Caparison Guitars

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Caparison Guitars is a Japan-based manufacturer of custom shop electric guitars.

The Caparison Guitar company was established in 1995 by former Jackson/Charvel Japan designer Itaru Kanno. The company's main design office is based in Tokyo, Japan and the guitars themselves are manufactured in Nagoya, Japan.

The company's best selling guitar is the "Horus" model. This guitar features a 27 fret neck with clock inlays that change time for each fret position (1 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 5 o'clock, etc.) Caparison Dellinger and TAT models also feature these clock inlays on the fretboard, however, these guitars feature 24 fret necks. Other Caparison Guitar models are the 7 String Dellinger, Angelus, FKV, Venus and Apple Horn. Caparison currently has a Dellinger bass guitar in production.

Caparison also has a line of guitars intended to perform better with low tunings, as well as with standard tunings, called the "HGS" series. The bridge of these guitars is mounted 3mm farther back on the face in an effort to provide higher string tension when using drop tunings.

Caparison makes its own humbucking as well as single coil guitar pickups. The company also produces a dual rail humbucking pickup that fits into the footprint of standard single coil pickup. Another common feature on Caparison Guitars is the use of "Push/Push" volume and tone potentiometers. These special "pots" are used to activate coil splitting and pickup selecting functions on certain models.

Itaru Kanno personally applies the hand painted finish to and sets up every Caparison Guitar. Since they are highly customized instruments, Caparison produces only about forty guitars per month. For years, Caparison Guitars were only available in Japan. However, Caparison now has distributors in the USA, Denmark and Australia.