James Tyler Guitars is a manufacturer of boutique electric guitars. The company is located near Van Nuys, California and was established in 1972. It was long regarded as LA studio musicians' "business secret",[1] and consequently reached the public eye through studio musicians like Dan Huff,[2] Michael Landau,[3] and Neil Stubenhaus.[4][5] The company is known for creating instruments "flawless in design and construction"[6] with an easily recognisable yet somewhat controversial headstock,[7] and creative guitar body finishes with names like "psychedelic vomit", "burning water", and "caramel cappuccino shmear".
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During the 1980s the company did primarily repairs and modifications of guitars, but built some custom guitars based on parts from other manufacturers such as Kramer for some of Los Angeles's studio musicians, namely Dean Parks, Michael Landau and Dan Huff.[8] In 1987 the first production model was released called the Studio Elite, a hot-rodded Fender Stratocaster[1] that James Tyler describes as "a guitar with all the good stuff."[9] All the woodwork was done by hand, and it featured the "hockey paddle" headstock that some find "a little over-powering"[10] and has been regarded as a feature people either love or hate,[11] but made it certain that the company does not infringe on Fender's trademark headstock design. Additional standard features are a Demeter mid-boost circuit with a gain control and a preset switch and a neck finished in such a way that it feels like it has been worn-in through years of use even though it is brand new, similar to what Music Man did with their Eddie Van Halen signature model guitars.[10]
Their second model, the Ultimate Weapon (available with 2 or 3 humbuckers and a Floyd Rose locking tremolo), was introduced in 1993 and was also based on the Fender Stratocaster but featuring a more contemporary look.[1] The latest incarnation of the guitar, the Ultimate Weapon HD, introduced in 2007, came with a pickguard, an H/S/S pickup layout and a Wilkinson vibrato. Tyler describes this model as "a Studio Elite wearing an Ultimate Weapon suit." In 2006 they introduced two models named Mongoose and Mongoose Retro, the former leaning towards Gibson-style design, while the latter is more of a Fender-design, both being "a sort of Les Paul-meets-Telecaster" and taking over for the then discontinued Telecaster-styled Tylerbastar line.[6] By now the manufacturing process had also started to utilize a Fadal digital CNC machine for routing the guitar bodies, allowing for additional optional features like a hollow body.[6][12] The company now also winds their own pickups, while earlier they used standard and custom pickups from manufacturers like Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Lindy Fralin, Tom Anderson and John Suhr.[11][12][13]
The company's first original finish was created in 1991 for Michael Landau as a joke that Tyler has commented "unfortunately, the world took it seriously".[9] It got named "psychedelic vomit" and has been described as "completely mad and random".[7] The second finish was created in 1993, again for Michael Landau, and was named "burning water", and is a combination of different colours that has been described as "a mass of swirls in different metallic colours".[14] In 1998 the first "shmear" finish was created, a paint job that uses layers of different kinds of paint and takes about a week to finish.[13] One reviewer called the Candy Cherry Red Shmear finish "not for the faint hearted."[9]
In 2008 the company released a series of guitars using the brand "Joe" and only made them available to the Japanese market.[15] These guitars can be regarded as a stripped-down version of the Studio Elite and the Strat-style Classic models, and according to James Tyler are "all about attitude."[15]
A Tyler-designed series of Line 6's Variax line of guitars was announced in the spring of 2010.[16]
The company also produced a limited number of custom-built bass guitars between 1992 and 2006, used for instance by David Hungate[17][18] and Neil Stubenhaus.[4][5]