There are rock fans who play Guitar Hero all day. And then there are fans who take their passion to the next level.

That’s where Tim Babich and Justin Ahmanson come in. Teaming up with a university professor and a graduate student, these electrical engineering seniors are establishing their own guitar brand called Coil Guitars, prototypes of which include customizable sound choices and the option for a “vintage” tone.

The team said their guitars feature new technologies that their competition doesn’t have.

“There’s always the slight fantasy of, ‘Oh well, what if we end up being the next Fender?'” Ahmanson said.

The team’s guitars are designed by Bruce Jacob, a computer engineering professor and the company’s founder. Each instrument features an ebony fret board, a neck that runs the breadth of the instrument’s body and a programmable switch that allows the guitar to mimic the sounds of famous guitar brands, such as Gibson and Fender. Users can open up the back of the guitar and choose different combinations of 14 sound options. Jacob said the switch’s programmability can’t be found on any other brand.

Coil Guitars will also feature a new type of preamp, a device that gives guitars a higher quality sound, Babich said. The preamp, designed by Babich and Ahmanson, allows guitarists to choose between a modern or “vintage” sound – think Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix. Babich said as far as they know, no other preamp has that option.

“Basically a lot of guys that play guitar, we found that all of them like this kind of vintage electronic sound,” Ahmanson said. “What we did is took some modern electronics and kind of imitated the sound that the guys liked.”

The team plans to begin selling the guitars this summer.

At first, Babich and Ahmanson hadn’t planned on becoming involved in the guitar business. It started as a research project for school credit.

“Since we got into the research and actually started producing, we came up with this plan for this preamp and decided it was cool enough that, what the hell, let’s try to make some money off of it,” Babich said.

But they never imagined they would go this far.

“It’s relatively recently that, you know, we’ve … actually done the numbers, done the marketing research that has made us able to say confidently that, you know, we can really make something of this,” Babich said. “And the market for these guitars is growing.”

This summer, the team plans to have about 100 guitars manufactured and sold to local stores.

“Basically, Guitar Center is the big chain. Our strategy is, we’re going to everyone but Guitar Center – all the independent stores that basically compete with Guitar Center by selling products like ours, and so that’s pretty much our market,” Babich said.

Guitar Center is off their list of potential buyers because it’s a national chain and therefore probably wouldn’t pay attention to new brands, Ahmanson said. But someday, they hope their guitars will make it to the shelves of national chains.

“After a few years, if we are successful in [the] local regional market, then we’ll go to trade shows and try to build up a national presence,” Babich said.

The team plans to first target stores in the Mid-Atlantic region. Over the summer, they will go to each store to demonstrate their guitars. Ahmanson hopes that if a store is interested, it will buy one or two. But if the guitars prove to be popular, they hope the store will reorder.

Jacob said his inspiration stems from his high school years, when he strummed his first guitar made by a “no-name Japanese manufacturer,” while his friends were playing expensive American brands. His Japanese model had a similar design to Coil Guitars.

“It’s like … someone tells you to paint a picture, but they only give you one color. Now you can do some really cool stuff with one color,” Jacob said. “But I grew up with a guitar that had lots of colors. It had a two-dimensional palate of sound.”

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