BusinessWeek Magazine recently featured an article about how the resurgence of heavy metal has helped some guitar makers. The article highlights several niche, unique guitar builders that make guitars typically used by heavy metal guitarists. The three guitar makers discussed are Halo Custom Guitars, Inc., Minarik Guitars, and B.C. Rich Guitars.
The common thread among all three guitar builders are that they create uniquely-shaped instruments, the type of guitars often used by heavy metal guitarists. They also name the guitars with names such as D-Spawn, Hellfire, Diablo, and Warlock. In addition to wild designs and names, the companies have added seven- and eight-string guitars to their product lines.
Even though these companies seem to be targeting heavy metal players, they realize that diversification is necessary. Marc Minarik of Minarik Guitars states in the article that:
“It’s a pendulum. It’ll swing back the other direction and hopefully we’ll have our line well padded with instruments that the other styles of music will find equally pleasing,”
Nowadays, I tend to play the more standard guitar models, primarily Strats, but in my younger days, I had an Ibanez Flying V-style guitar and played heavy metal music. In fact, B.C. Rich was big back then, and it appears as though they’ve made somewhat of a comeback over the past 5-10 years. I think there’s room for all of these guitar makers, and I’m glad to see that there are people finding and filling niches in guitar making.
Although not mentioned in the BusinessWeek article, Dean is another guitar maker that has been helped by the resurgence of heavy metal over the past decade. Specifically, Dean has been helped by the popularity of Dimebag Darrel, who famously played the Dean ML and turned a whole generation of metal-heads onto Dean Guitars.
What’s the wildest guitar you’ve owned/played?