Paradis Polyphonic (Hexaphonic) Guitars -> Here is a dedicated site!

Why Polyphonic Guitars? read all about the physical background to this very musical technology

For many years, this page contained the first chapter of the PARADIS Story, starting in 1983.

The primary idea of PARADIS was:
Colaboration of lutiers and engineer lead to new concepts and instruments!
The primary result was a revolutionary set of products for a complete polyphonic instrument:
Paradis Polyphonic Piezo Pickup, the Avalon guitar and Polysubbass.

1988 the first Avalon was built and 1991 it was successful at Frankfurt Musik Messe. but the price did not pay the effort. Although parts of the process were automized, and Jon Piguet, Heinz Fässler and others helped, 1996 it went to sleep after about 250 guitars... but minds, technology and experience kept growing!

MP3 sound samples of Paradis Guitars:

Avalon nylon string:
My funny Valentine (Claus Boesser)
Quanno chiove (Pino Daniele)
Lua (Fourth World)
Ocean Song (Eliane Newmeister)
Song of Hope (Patrik Steinbach)

Avalon steel string:
God Bless the Child (Claus Boesser)

Elegy with digital processing by Mathons VST Plugins :
2005 Polyplugs Demo (Matthias Grob)

Video collection at Youtube

18. April 2014: Rolf Spuler died!

 

2005 he had come back to guitarmaking, improved Avalon with headstock, built-in PolyBass, GK controls,,, and renamed it to Rolf Spuler model Paradis.
He also created Basz and Jazs and the FireWire guitar with little success. but the Paradis was widely admired.

Rolf was overloaded doing the 3D design, CNC programming, guitar building, electronics creation and modifications, pickups, graphics for folders, customer service... only Ursetta caring for some of the burocracy and Philipp for electronics. he had a hard time to share work since hardly anyone did things at his standard (or idea?) of quality. He himself suspected that this brought some bitterness that may have caused his pleura cancer. but it may just as well have been the dust of the hard wood or the solvents of the paints... he fought with all kinds of alternative methods and only gave up a few days before he died, always keeping up the the hope that he would return to his newly installed workshop and build guitars in peace after some reorganisation of his life...

He was a great friend, a genius, one of the very few persons I could sit together over a white paper fill it with ideas and we always agreed on new ways to do things. In 30 years of sometimes intense, sometimes loose partnership, we never had a disagreement or money problem between us... Now I sit in his office and grab through his well organized but huge collection of designs and documents to colect what we need to continue caring for the wonderfull instruments he made... search his workshop for parts and hope that someone who understands about these things shows up and profits and continues... with Rolfs help from beyond...

Rolf did not have time to maintain his website at the quality he wanted. so now I created a new site at the quality I can.