Interview by Paul Salfen
Hard rock and heavy metal legend Bruce Kulick and “The Sensei of Vintage 1980s Guitars,” Johnny DiFatta of AXN Guitars have announced a special collaboration to engineer boutique guitars under a new banner, Kulick Guitars.
“Meeting Johnny from AXN ignited my love of M-1 guitars from the 1980s. This collaboration will help me create boutique quality guitars worthy of my name on the headstock.” – Bruce Kulick
Bruce Kulick, you know the name… 12 years, 8 albums with rock ‘n roll icons KISS. The Asylum and Revenge records carrying his credits are considered indispensable. 23 years a member of Grand Funk Railroad. Trusted sidearm to Meat Loaf, Billy Squier, Union, Avantasia, Lordi and Michael Bolton.
Guitar luthier and ESP aficionado, Johnny DiFatta from AXN Guitars is recreating the glitter, the glam and the grunge of a short-lived period of time in rock n’roll history. AXN Guitars, a brand name carrying its own weight.
If you’ve caught recent shows by The Bruce Kulick Band, you may have been treated to the sight of Kulick wielding an ESP-styled guitar faced with a recall of his Asylum album era. Consider Kulick’s AXN-backed Asylum boutique guitar a tribute and a mission statement. Retro elegance. Arena-heralding flair.
Remember heavy metal in The Big Eighties? The larger-than-life stages. Pyrotechnics, awesome light shows, fire and more fire. Decibels so loud you felt the vibrations in your bones a week after the show. The image and the glitz and awesome custom-built instruments with graphics. These are guitars made famous by the MTV era of the 1980s.
AXN Guitars founder and luthier Johnny DiFatta wants to keep the spirit alive. Joining him in this preservation effort is former KISS and Grand Funk Railroad guitarist, Bruce Kulick. Together, they’re bringing you Kulick boutique handmade Guitars.
“Bruce reached out because we liked the same things, and we started talking about the guitars he used during his era of KISS,” Johnny explains as the foundation to their future collaboration. “We went over the early 1980s ESP catalogs of guitars Bruce played and used live at that time.” DiFatta adds, “ESP Guitars were one of my two main influences as a guitar manufacturer with the other being early Charvel Guitars.”
KISS’ Asylum will turn 40 years old next year, and with it marking the recording debut of Bruce Kulick with the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famers. Asylum served as a linchpin toward fostering a retro homage project starting in 2020.
Johnny reflects, “The ESP Bruce played live in the early KISS days was his 1985 ESP M-1 with a Flip-Flop paint job. It’s the same guitar that is hanging in the Hard Rock Cafe in London England right next to Eric Clapton’s Stratocaster today. So I went on to manufacture and produce a replica of that M-1 ESP but it had a chunkier neck on it. We applied some guitar math and used a caliper tool to examine his favorite ESP guitars. I instructed Bruce on how to calibrate the thickness of a guitar neck. Bruce settled on a slightly thinner neck profile that was very 1980s-ish with an R2 nut. Now Bruce has that tribute guitar and uses it live.”
To depict his own take of the memorable Beatlesque headshots on the Asylum album cover, Johnny spins his art process:
“Bruce said it would be great if we could do a guitar with his face on it from the Asylum cover. I said that was doable and I was already making AXN custom guitars with artwork on them. So I took photos of a guitar without any artwork on it. Since I’m also an artist, I went into Photoshop and designed the guitar. I also went and bought the biggest poster I could find of the Asylum artwork, and I photographed just his face and did a lot of cool stuff with it. I had to move some of the paint splatters around the pickups, the bridges and the neck and move Bruce’s face around until the symmetry was there.”
The result became a tribute guitar. The gorgeous mockup blossomed into a further collaborative effort by two “guitar geeks.”
“Bruce wants to offer boutique guitars,” Johnny relays. “His fans are constantly asking Bruce for more guitars that celebrates his KISS era. We started talking about the woods, the hardware, all the specifications, and the pickups. Everything that is involved in the process of making guitars. Bruce showed an interest in learning more about what makes a guitar truly great. He was intrigued by my knowledge since I’m a luthier and I’m a guitar player and I used to be in a working band.”
Some of the features a Kulick guitar will offer are locking bridges, a single humbucker and a non-reversed headstock carrying the Kulick logo on the front, and the AXN logo on the back. It’s handcrafted and “period correct,” as Johnny boldly asserts.
Retro done not only right, but major league 1980s throw-back guitars.
About Bruce Kulick and AXN Guitars:
Time will only be kinder to the esteemed name, Bruce Kulick, and his contributions. Not only to KISS, but rock n’ roll at large. Johnny DiFatta of AXN Guitars essentially started manufacturing guitars in 2018 and even then AXNs were considered high pedigree. Today, he is well-known throughout the world for AXN Guitars and as the most notable vintage ESP and Charvel historian in the United States.
As “The Sensei of Vintage 1980s Guitars” and someone who knows Eddie Van Halen’s Kramer/ESP guitars inside and out, Johnny usually owns up to 200 guitars at any one given time and he has sold over 1,400 vintage guitars online. The ESP-influenced master craftsman has his sneakers planted firmly in the Eighties, thus it’s nothing less than fate Johnny and Bruce Kulick were destined to join forces.
“I’m excited that Bruce and I have been able to examine and discover the technical details of the guitars he used during his KISS era,” Johnny glows about their partnership. “Because Bruce and I have been working together for the past four years, I have incorporated many of his suggestions into my AXN Guitars.”
In summation of this growing Kulick-AXN endeavor, Johnny notes, “This isn’t about money so much as it is the demand of the fans because Bruce and I totally love these guitars. I’m a KISS fan first and foremost, yet it’s also about our crazy obsession with era-correct guitars of the Eighties.”
For more information on Bruce Kulick and AXN Guitars, please visit:
Bruce Kulick’s website: BruceKulick.com-The Official Bruce Kulick Website | Home
AXN Guitars: AXN™ Guitars (alienxnation.com)
