Mayones

Mayones is a guitar and bass maker from Gdańsk on Poland's Baltic coast. The company dates itself to 1982, though its own timeline shows the first Mayones bass built in a home garage in 1981 by Zenon Dziewulski and a friend. It soon became a family business owned by Zenon and his wife Halina, and the early years were shaped by martial law and the Iron Curtain, with the founders improvising parts, for example winding pickups with magnets taken from furniture or toy trains.

The name is said to come from a friend nicknamed Mayonnaise, who loved adding the sauce to his food, and it was meant as a temporary fix that stuck. Today the company says each instrument is designed, built, painted and checked in Gdańsk by a team of around 40, and it marked 40 years of the brand in 2022.

The catalog includes models such as the Regius and Duvell, and the brand is especially strong in seven- and eight-string guitars and bass. Guitar Radar follows Mayones's new models, custom series and artist signatures.