Access Backstage Pass
In 2026 the guitar industry has never felt so saturated. Gear fatigue is real. For many observers the market is a merry-go round of familiar body shapes and styles, capable of inducing a dizzying deja vu. Fresh faces are few and far between.
At least, that’s the thinking at Guitar Center, whose CEO is on a mission to bring something fresh to the market with a new in-house instrument brand. But he’s not going about it the orthodox way – he’s asking players to help him design a guitar from the ground up.
Last month, Gabe Dalporto made headlines when he announced his Guitar Labs initiative. The idea is simple: a bunch of like-minded guitar fans gather on an online forum and debate what constitutes the perfect guitar.
Pickups, hardware, tonewoods, electronics, layouts, body shapes, contours – no stone is to be left unturned. Common frustrations, shared shortcomings, annoying imperfections of other models will all be taken into consideration.
The aim is to pool cutting-edge insight from fans and players alike to produce something innovative and completely different – something that will push guitar design forward.
Which is, of course, much easier said than done. The execution will be a monumental task. Established brands have long struggled to do what Guitar Center is trying to do. But Dalporto isn’t fazed. He has full faith his team will deliver.
“A large portion of the industry continues to chase replicas of ‘50s and ‘60s engineering,” he tells Guitar World. “Leo Fender built the first Telecaster 70 years ago, and since then we’ve put a man on the Moon, invented the smart phone, created AI and launched self-driving cars.
“We all love vintage instruments, but we also can’t be tethered to the mindset that the 1950s was the pinnacle of guitar technology.”
Guitar Center, of course, isn’t the first retailer to launch an in-house brand. Thomann has Harley Benton; Andertons has K-Line; Gear4music has SubZero. Heck, this isn’t even Guitar Center’s first rodeo – that mantle goes to Mitchell.
But this time is different. Dalporto has lofty ambitions for his as-yet-unnamed project, which could very well define his legacy with the retail institution in years to come.
“Many retailers offer house brands because, when you cut out layers of the supply chain with all their overheads and corporate bureaucracies, you can offer a higher quality product at a lower price.
“Unfortunately, most retailers simply make copycat products and charge a little less. That’s completely uninteresting to me. I told our team the last thing the world needs is another Les Paul or Telecaster clone.
“I gave them a challenge: if we’re going to launch a new guitar brand, it’s got to be demonstrably better than anything out there. We need to bring actual innovation to the table – ‘Go make the best sub-$1000 guitar that the world has seen, that isn’t a clone of something that already exists.’”
Perhaps the biggest talking point surrounding the project is the way in which the digital floor has been opened for input. The Guitar Labs Reddit page is very clear in its caveat that any idea proffered to the company will belong to the company.
“By submitting your Idea, you assign, transfer, give and relinquish to Guitar Center all right, title and interest in and to the Idea or any material based upon or derived therefrom for no consideration,” the legalese-riddled statement reads. “Guitar Center may use and exploit, without any payment or attribution obligation of any kind, any Idea you provide to Guitar Center.”
Would you rather we didn’t listen to customers? Hide in our offices in the pursuit of mediocrity?
In other words, if you help design the thing, don’t expect to be compensated for it when it starts making a profit further down the line. That all belongs to Guitar Center.
Safe to say the response was mixed, if slightly more skewed towards skeptical. “Why would we give you our ideas for free?” fans would argue. For Dalporto it isn’t so black and white. “Literally millions of musicians come through our doors every year,” he says of the decision to include players in the design process.
“And if there are two things we know about musicians, it’s that they’re creative and they’re opinionated. Why not engage directly with them right out in the open, let them tell us the things that tick them off about their current instruments, the things they wish their instrument did – then build them exactly what they want?”
Dalporto is keen to shrug off the skepticism. “First off, I would say, ‘Please, if you don’t want to contribute to this product, then don’t,’” he states. “Nobody is forcing anyone to contribute. We transparently posted that anything they contribute is voluntary, and we may actually listen to them and use their suggestions.
“Beyond that, would you rather we didn’t listen to customers? That we just hide in our offices and listen to some corporate shirts pontificate on pickup choices and make uninformed decisions in the pursuit of mediocrity? I think that’s a lousy way to build an instrument.”
On the flipside, some are embracing the opportunity to be involved in the process, and have readily offered up their insight to help put the brand together. “We’ve gotten enormously valuable feedback from a variety of sources,” Dalporto reports. “The conversations on IG and Reddit are very active; there’s been great learnings there.”
And fans aren’t the only ones to have been involved in the process. Dalporto reveals that a handful of heavyweight consultants have also been brought into the R&D process. “We’ve engaged with some legendary musicians and product designers for feedback and design recommendations,” he teases.
“We’re actively building prototypes and testing frequently with small groups of musicians. Our engineers are conducting an enormous number of experiments, from measuring body stiffness to string friction and tension during tuning, and mapping the pickup response profiles of iconic instruments.”
Retailers build some product, slap a generic name on it, throw it on the shelves, and then… nothing. I think that’s wrong
There’s no date set for when the guitar will make its debut to the world – but it might be closer than you think. Dalporto says he and his team are making good progress.
“I’d say we’re about 90 percent there in terms of identifying the everyday friction points players deal with and just learned to live with,” he confirms. “Things that slow them down, limit them, or don’t quite match how they play today. The problems worth solving.
“We’re maybe 50 percent there in our solutioning and engineering. We have ideas and points of view on the specifications, but we haven’t locked any of them yet.”
No matter what some may think of Guitar Labs, Dalporto clearly has grand designs for the brand. This is not a ‘one-and-done’ scenario – it could very well be the start of something bigger.
“Another thing retailers mess up with house brands is they build some product, slap a generic name on it, throw it on the shelves, and then… nothing,” he observes.
“I think that’s wrong. If we’re going to build a product line, let’s have it be a real, honest-to-God brand. Talk to a ton of musicians and find an unmet need. Define what you stand for. Design the products to those standards. Test prototypes with customers.
“Get it in front of expert reviewers for their honest take. Develop a multi-year pipeline of product innovation and line extensions. Market it.”
Ultimately, says Dalporto, he wants products that not just move the guitar into the future, but will stand the test of time. As the CEO concludes: “This is a brand that we hope will be around 100 years from now.”
- Visit Gabe Dalporto’s Instagram channel to keep up to date with the Guitar Labs progress.
