~ Teuffel Guitars ~

Ulrich Teuffel's great-grandfather was an engineer, his grandfather was an engineer, his father is an engineer, his second grandfather was a cabinetmaker, his uncle is a cabinetmaker, his granduncle was a painter: as you can imagine, becoming an accountant has never been Teuffel's ambition. An inventor is a bit more his style.

After obtaining a highschool degree Teuffel began an extended apprenticeship in metalwork and construction at Mercedes-Benz. During that period he learned that you can't name something "exact" if it isn’t down to one hundredth of a millimeter. Today he thinks that the figure is actually beyond one thousandth of a millimeter. But everyone starts out as a beginner.

Many years ago Teuffel had already built his first acoustic guitar (not the desktop-wood guitar which he made as a child) when he saw a book by Donald Brosnac which not only explained how to build an acoustic guitar but also showed gorgeous pictures of Steve Klein's instruments. Teuffel started at once on building a Steve Klein Acoustic. The guitar looked more like a Canadian hunting lodge with carvings and a soundhole on it. So he skipped that sample, and the first real guitar he built was a hommage to Steve Klein. At least he tried to replicate the form because he had no idea of his construction plans, which the pictures didn't show.

Teuffel founded his company on June 1st 1988, and spent his time building electric guitars and basses. In those years he designed his first guitar series "Dr. Mabuse" and the bass line "JFK" which was based on traditional examples: glued-in necks, Mahogany, flamed maple, quilted, brazilian rosewood, pickups, tuners, vibrato from wholesale suppliers, glossy finish - the usual things.

If you asked Teuffel about his most formative experience in guitar making, he’d probably say it was his study of industrial design from 1992 until 1996.

In the year before he started really designing he was dissatisfied with his guitar work. The series had been developed completely, the results were good instruments, and today they are even collectable guitars. But he had been looking for a wider challenge which he couldn't find in the realm of traditional guitar building.

From the distance of his design study Teuffel learned to look at his guitar work from a distance. At the end, he resumed work structuring it with themes and concepts and came back with the birdfish guitar. Two years later he created the coco series, then the tesla series and in late 2007 the niwa.