Brawley Guitars
Brawley Guitars was a range of electric guitars produced under the Brawley name. Keith Brawley had previously been an executive for Fender/Squier from 1989-2001.
Guitar features
The guitars were produced in South Korea between 2000 and 2002. All featured a contour top, bolt-on neck, self-locking winders and a wider 'fat fret' neck. Though available in several configurations, including double humbucker models, typical models featured 2 single coil Alnico pickups and one bridge mounted humbucker with either Wilkinson and Floyd Rose vibrato bars, although a twin humbucker and hard tail model was also made. The fit, finish, and feature of Brawley's fretted instruments represented a very strong value-for-money at the time. Keith Brawley likened his guitars to Lexus cars in press interviews.
Brawley also produced a range of bass guitars in four-string, five-string and six-string versions. The top-of-the-line models featured neck-through body construction and all of them had a 35-inch scale length, as opposed to the standard 34-inch scale developed by Leo Fender on the first electric basses. These were known as the Artemis series and featured humbucking pickups on all models and active electronics on all but the entry-level model.
Changing market
Mars music stores was a large dealer of Brawley guitars, but the music store chain failed amidst overheated expansion, taking down Brawley guitars with it. Keith Brawley subsequently worked for Guitar Center where, after five years as the vice president of guitar merchandising, he was promoted to the position of vice president of merchandising and creative at the company's direct-response division, Musician's Friend. There, he oversaw both the purchasing and creative teams producing the company's catalog and Internet efforts. -Musical Merchandise Review Magazine (MMR)
Sale to Guitar Center
Keith sold his guitar designs to Guitar Center to be used as the Laguna brand, currently sold as an in-store brand. The Laguna guitars are modeled after Keith's designs, right down to the headstock, although the production of Laguna is in Indonesia, rather than South Korea. Today, Keith Brawley is the vice president of sales for Taylor Guitars.
Some Southern California stores such as Johnny Thompson Music in Monterey Park showed great success with Brawley instruments, including Costa Mesa's "Cobra Music". There are many bands that can be seen using Brawley Guitars including Charles Jirkovsky of San Diego band "All in Favor" and Brian Sun of "Residual FX."