Official Luthiers Forum!

http://www.teuffelguitars.de/instrumente/birdfish/bilder/guitar.jpg

This German fellow Teuffel builds some radical guitars. Quotes Fender incessantly on the Gourmet Guitars, The Best Luthiers, DVD Series. Never heard of him or seen him until I bought this video off eBay.

Volume 1 includes Claudio and Claudia Pagelli, Ulrich Teuffel, and Mike Lewis. Volume 2 includes Rick and Elias Turner, Kim Walker, and Michael Lewis who builds an authorized D'Angelico archtop replicas. Elias is really enamored with his dad's work. Pretty good salesman you have there Rick.

Back to the Birdfish, what a fresh look at the electric guitar. He has a couple other models that Ulrich Teuffel, Coco and Tesla. He became allergic to epoxy and fiberglass and discontinued Coco in '02. The Tesla has an obvious disadvantage for playing upper register electric as on standard guitar necks. But the birdfish is captivating.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Teuffel is a student of Industrial design and it shows big time in his guitars.

The Bird Fish is engineered with interchangeable pick-ups for different applications and the two cylinders that you see are also interchangeable with cylinders made of different woods for different tone.

If I recall he only made and will only make 500 of these.

Very cool Bruce!

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Thank goodness for small favors

Ahhh, Michael, you're not a fan, eh?

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Must be more comfortable to play than it looks.....

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Horton, MI

I'll pass on that one

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Say what you do, Do what you say.

Ulrich says in his Gormet Guitar's piece, that his designs are quite polarizing. (as evidenced here in this thread) It's way cooler than the Fender Thinline clone laying on my workbench.

Rick Turner was getting onto a few of us to come up with our owns designs recently when talking 4 string acoustic bass. We were all enamored with the Breedlove version and trading body tracings.

I bet there isn't one OLFer with one of these in their closet. They were described as the Porshe of electric guitars, and that aptly fits what I saw on the DVD. Way, way cool, Ulrich.

It's funny too on the videos that either the builders were building copies to the nth degree (Mike Lewis and his Resophonics, Michael Lewis and his D'Angelico's and Kim Walker and his reverence for famous guitars) or they were cutting edge with technological advances in their designs (Turner and Teuffel).

This thread isn't meant to be controversial, just showing off what another builder, in another part of the orb is doing with his time. Makes me want to go hunting and fishing for some reason while whistling a futuristic tune....

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Some of the Euro guys are not as hung up on "traditional designs" as are many North Americans...exceptions being folks like Linda Manzer, Steve Klein, Ned Steinberger, and Ken Parker. But of course Ned is the only guy of the batch to see ongoing commercial success with his design licensing. Linda's doing great, but it's in the small lutherie shop mode. Steve is trying a come-back, and Ken is struggling like the rest of us. It's easy to imagine that the best known luthiers are doing great and rolling in dough. It ain't necessarily so...

It's not easy selling "radical lutherie", and I, for the most part, try to blend forward-thinking engineering with at least some elements that have familiarity to the eye. It's hard to beat a fairly conventional guitar shape...

Just think of how radical Parker's or Doolin's guitars used to seem. Now they almost look normal to me. Now this guitar on the other hand...I'm not so sure about. It is a neat concept though.

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Joe Breault
Merrimack, NH
Perpetual novice

Forget which luthier on the DVD's said it, but conventional wisdom says that it should fit in a case off the shelf. I've heard a number of complaints in this dept. right here on the OLF.

Rick, I thoroughly enjoyed the DVD section on your stuff. And seeing your son and hearing your voice was neat. Those Gourmet folks did all of us a great service chatting with you guys.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Not a comment on the playability or quality of this guitar. Just in my eyes that what ever you call it is bu** ugly, To an industrial designer I am sure it gorgeous

I'm no industrial designer, but I like that a lot. Truly innovative and very, very cool.

Andrew

Yea! Ulrich builds a wild machine Bro!

Here's a pic of the Tesla


Love'em or Hate'em! There is no in between on Teuffels work!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

See the three buttons between the pickups and below the strings, those add some cool effects, one is on off, kills and returns the signal of the pickups during playing, one is an intentional pickup microphonic sound. The third one must have been in my deaf range of hearing loss, I couldn't detect what it was doing. Big drawback on the Tesla is the neck limitation due to the beak or whatchamacallit going up the neck. The player on the DVD said it just made him play in a "new way". It was all jazz stuff they were doing with the Tesla.

Michael that guitar is called the Birdfish, quite stylish isn't it. These are a number of years old and Guitar Center hasn't picked them up so I guess.....

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

On first look I though, man that's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. Looks like it was assimilated by the Borg. But, I come back to it a few times and it's really starting to grow on me. That Tesla is just way cool. I'd have one of them any day.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

They kind of grow on ya! At first there's kind of an impression that says "That ain't right", "How can this thing happen" then it's like Huhm! The Coco I'm not a big fan of, it's reasonably mundane but the Birdfish and the Tesla are cool looking.

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Ah! I take that back! The Coco is like a big purple 6 string potato chip. I was thinking of another guitar. Lo siento Amigo mios!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Listening to these guitars being played by good artists convinced me that they are for real. I doubt that they could be considered tough guitars and long life guitars (thinking Jaco's Jazz Bass). Can you imagine what any of these three Teuffel's would look like with that kind of abuse and wear? The Birdfish of course since it is so modular, could be outfitted with new pieces, no problem. I wish Gormet would put up some YouTube vids of these instruments.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com