James Tyler Guitars is a manufacturer of

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

s. The company was located near

Van Nuys Van Nuys () is a neighborhood in the central San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Home to Van Nuys Airport and the Valley Municipal Building, it is the most populous neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. History In 1909, t ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and established in 1972. consequently reaching the public eye through studio musicians like

Dann Huff Dann Lee Huff (born November 15, 1960) is an American record producer and songwriter. For his work as a producer in the country music genre, he has won several awards, including the ''Musician of the Year'' award in 2001, 2004, and 2016 at the Co ...

Michael Landau Michael Christopher Landau (born June 1, 1958) is an American musician, audio engineer, and record producer. He is a session musician and guitarist who has played on many albums since the early 1980s with Boz Scaggs, Minoru Niihara, Joni Mitch ...

, and Neil Stubenhaus. The company is known for creating custom

high end In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a greater proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in contrast to ...

guitars, with an unusual

headstock A headstock or peghead is part of a guitar or similar stringed instruments such as a lute, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and others of the lute lineage. The main function of a headstock is to house the pegs or mechanism that holds the strings at the ...

, and guitar body finishes with names like "psychedelic vomit", "burning water", and "caramel cappuccino shmear".

History

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 the Los Angeles studio musicians

Dean Parks Weldon Dean Parks (born December 6, 1946) is an American session guitarist and record producer from Fort Worth, Texas. Albums Parks was member of the North Texas State One O'clock Lab Band before moving to Los Angeles to work with Sonny and Cher ...

and

. In 1987 the first production model was released called the "Studio Elite", a hot-rodded

Fender Stratocaster The Fender Stratocaster, colloquially known as the Strat, is a model of electric guitar designed from 1952 into 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has continuously ...

The woodwork was done by hand and it featured a "hockey paddle" headstock, which was used to ensure that the company does not infringe on

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC, or simply Fender) is an American manufacturer of instruments and amplifiers. Fender produces acoustic guitars, bass amplifiers and public address equipment, however it is best known for its ...

's trademark headstock design. The Studio Elite model is featured on Guitarist magazine's list of "50 guitars to play before you die". Wayne Krantz by Rich M

Their second model, the "Ultimate Weapon" (available with two or three

humbucker A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out the noisy interference picked up by coil pickups. In addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used in d ...

s and a

Floyd Rose The Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo, or simply Floyd Rose, is a type of locking vibrato arm for a guitar. Floyd D. Rose invented the locking vibrato in 1976, the first of its kind, and it is now manufactured by a company of the same name. The Floyd R ...

locking tremolo), was introduced in 1993 and was also based on the Fender Stratocaster but with a redesigned appearance. 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 Gibson may refer to: People * Gibson (surname) Businesses * Gibson Brands, Inc., an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and audio equipment * Gibson Technology, and English automotive and motorsport company based * Gi ...

-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

Telecaster The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it is the world's first mass-produced, commercially successful Les Paul had built a prototype solid bod ...

-styled Tylerbastar line. By now the manufacturing process had also started to utilize a Fadal digital

CNC Numerical control (also computer numerical control, and commonly called CNC) is the automated control of machining tools (such as drills, lathes, mills, grinders, routers and 3D printers) by means of a computer. A CNC machine processes a p ...

machine for routing the guitar bodies, allowing for additional optional features like a hollow body. The company now also winds their own pickups, while earlier they used standard and custom pickups from manufacturers like

Seymour Duncan Seymour Duncan is an American company best known for manufacturing guitar and bass pickups. They also manufacture effects pedals which are designed and assembled in America. Guitarist and luthier Seymour W. Duncan and Cathy Carter Duncan foun ...

, DiMarzio,

Lindy Fralin Lindy Fralin is a US manufacturer of "boutique" guitar pickups based in Richmond, Virginia. He got his start in the early 1990s winding by hand on a homemade machine because he was not satisfied with commercially available pickups. After a number ...

Tom Anderson Thomas Anderson (born November 8, 1970) is an American technology entrepreneur and co-founder of the social networking website Myspace, which he founded in 2003 with Chris DeWolfe. He was later president of Myspace and a strategic advis ...

and John Suhr. 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". It got named "psychedelic vomit", and Jordan McLachlan of ''Guitarist'' magazine described it as "completely mad and random". The second finish was created in 1993, again for Michael Landau, and was named "burning water", and is a combination of different colors which Neville Marten described as "a mass of swirls in different metallic colors". 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. In 2008 the company released a series of guitars using the brand "Joe" and only made them available to the Japanese market. These guitars are a more minimal version of the Studio Elite and the Strat-style Classic models. A Tyler-designed series of Line 6's

Variax Variax is the name of a line of guitars developed and marketed by Line 6. They differ from typical electric and acoustic guitars in that internal electronics process the sound from individual strings to ''model'' (replicate) the sound of specific g ...

line of guitars was announced in the spring of 2010. The company also produced a limited number of custom-built bass guitars between 1992 and 2006, used for instance by

David Hungate William David Hungate (born August 5, 1948) is an American bass guitarist noted as a member of the Los Angeles pop-rock band Toto from 1976 to 1982 and again from 2014 to 2015, and the son of judge William L. Hungate. Along with most of his T ...

and Neil Stubenhaus. In 2011 Tyler Guitars relocated their operation and offices to a new facility in

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Located to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated ar ...

. In 2014 James Tyler partnered with Japanese distributor Daisuke Kitahara to manufacture affordable versions of their popular models in Japan before establishing Tyler Guitars Japan two years later.

Models

* Studio Elite * Ultimate Weapon * Mongoose * Tylerbastar * Classic

Artists

Some musicians who use/have used Tyler guitars are:Artists
on Tyler website, 15 Oct 2019 *

Abraham Laboriel Abraham Laboriel López Sr. (born July 17, 1947) is a Mexican-American bassist who has played on over 4,000 recordings and soundtracks. ''Guitar Player'' magazine called him "the most widely used session bassist of our time". Laboriel is the f ...

* David Williams *

Elvis Costello Declan Patrick MacManus Order of the British Empire, OBE (born 25 August 1954), known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. He has won multiple awards in his career, including a Grammy Award in ...

* Glenn Pearce * George Lynch *

Jake E. Lee Jake E. Lee (born Jakey Lou Williams, February 15, 1957) is an American musician best known as lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne between 1982 and 1987 and later as a member of the band Badlands with Ray Gillen. He formed the band Red Dragon Car ...

Jennifer Batten Jennifer Batten (born November 29, 1957) is an American guitarist who has worked as a session musician and solo artist. From 1987 to 1997 she played on all three of Michael Jackson's world tours, and from 1999 to 2001 she toured and recorded wit ...

John Fogerty John Cameron Fogerty (born May 28, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. Together with Doug Clifford, Stu Cook, and his brother Tom Fogerty Thomas Richard Fogerty (November 9, 1941 – September 6, 1990) was an American mu ...

Keith Howland Keith Howland (born August 14, 1964) is an American guitarist and singer. He was the lead guitarist for the veteran pop-rock band Chicago from 1995-2021. Howland started playing the guitar at the age of seven, and he played in a number of band ...

Kenny Loggins Kenneth Clark Loggins (born January 7, 1948) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. His early songs were recorded with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1970, which led to seven albums recorded as Loggins and Messina from 1972 to 1977. His ...

* Michael Anthony *

Michael Casswell Michael John Casswell (18 June 1963 – 30 September 2016) was an English session guitarist, who toured and recorded with numerous artists including Brian May, Joe Bonamassa, Steve Hackett, Wang Chung, Ronan Keating, Rose Royce, Cozy Powell, Tony ...

* Neil Stubenhaus *

Prince A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. Th ...

Rick Derringer Rick Derringer (born Richard Dean Zehringer; August 5, 1947) is an American guitarist, vocalist, producer and songwriter. He came to prominence in the 1960s as founding member of his band, the McCoys. Their debut single, "Hang on Sloopy", was ...

Robben Ford Robben Lee Ford (born December 16, 1951) is an American blues, jazz, and rock guitarist. He was a member of the L.A. Express and Yellowjackets and has collaborated with Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Larry Carlton, Rick Springfield ...

Steve Howe Stephen James Howe (born 8 April 1947) is an English musician, best known as the guitarist in the progressive rock band Yes across three stints since 1970. Born in Holloway, North London, Howe developed an interest in the guitar and began to le ...

Steve Lukather Steven Lee Lukather (born October 21, 1957) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger and record producer, best known as the sole continuous founding member of the rock band Toto. His reputation as a skilled guitarist led to a stea ...

* Steve Watson *

Stuart Hamm Stuart Hamm (born February 8, 1960) is an American bass guitar player, known for his session and live work with numerous artists as well as for his unconventional playing style and solo recordings. Career Born in New Orleans, Hamm spent his chil ...

* Takeshi Akimoto * Terry L Perry * Gerry McGee * Tommy Walker (worship leader) *

Vivian Campbell Vivian Patrick Campbell (born 25 August 1962) is a Northern Irish guitarist. He came to prominence in the early 1980s as a member of Dio (band), Dio, and has been a member of Def Leppard since 1992 (replacing Steve Clark after his death). Camp ...

Walter Becker Walter Carl Becker (February 20, 1950 – September 3, 2017) was an American musician, songwriter, and record producer. He was the co-founder, guitarist, bassist, and co-songwriter of the jazz rock band Steely Dan.Russonello, Giovanni,Listen t ...

Wayne Krantz Wayne Krantz is an American guitarist and composer. He has performed and recorded with Steely Dan, Michael Brecker, Donald Fagen, Billy Cobham, Chris Potter, David Binney, and Carla Bley. Since the early 1990s, Krantz has focused primarily ...

* Yuji Toriyama *

Jae Park Park Jae-hyung ( ko, 박제형; born September 15, 1992), better known as Jae ( ko, 제이), is an Argentine-born American musician, singer and songwriter of Korean descent, best known as a former vocalist and lead guitarist of South Korean roc ...

References

External links

Official website
{{Guitar brands Guitar manufacturing companies of the United States Manufacturing companies based in Greater Los Angeles Design companies established in 1972 Manufacturing companies established in 1972 1972 establishments in California