The ML1s have arrived with Barnes & Mullins, have been checked over, and are now being shipped all over the world to those of you who have purchased them. If you haven’t yet purchased an ML1, you can head to the Purchase an ML1 page, which has a selection of stores that still have ML1s available.

I cannot begin to explain how exciting this is. It’s one thing to be offered a guitar company, but to actually see this entire process reach the end of its journey, and have dudes e-mailing me to say things like: “I HAVE IT! CHAPPERS! I HAVE MY ML1! ITS THE BEST GUITAR I HAVE PLAYED IN MY LIFE AND I HAVE PLAYED A FAIR FEW. SORRY ABOUT THE CAPS LOCK, I’M REALLY HAPPY. ITS SO AWESOME. PEACE!!!!! – Jack Lavelle, UK. \m/” - it’s just beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

Rob “Chappers” Chapman is a busy man wearing many hats: guitar instructor, equipment reviewer, YouTube personality, guitarist and singer for Monkey Lord, guitar festival owner and host, and most recently – guitar company owner. Recently I managed to pull him away from his busy life for a few minutes to have a video conference about Chapman Guitars and the early success of its collaboratively designed ML-1 guitar.

So let’s start this story from the beginning; how did you find yourself hooking up with the distributor of the ML-1, Barnes and Mullins Music?

I got involved with Barnes and Mullins because I went to Abbey Road, well first of all I bought a Faith Acoustic guitar back in the day – I’m talking maybe 10 years ago (1999), and I got this (holds up Faith Saturn), it was Fucking awesome. This is one of the Saturn acoustic guitars from the original run of Faith Guitars. And it was the only acoustic guitar I found, because I spent months looking for one, but it was the only acoustic guitar I found that felt like it was one piece of wood rather than several (pieces). I was really impressed, and at the time I knew nothing about Patrick James Eggle (world renowned luthier), I didn’t know who he was – I just liked the sound of it and it was really reasonably priced. My wife bought it for me. I needed an acoustic guitar because I was off to Abbey Road to record with Eddie Kramer for the first time, so I was like “I really need to get an acoustic guitar…” I really didn’t want to not have that tone, you know – just in case.

And so I got it, took it to Abbey Road, and the weirdest thing was that we (The Black Hand) went there to record three rock songs and instead ended up recording an improvised acoustic piece and releasing that as our single. Eddie took me in a room, miked me up, told me to warm up, and as I warmed up he shouted “Take!” What I had done as I warmed up was a run through of one of our tunes acoustic style and he recorded that. It was loose and off the cuff and he loved it and kept it. Eddie then had the singer sing over the take and we released that rather than any of the heavier stuff. He (Kramer) said that the Faith had a really special tone, and I completely agree with him that it was amazing.

So after that, Faith Guitars were pretty high in my estimation and I decided to write them a letter and tell them about recording with Eddie and the Faith guitar how amazing it was, and to see about maybe getting another one for a backup. Alex Mew, the marketing director wrote me back and said “Hey we’d like to endorse you, and by the way that model is really old and we don’t make it any more; we have a whole new range that have been redesigned by Patrick James Eggle.” So then I learned who Patrick James Eggle was and became even more impressed.

So that’s how I built up a professional relationship with Alex Mew. Alex Mew is one of the rare people in the industry of guitars who actually cares – he genuinely cares. He’s not in it for money, he loves guitars and he loves watching people get excited about music and about guitars. Eventually I started doing some review work for Alex and did some guitar clinics and trade shows for Faith Acoustics. I was never really an acoustic guitar player, but I could lend my hand to it and when I would do clinics for Faith I would just improvise in E,A, and D (laughs). So that’s how I got involved with Barnes and Mullins.

The first production-line (non-prototype) ML1 to arrive in the UK was delivered to Rob last week.

“I just couldn’t believe how awesome it looked out of the box, and how natural it felt in the hands. My stringed stick of command really is born. I’m particularly impressed with amazing pickups that we chose specifically because they were ridiculously cheap, it seems we lucked out because they are insane. You can get crushing metal tones, or at the pull of a coil-tap you can get classic vintage Telecaster twang. Pickups really are a personal choice, and I urge guitarists to fit their own pickups with the help of a good luthier. Unless of course, that is, they fall in love with the stock Chinese pickups, which have a magic all of their own. I will be keeping this guitar with stock pickups not only to commemorate the launch of the Chapman Guitars, but also because they sound bad-ass.”

Rob was lucky enough to work with Eddie Kramer (legendary producer of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix) again at LAFX in Hollywood on the track “Breath” for Rob’s band Monkey Lord. Eddie brought a vintage Strat and a Hendrix Flying V to the studio to be used in the recording. Eddie loved the ML1 and decided that the ML1′s tone was better-suited to the song. There is an abundance of excellent video footage of this recording to be released soon.

We are very proud to announce the launch of Chapman Guitars with the CG-ML1. This marvellous slice of collaboratively designed win pie is brought to you by the fair hand of Rob Chappers, with help from the many thousands of wonderful people who voted on the various specs of the build. Those lucky enough to own the ML1 are part of a heritage and a family of which I am proud to be the founder of.