Is Tosin Abasi building a gear empire?

Is a new era of Abasi Concepts about to dawn?

Not content with being one of the greatest guitarists of his generation, Tosin Abasi has dropped the biggest hint yet that he plans to build a formidable gear empire with Abasi Concepts.

The firm launched in 2017, with Abasi working in collaboration with COO Ivan Chopik. Together, they’ve brought a unique guitar body shape and some high-end craftsmanship to the fore via its Larada, ēmi, and Legion models, as well as a small cluster of pedal releases.

But the book doesn’t seem to be stopping there.

“Abasi Concepts was always meant to be an umbrella encompassing more than just guitar design,” Tosin Abasi tells Premier Guitar.

As per its website, Abasi Concepts has continually defined itself as a firm providing “modern solutions for the modern guitarist,” and so it's no surprise that the pair are looking beyond just guitars and pedals.

But they’ve had to take their time to establish a firm foundation; to build a reputation that Abasi Concepts weren’t just building fancy-looking guitars to cash in on Abasi’s stature. They wanted to show they could bring fresh ideas to an industry densely populated with products.

“I think the search began as more of trying to answer a problem,” Abasi says of the company's need to exist, which spelled the end of a nearly 10-year relationship with Ibanez. “I think a lot of eight-string guitars attempt to scale up a six-string. But I felt that a ground-up approach made more sense. I wanted to treat the eight-string as its own consideration. So there was a solution-oriented approach.”

To say its builds have been a success feels like an understatement. Today, it boasts quite the roster of players. Justus West used an Abasi on Beyoncé’s latest, Grammy-winning album. Meanwhile, Night Verse’s Nick DePierro, Baxty, Giuseppe Gilardi, Josh de la Victoria, Joseph Anidjar, and Stephen Taranto are just some of the other diverse fretboard burners to have joined its ranks.

Now, Abasi Concepts is eying further growth. Then, perhaps later, world domination.  

Expanding the Archetype

In 2019, as Abasi’s earliest guitars were converting players like a monk on a mission, the guitarist was working with Neural DSP on his celebrated signature plugin, Archetype: Abasi. That could be a springboard for the company’s future endeavours.

“We’re interested in solutions across the board. And part of the fun of having the company is that we get to manifest the things we wish existed,” Abasi underlines. “Software is a territory that we have not really stepped into yet, but it is clearly of such utility that it would make sense.”

Perhaps that means the lauded Micro-Aggressor compressor, and its Pathos distortion are being readied for digitalization. We’ve already seen Boss turn its ever-popular stompboxes into plugins – although locking them behind a subscription wasn’t the brightest idea. To think Abasi Concepts would do likewise isn’t extraordinary.

There’s also the possibility of digitizing his current live rig, which is a little more old school than it once was...

Pushing air

Those who have followed Tosin Abasi’s gear journey, they’ll know that he’s pivoted away from modellers in recent years. He’s now a big champion of Bad Cat amps and pushing air the old-fashioned way.

So, as much as Abasi Concepts is centred on offering modern-minded solutions, don’t count out more traditional products dropping in future.

“Ivan and I are both big fans of tube amplifiers,” he explains. “There’s no substitute for playing an amp in a room. So the amp thing has been a conversation.”

He’s tight-lipped about the takeaways from those conversations, but it’s clear that the Abasi Concepts stock is set to continue growing. He wants to build a gear empire, and who can blame him?  

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