It is hard to imagine modern life without the electric guitar or imagine how the social and sexual revolution of the 1960s could have occurred without it.

Les Paul’s great invention changed the world. Without the electric guitar there would have been no Elvis Presley, no Beatles, no Rolling Stones and no pop culture as we know it.

The electric guitar may have been a revolutionary instrument, but its evolution has been extremely conservative. Designs for the electric guitar have barely changed in the last 50 years. The market remains dominated by Gibson and Fender. Their marquee brands, the Gibson Les Paul and the Fender Stratocaster, are icons of modern culture and remain trusted by generation after generation of musicians. For that reason, the guitar-buying public remains notoriously conservative.



As the Gibson company found to their cost, the guitar-buyer eschews anything that smacks of being a gimmick. Two years ago Gibson launched the Firebird X, a guitar which had built-in effects and came with a hefty price tag, but it flopped.

Into the void has come Irish electric engineer, musician and entrepreneur Rob O’Reilly (30) from Killarney who set up the Pay As You Please restaurant in his hometown.

His BE guitar is a revolution in guitar design and his ambitions are equally impressive. The elemental colours of black and white are redolent of the original iPod.

“I’m doing for guitars what Steve Jobs did for phone,” he says.

“There is no guitar like it anywhere. When people see it they go ‘Wow. I’ve never seen anything like that before’. The overall visual look of it is totally different to anything on the market. It is mixing the fashion industry with the music industry.”



Radical features
His guitar has two radical features. The first is a transparent centre made of acrylic, heresy for orthodox guitar players for whom the wood at the centre of instrument is a key part of the sound.

The guitar has space for inlays which you can customise with your design or even include lights or a mirror inside.

The other is the balance bar which locks the guitar in place whether sitting or standing and is patent pending.

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