1993-1995

on the picture, he is creating the picks at Frankfurt Messe around 2000. he does all kinds of mechanical works and loves learning and inventing. recently his main focus is on creating personalized card games and recreating old machine games.

after Rolf died he was the fundamental support to mount the guitar parts that were left and repair the machines to be sold and come up with incredible ideas, sometimes fun sometimes totally practical. he even designed the Muurmeli for Ursetta and solved many other graphical problems – and he helped to keep the good humor in difficult times!

Philipp Scheidegger

Philipp Scheidegger worked as sound engineer for Andreas Vollenweider and recently solves some very advanced electronic problems at EMPA
on with picture with Matthias Grob 2006 during a technical meeting at BridgeCo company where the only FireWire guitar was created.

Concept: Matthias Grob, Rolf Spuler
Hardware: Philipp Scheidegger
Software: Day Koch
Plug-ins: Matthias Grob, Andy Butler
Support: BridgeCo, Axon

around 2017 Philipp created the layout and the preamp of the Polybass and increased battery life with his experience and love for details and improvement.

1980

Rolf Spuler started building guitars at Gitarestübli in Hegi, around 1980 (here is how he wrote his story)

Matthias Grob started building his special guitar amp with hexaphonic distortion in Zürich around 1978

they met because Rolf was interested in the hexaphonic technology in 1982

and founded Paradis Guitars with Jury Roten and Iris Dressler in 1984

the picture shows Rolf and Matthias at the Frankfurt Musik Messe 1993 the only time the LOOP delay was shown (Gibson did not show the Echoplex).

the founding picture of 1984:

Rolf Spuler (solid body guitars), his partner Iris Dressler (wood turner artist), Matthias Grob (electronic engineer) and Jury Roten (acoustic guitars)

Here at Musikmesse Frankfurt 2006:

Manne Schlaier, Marco Russo, Ljubo, Rolf, Ursetta Mutzner, Andreas Schmidt, Tom Maier

first time/Musik Messe Frankfurt

probably the first time we went to the Musik Messe Frankfurt showing all kinds of guitars, including the red strat which had our piezo pickups and an on-board Polydistortion!
Roman Affolter ,Reto Fürst, Rolf Spuler, Matthias Grob

Ljubo Majstorovic

hundreds of musicians stopped at our booth to listen to Ljubo Majstorovic’s unique, lovely and virtuoso playing

he builds his own guitars and hacks and connects Macintoshes. he is the only one I am aware of who takes new gear apart and builds the main PCB into his ultra compact “guitar amp” and feeds it from a central supply – so he can take all on the train easily because he rejects cars…

and he gave the idea for the wooDI “effect” !

he also builds the most complex live looping tools of the world customized in Max and controls them with pedals built from keyboard electronics…

Ljubo does not care for success. He never published recordings of his music, yet recorded many other music in his unique studio in Baden. He used to play guitar festivals, but recently complained that its not worth the effort.
Guitar players that have seen him play agree that he is one of the most remarkable musicians of our time…

Willy Strehler

Willy Strehler was present over decades: first as guitar client, then a main motivator and tester and co-creator of the LOOP delay, then the same for the wooDI.

he started as vocal and guitar teacher and created his recording studio and now earns his freedom as sound engineer of the best known Jazz club in Zürich: Moods.

we always made good music and learned from his huge experience with building motor homes and wind surfing and loads of other creativities…
here he plays is amazing frame-drum setup where the mics are attached to his head so he can hear live what he transmits…

Andreas

Andreas worked with Rolf in the Gebensdorf times 2005-7. He then moved to Greenpeace, but he also help us a lot after Rolf’s death since he knows more about building the Paradis guitar than anyone else…

musicians

we reject endorser business. musicians play our instruments because they love them:

John McLaughlin
Pino Daniele
Lionel Loueke
Al Di Meola
Abe Laboriel
Forbes Henderson
Blake Mills
Sigi Schwab
Kazumi Watanabe
Andreas Vollenweider
Wolfgang Muthspiel
José Neto
Claus Boesser-Ferrari
Max Lässer
Albino Montisci
Peter Horton
Falk Zenker
Martin Herrberg
Deirdre Cartwright
Michael Sagmeister
Peter Bursch
David Friedmann
Andreas von Wangenheim
Friedemann Witecka
Christy Doran
Heinz Affolter
Patrick Steinbach
Paul Pleijsier
Alieksey Vianna
Carlos Walter

Instrument creators we exchanged ideas with

Guitar makers:

Pickups and Electronic engineering

  • Wolfgang Hauske – helped us a lot to start making pickups in 1884
  • Keith McMillen – amazing how he worked on the same subjects: Polyphonic (hexaphonic) guitars and looping
  • Rein and Taivo of Spicetone – hex distortion and paning pedal
  • Pascal Stoffel and Frank Deimel of Leslee, a unique in guitar effect I designed according to Pascals vision
  • Pete of Submarine – hex pickups
  • Peter Neubäcker of Celemony
  • Richard McClish – the one pickup that comes closest to the Paradis concept and became available shortly afterwards
  • Carlos Juan – pickup maker
  • Stephan Schertler – punchy amplification with totally new electronic concepts
  • Jürg Vogt – vovox – special cables
  • Köbi and Daniel Weiss of Weiss – high end sound products