By: Jenny Castro
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 12/21/24 – Bruce Kulick, former guitarist of Kiss and Grand Funk Railroad recently teamed up with AXN Guitars for an exclusive limited edition boutique guitar line which pays homage to Kulick’s iconic era in Kiss. Joining the band around 1984, Kulick was featured on numerous Kiss albums including 1985’s Asylum and1987’s Crazy Nights. An era when Kiss experimented with glam metal, Kulick’s new collection with AXN Guitars perfectly fits Kiss nostalgia and 80’s style flashy rock n’ roll and MTV era. Telling us more about the upcoming guitar line, Johnny DiFatta of AXN Guitars provides insight, “Bruce and I became friends some years ago and have likes that are very similar in the kinds of guitars that we like to play,” DiFatta said. Adding, “And then in essence I’m manufacturing guitars for Bruce, and he wants to deliver a certain kind of instrument to his fans, and it’s really generated out of the need for Bruce to accommodate all the requests that he has from Kiss fans.” Based out of California, DiFatta started his company about 10 years ago with each guitar handmade and manufactured from the best, “My guitars are for players who like heavier sounds, and I’ve used additional guitar influences from the history of guitar manufacturing to design and develop my guitars. So that’s really what I’m doing and that’s what me and Bruce are doing together with this project,” DiFatta explained.
For the guitars, fans can expect a few different designs with one in particular featuring cover art from the Asylum album. Difatta further explains, “So that album has four faces on it from each member of Kiss Bruce was on the cover, so I used the original artwork to recreate onto the front of the guitar. That has generated a lot of interest in what Bruce has done, and I think it’s going to be a really big deal to commemorate his era with Kiss. And so, during that era he experimented with a lot of different hard rock sounds, and its sort of intrinsic of that glam metal era of the1980s that everybody loves so much.”
Currently, the collaboration is in the beginning stages and both Johnny and Kulick have spent a great deal of time perfecting the instruments including an M-1 style guitar, “We basically used scientific methods to figure out what he likes his guitars to feel like and what shape he wants the bodies of the guitar to feel like. All of these things are very important to people that play guitar and the woods they are made out of. So, I refined all that from a scientific standpoint and we arrived on the perfect design. And right now, there’s been 4 guitars we developed, and two of them have been branded as a Kulik guitar so they’re Bruce Kulik’s brand with a collaboration with AXN Guitars. The two that he is using right now one is a yellow guitar, and it resembles something he used in Kiss, and we also have the two Asylum guitars that have the Asylum cover artwork, and that’s the starting point right now,” DiFatta said.
With such an iconic musical legacy, Kiss fans will be excited to see Bruce’s 80s style guitar collection, “The things that fans want are a constant and it really comes down to what era of Kiss you’re trying to fulfill, and I think that’s why Bruce is really centered on the things he used in Kiss,” DiFatta said. Adding, “Remember there’s a number of big hit songs from 1985 into the 90s when Bruce was in the band, and they didn’t wear makeup. In all those videos from MTV he used very bright colorful guitars. It was a bright colorful time, so I think you’re gonna see him meet the needs of his fans with the kind of flamboyant hot colors of the 80s.”
For more information check out AXN Guitar’s official webpage or Instagram.
Click here for Bruce Kulick’s Official Website.
Bruce Kulick’s Instagram available here.
