Made in six days on our Build Your Own Guitar course

This guitar was made in two visits on our split weekend course, which started with 3 days in May, and finished with another 3 days last week.

Martin designed and specified every part of his guitar including the flame maple cap, two p90’s, and Bigsby vibrato arm.

The body was also chambered although there is no f-hole to see it…it makes the guitar lighter and adds an airy tone to the sound.

Martin also requested a satin finish on the back of the neck and body but understandably wanted a gloss on the front. Unfortunately this pushed us right to the edge and then on the last day Martin noticed some damage on the finish…as he was straight off on holiday to Wales we offered to fix it then send it on to him so it would be there when he returned…Here is a quote from an email we just received – (THANKS MARTIN!)

‘I would just like to say that I am absolutely staggered at how good BYO-305 really is. Amazing. I lowered the action a tad and played it at practice last night, it plays amazingly well, better that any guitar I have ever owned in fact (I’ve had a lot over the years, I think I’m up to about 80). It sounded supremely good also, those Wilkinson p90’s are real tone monsters, a most pleasant suprise, I shan’t be changing them out! And, as you know, it looks a million dollars.
Happy? Pig in sh*t? Cock-a-hoop? Over the moon? Pick any one and double it, that’s how I feel.
To all involved, for your skill, hospitality and patience (especially when things went marginally awry), please accept a huge thank you from me.’

One more stunning guitar from the Bailey workshop – Top Job – Martin! More to come…

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HEY!…

We don’t just run courses here! We also make our own unique range of Bailey guitars – If we can do this in six days on a course, just imagine what we could build for you… or to put it another way – if you can imagine it, we can build it.

Contact us with your requirements or have a look at some guitars in our online shop.

…Made in six days here in the Bailey workshop on our build your own guitar course…

This guitar was made in two visits on our split weekend course, which started with 3 days in May, and finished with another 3 days last week.

Graham chose some nice custom touches including a Figured Walnut (oops..my mistake) Tasmanian Blackwood cap for his ‘Drop top’ and a Hannes bridge with piezo. The neck is Birds Eye Maple with an ebony fretboard and is inlaid with mother of pearl position marker dots.

The Hannes piezo was a little tricky to fit but not as hard as working out exactly how many different sounds we could get out of it.  There is a five way slider with peizo/magnetic switching options and a piezo volume control. The magnetic (normal) pickups are controlled by a 5 way rotary selector, volume, and a tone control with a push pull switch to activate a coil cut. If anyone could let me know how many that is- please let me know – I ran out of time to count them!

Yet another beautiful guitar from the Bailey workshop – nice work Graham! More to come…

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Doh…

We don’t just run courses here! We also make our own unique range of Bailey guitars – If we can do this in six days on a course, just imagine what we could build for you… or to put it another way – if you can imagine it, we can build it.

Contact us with your requirements or have a look at some guitars in our online shop.

Bailey Guitars make a unique range of high quality instruments, each one individually hand crafted in the rolling hills of Ayrshire, using only wind and solar energy.

We also run several different guitar making courses, enabling anybody to build their own with no previous experience necessary – This video shows an overview of our course ‘Build Your Own First Guitar‘ which takes place here at the Bailey workshop.

Morgan became our 300th electric guitar builder and was joined by Graeme (Right Hand), Graham (Left Hand), and Toby, who also built their first guitars with us.

Toby chose to have a full gloss finish so had to stay an extra day. While Billy sprayed Toby’s guitar the others all finished setting theirs up – Toby stayed on for his extra day to assemble and set up his guitar.

When Toby had finished he sat down and played this song which I was lucky enough to catch on video. The sound quality is not too great as it was recorded on a camcorder mike but that doesn’t take anything away from a great song performance. The mood of the song seems to suit the video perfectly – hope you enjoy it!

Thanks to everyone involved in making the May 2012 course a success.

…Number 303 – The last guitar to be finished on the May Build Your Own First Guitar course.

Toby made his own custom version of the Bailey Bandsman and because he chose a full gloss finish he had to stay an extra day while Billy sprayed and polished it for him, so he was inevitably the last to finish.

Toby is the first to have a full gloss spray and build his guitar in just one visit…This was made possible with our new UV laquer system, it simply is not feasable with tradition cellulose due to time.

He upgraded most of the parts, including adding a very highly figured piece of quilted maple for the cap, a tunamatic bridge with stop tailpiece, Bareknuckle pickups and took the option of 24 frets instead of the usual 22.

This is a great example of what is now achievable on the build your own first guitar course.

Spec

Body: Meranti body with Quilted Maple cap

Neck: Mahogany

Fretboard: Ebony

Hardware: Chrome

Bridge: Tunamatic with stop tailpiece

Tuners: Gotoh

Pickups: Bareknuckle humbuckers

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…Number 301 – The second guitar of four made on the May Build Your Own First Guitar course.

Graeme (right hand)  made his own custom version of the Bailey Bandsman.

He chose a really beautiful piece of figured Ash for the cap which came uplovely with the natural oiled finish. He also chose to use P90 pickups but apart from that it is pretty much standard.

Spec

Body: Mahogany with native ash cap

Neck: Mahogany

Fretboard: Ebony

Hardware: Chrome

Bridge: Gotoh 510

Tuners: Gotoh 510

Pickups: Wilkinson P90’s

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