Meet Frank Deimel

Today we’d like to introduce you to Frank Deimel. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Frank Deimel has been building guitars since his early adolescence and started his professional business in 1998 in Berlin. Giving an unimpeachable tool to a musician but also mirroring his/her unique style is his absolute goal.

A »classic« design stays to be a very important point of lead for creation since he and his customers share the same love for the old vintage models. Therefrom Frank Deimel alters his models with modern features to suit nowadays personal and ergonomical likes.

Throughout the last decades, he gathered a lot of experience by building solely custom instruments and doing repairs and modifications. As a result of this, in 2012 two serial models of Deimel Guitars have been launched that consolidate only the best features in two different designs. The »Deimel Doublestar« is a very compact and symmetric guitar with ergonomic features known as F-style guitars, but with the warmth and sustain of a G-style guitar.

The »Deimel Firestar« comes in a more expanded design, which provides long string sections beyond bridge and nut, and wide-sounding pickups with experimental electronics. Both models are varnished in classic 60ies car colors and contain attractive wood sections.

Since 2007, Frank Deimel work with his partner Kora Jünger.

Together, our approach to handcrafted, well-designed guitars in modern pop culture has fully developed. The inspiration of vintage design cues and experimental, open-minded features lead to our main objective: We want to give a tool of great appearance, perfect playability, and inspiring possibilities.

2015 Kora, Frank, the kids, and the workshop moved 40 km further east from Alexanderplatz into the nature reserve area »Naturpark Märkische Schweiz«. Here finally they find plenty of space for their family and a hell lot of new guitars.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There is no day where we do not stumble upon one, as we try to live the life of an artist/craftsperson while having 2 great kids and making the necessary funds to sustain it all.

Sometimes our journey into the outer space of guitar developments crashes into the regular making of our monthly schedule, but what would the world be if we would not rethink and question it all?

The fun part of life as an artist truly is to create invent and develop. A beautiful challenge if all is well balanced!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
When we met in 2007 not only love come into our lives but the start of combining the passion of each of our arts and crafts. When we think and talk about guitar design, we try to express the spirit of our lives and what drives us to build guitars.

While Frank studied Industrial Design at »Hochschule der Künste Berlin«, Kora received her diploma in Visual Communications from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg and a Master of Fine Arts New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. Together we have a profound knowledge of arts & design that we live and work on a daily basis.

The series of Artist Editions started in 2014 and was first shown at the very first Holy Grail Guitar Show. We wanted to make something really special not yet seen for this special guitar show that we were co-organizing as co-founders and board members of the European Guitar Builders Association.

This first Deimel Firestar Artist Edition »Berlin« combines the colorful flatness of Kora’s paintings and drawings with Frank’s technical tweaks and spins. Berlin was 2014 our home base and the location of the first Holy Grail Guitar Show.

Living in Berlin, we could feel the power and creativity of all artists and young people from all over the worlds coming together. Kora made the entire visuals of this guitar based on ink drawings she made as a starting point. She then vectorized all of them and made this beautiful collage that was spray-painted by a local air brusher.

From there we took the art a step further and Kora started applying her drawing with a napkin technique. The rough style fits very well with the handwriting of her drawings.

Kora usually starts with a theme in mind that she researches and then makes many drawings that serve her as a library. Each guitar is her canvas that she applies her colleagues on. In a final step, Frank and Kora decide on the pickguard, pickups, and all other details.

On a more recent path, we pushed forward our idea of a guitar being a sound interface featuring additional onboard features yet unseen on guitars. To mention a core idea that dates back to the original idea of inventor Pascal Stoffels, we developed a unit called PickupLesLee®. This is a device that lets alternate two pickups and therefore creatures a unique and new sound texture, adjustable in speed and intensity.

To even go further we found a way to connect this oscillating effect to analog synthesis, meaning you are able to be in sync with the world of modular synthesizers. This newest development opens a new door to many sound design possibilities, creating a connection between these 2 instruments yet unexplored this way.

Besides building our serial models with respect to customizable features, we love to work “in the lab” to widen the perspective on making use of an electric guitar. A lot of those ideas also developed in cooperation with our customers, a process we truly enjoy in our daily work.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
The guitar is dead, right? Well… it looks like the opposite to us! So many new makers out there, so much more quality and variety!

The full rainbow seems to unfurl right now, and we do not wonder as to what is wrong with something you can easily carry, play endlessly, and still looks sexy on you? Long live the guitar, or whatever it will develop to in the future.

Pricing:

• starting 3580€
• up to 15000€

Contact Info:

• Website: www.deimelguitarworks.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deimelguitarworks/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeimelGuitarworks
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/deimelguitarworks
• Other: https://korajunger.com

Image Credits
©deimelguitarworks.com