Technical innovator, gear entrepreneur, virtuoso, guitar guru. These are just some of the terms that can be used to describe Tosin Abasi – one of today’s foremost electric guitar players, who has helped redefine the progressive metal guitar scene on numerous fronts over the course of his career so far.
When he isn’t pushing the boundaries of his own playing in Animals As Leaders, he’s heading up his own gear firm, Abasi Concepts; collaborating with Apple for a new GarageBand producer pack; knocking heads with Ernie Ball Music Man to develop their joint guitar design, the Kaizen; or mastering a new genre.
The reality is, he does all of that (and much more) at once – so how he managed to find time in his hectic schedule to swing by the Abasi Concepts booth at NAMM 2025 for an in-depth chat with Guitar World to discuss all-things-guitar is, quite frankly, remarkable.
Fresh off the back of expanding the Abasi Concepts product range throughout 2024 with all-new guitars, pedals, and accessories, the Animals As Leaders, erm, leader, took a brief 15 minutes to reflect on his guitar-building and music-making journey thus far.
It’s been a whirlwind to say the least, and there’s no sign he’ll be slowing down any time soon. With a tour on the books, an AAL record in the works, and maybe even tentative plans for a daring blues album, the next 12 months looks to be business as usual for Abasi.
All of the above – and a juicy update regarding that highly elusive Abasi Concepts nylon-string – can be found in the following highlights from our interview with Tosin Abasi and Abasi Concepts COO, Ivan Chopik (you can watch the full thing below).
Tosin, there are some beautiful guitars in this booth. When you first started out in your career, did you see yourself as a guitar designer?
“Not as a guitar designer, but customizing guitars was always this attractive thing to do. There were the established brands, and then you'd see these custom, luthier-made guitars that often had feature sets and woods that were like, ‘Whoa.’ You can't just go into a Guitar Center and get that.
“When I started playing eight-string specifically, I realized that there weren't a lot of options from the traditional big brands and manufacturers, because at that time the eight-string was a very novel guitar.
“So the guitar design was more of me being like, ‘Well, I'm playing an instrument that seems under-served as far as options [go],’ and I basically commissioned a custom guitar for myself with eight strings and that was the first sort of ground-up design: it was to solve problems I found on existing eight-strings that basically just felt like you took a six-string guitar and added more strings. The design was almost a de facto thing that came from actually wanting the form of the guitar to match the playability.
“There was another issue with a lot of the eight-strings – it seemed as if they catered towards only playing really heavy music in the lower register, and I was someone who wanted to do a lot of chordal stuff and a lot of lead guitar.
“So there were features like the multi-scale and the actual shape of the body and the neck profiles that I wanted, to [make it] really easy to play even though it had more strings than you were used to. That's where the design part actually came in.”
You've got a few different body shapes now in the lineup. What was the inspiration behind them? Was it purely an ergonomic consideration for you?
“There's some features that make this a lot more ergonomic, right? I like sitting in a classical position when I'm practicing. It just centers you with the guitar, as opposed to the offset thing. So this bottom cut away [on the Abasi Concepts guitars] really sits nicely on your inner thigh, and it pitches the guitar up at a nice angle. And then the beveling minimizes the space between you and the rest of the instrument.
“[Showcasing the Abasi Concepts Larada] We did this continuous bevel, and also the neck joint – this has extreme fret access, and what's cool is that we're able to get the majority of the neck deeper into the body, which basically reduces the wingspan while playing the instrument. So, [you can] set up your hand closer to your torso.
“These things combined make the guitar. They shrink it, basically… and we lose some mass here, so the guitar is light as well. And the Fishmans, I think, are really fantastic pickups. They have multiple voices, and they handle the frequency range really, really well. That's like the icing on the cake. The electronics are specific to this instrument as well.”
Everyone is asking about this nylon-string that you've been teasing for a very long time. What's the latest on that?
“[Showing the latest Abasi Concepts nylon-string model] This is the latest prototype. We were experimenting with using the logo as a soundhole, but I think we're gonna delete that. We've also been playing with how thick this bridge is width-wise.
“It's basically an attempt to create a nylon-string instrument that [takes] a lot of the same design concepts from [other Abasi Concepts guitars] – multi-scale, thin-bodied, ergonomic – but it's for guys who maybe aren't traditional classical players, but do want a nylon-string guitar for recording and specifically for stage.
“My band Animals As Leaders, we have compositions with nylon guitars, but on stage, a fully resonant traditional classical guitar feeds back. You can't have a wedge at volume. If you got a drum set behind you, it just makes it unusable.
“I actually noticed that Cordoba has a guitar called the Stage, and I toured with it and I was like, ‘Man, this thing is actually perfect.’ [The Abasi Concepts nylon-string] is a similar thinline acoustic-electric approach that's usable on stage.
“We did some things where we split the difference between the string spacing between an electric and a classical. Because classical spacing is really quite wide, we wanted something that – if you didn't play traditional classical and you're an electric player – you could get on this and it wasn't as jarring.
“So, the neck profile is closer to an electric guitar, and the string spacing, we basically hybridized it. What's really cool is that on a nylon-string guitar, you could never play the 19th fret. And I really like that you can sweep pick on this thing, so it gets you the nylon-string sound without the physical limitations of a traditional acoustic instrument.
“And we're working with Fishman on a pickup. Piezo pickups can often have a transient attack that's a little paper-y. Fishman [are] geniuses at making these direct systems sound like they have the depth and ambience you would expect from acoustic, so we're really proud of how this actually sounds like plugged in.”
You've been doing quite a lot with pedals recently as well, and also strings. What's the latest in your wider category? Do you have any more pedals like in production at the moment?
“Years ago, we did a drive pedal called the Pathos and it was an attempt to do an amp-in-a-box thing. I use it for leads. You know, I’m a big fan of Dream Theater, and John Petrucci has a very harmonically rich, smooth-sounding lead. This pedal kind of gives a bit of that.
“And, you know, we're both guitar players, and the reason we're designing gear is we’re making things that we wish existed. We really think that that pedal sounds great.
“And the [recently released Micro-Aggressor] compressor… I think guitar players don't often understand compression, so I think it's a secret that some guitars are missing. A lot of pedal compressors are designed to do something similar to a studio comp, and we decided to make one that’s actually a boost-style compressor that enhances the transient attack without a hard clip. You literally could use it to drive the front end of an amp… it physically feels like your amp is giving more, which is amazing.”
Nowadays, a lot of people are switching from tube amps to amp modelers, whereas you've gone the other way. What facilitated that move?
“I think it's a [case-by-case] scenario depending on the gig. There are times I will use modelers, and there are fantastic companies like Neural DSP [who make them]. They cloned my tube rig and it's shocking [how good it is]. Our feeling is that modelers are basically perfect, especially at the end of the chain, when you're hearing a mixed record or a mixed band.
“But there's nothing that defeats the experience of plugging into an amp and a cab in the room. And it's not knocking modelers, it's just saying there's literally physical differences between how the sound is being produced. So for me, it's like a love of both, right? It's like, I still like engines but [electric vehicles] have their place.
“Like I said, for us this [company] is a passion project, so I think we want to do it all. We definitely bias ourselves sometimes towards what feels good and what sounds good in the room, so that's pedals and maybe even amps in the future.”
What are you working on at the moment? Is there a new Animals As Leaders record in the works?
“We are about to begin pre-production on an album. We do have some touring – we're headed to Europe in a few weeks – but I want to spend a portion of this year writing the record. In a perfect world, it'll be written and recorded by the end of this year.”
You said an interview that you were toying with the idea of doing a blues album at one point. Is that something that's still in the cards?
“This is funny, because Ivan is a fantastic blues guitarist, and I’d never really gotten into the genre. And there's amazing players like Josh Smith and Eric Gales that I’m like, ‘Okay, I've been missing out.’
“So I had a moment over the pandemic, where I was like, ‘I’m learning the blues,’ and I got really into it, and I said I'd do an album. I gotta respect the art, and I don't know that I've evolved to the point where I can [do it justice], you know what I mean? But it's fun. It's fun to mess around with.”
In terms of new music, are there any new techniques that you're working on at the moment?
“You know, it's funny. I’m trying to use the techniques that I have in more diverse ways, because at a point, it's about how effectively you're using what you already know, as opposed to thinking you've got to add more novel stuff. That's kind of where I'm at right now.
Who are the new players that are inspiring you from the new generation?
“There's this guy, Spiro [Dussias]. Alien levels of precision. It's like, you can't believe it until you sit in front of him and you're like, ‘Whoa.’ Honestly, Matteo Mancuso [is another one].
“These guys are literally like… we marvel at them. There's a guy that we brought on, Stanly Bactian, and he doesn't play slide but he plays guitar as if he's playing slide. It's very cool. He's drawing from a lot of gospel music, and to see someone from across the world tap into that and do it so passionately is very cool.”
- Visit the Abasi Concepts website and Tosin Abasi's Instagram account for more.
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