Stepp Ltd was formed by Stephen Randall and Pete Braslavsky in 1985 in London, UK.

The company set out to design and build the world's first electronic guitar. 

An electronic guitar is an instrument that is totally solid-state, but has the physical interface of a real guitar - strings that when touched, plucked, strummed, muted or bent, translate those movements into digital information that can then be understood by computers and/or synthesizers and used to create digital guitar music or completely new sounds.

The Company's first product was the DG1 which had its own on-board synthesis. The electronics of DG1 was designed by Dave Simmons the inventor of the Simmons Electronic drums. 

The DG1 comprised an electronic guitar that plugged in to a power supply and synthesizer unit contained within a guitar stand. The synth unit featured 12 Curtis music chips that were the engine behind the then popular Prophet 5 synthesizer. The DG1 sold for $3,000.

The guitar controls allowed the user to edit 2 banks of oscillators, filters and envelops and tuning for every string. The user could also create unique tunings. The DG1 came with 10 presets and a total of 100 programmable sounds and tunings. 

The DG1 was launched at the music industry's NAMM trade show in 1985.

Stepp also produced the DGX, a MIDI controller without any of the on-board sounds of the DG1. The DG1 sold for $1500.

The DG1 won a British Design Award, presented by Prince Philip to Stephen Randall in 1988.

The Stepp Guitar.