Ideology rooted in

In today’s seeming sea of knobs, switches, circuit boards, and a barrage of other mods & addons hitting the market every year, soap is choosing to go back to basics. Our mission is to create clean & smooth (like a bar of soap), lightweight & minimalistic guitars by removing unnecessary elements and maximizing spatial presence and player ergonomics through intuitive design. Read more about how we conceptualize and build our guitars here.

Back to the future

We are on a neverending quest for innovation, inspired by some of the most iconically designed guitars in history, such as the Parker Fly, Yamaha RGX-A2, and Ibanez JEM. Yeah, we’re old-school (but also future-school). Our founders grew up in the 90s when mail-order guitar magazines and music videos on MTV were all the rage; influenced by archetypal guitar players like Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Tom Morello (to name a few) and their purpose-built instruments plastering the pages of a premature internet. All said we’ve been tinkering with guitars for over 30 years and we’re poised to give back players those retro vibes …with a post-modern attitude.

Why “soap”?

When pondering what to name our guitars, and beginning to prototype them, we set out to invoke a feeling of “clean” and “smooth” (simple in design and comfortable to play). Our guitars are just that – clean and smooth, like soap – and so our name was born. Additionally, the colors and patterns in our guitars come from the use of pigments and powders often used in actual traditional soap making. Lastly, to add to the overall theme of our guitars, we decided that each guitar would come with a bar of “soap” (made from the same wood as the guitar, matching in color and pattern); a fun collectible to make each player’s purchase unique & interesting.

Our Founders

Brian Edwards

Brian, who has played in a few nationally touring bands, has lived out most of his lifelong guitar fantasies… the last being to design and produce guitars professionally. A lot of soap guitar designs have existed in his head (or have been scribbled on paper) since he was a kid. Brian’s favorite guitar right now is his Yamaha RGX-A2 (which is probably why we ended up with the knurled tuners we use), and his least favorite is his customized Jim Root Telecaster (but only because Adrian beat the hell out of it in a music video shoot).

Adrian Paolucci

Adrian has spent most of his life playing in regional touring bands and collecting guitars (and never selling a single one) – he even still has his first guitar ever owned as a kid (bought with his hard-earned allowance money). Adrian’s favorite guitar (at the moment) is his Stephen Carpenter ESP LTD SCT-607B, and his least favorite guitar is a Gibson (despite owning several and playing one in the photo above, hypocrite much?). Adrian’s special talent is that he has half of his right index finger missing but never drops a guitar pick.

Eric Reid

Eric is an Audio Engineer with over 25 years of experience in sound design, production, recording, mixing, and mastering, so he knows what a great guitar is supposed to sound like. Conversely, he’s never been shy about speaking up when a soap guitar isn’t up to par during our QA process. His famous line is “sounds like ass; the donkey kind, not the Kardashian kind – fix it”. Needless to say, Eric is the end-all-be-all for making sure our guitars sound amazing. His favorite guitar right now is his American Original Telecaster.