Blog
August BYO
Dave Bajic - A tough one.....
Wow this was a hard one – mainly because of the bound neck and tricky shaped body. This all adds time and led to several late nights in the workshop. Binding the neck makes the fretting take longer as each fret must be undercut both sides. There may have been a few choice words on that day
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Dave Inlays his headstock
Welcome back Dave – it’s like you’ve never been away! We’ve lost count of how many days Dave has been working on his Archtop masterpeice. He is inlaying a Japanese symbol with a long forgotten deep meaning. More on Dave Next time……..
Adam with 'BYO grin'
Adam also had his work cut out with the binding and also crown inlays. He is a BYO veteran though having built another guitar with us before so found it a little easier. As you can see it is now possible to have a gorgeous sunburst finish like this on the course….Thanks to Billy who starts work when we all finish on day 4 to get them ready for assembly day.
We Finally made it!
Joe, Dave Bajic, and Adam. Three more stunners and we all survived to tell the tale….just.
Wickerman Fest July 08 – Solar and Wind Powered Guitar building.
Mark was invited to build a guitar as a live demo over the weekend. Not to make things too easy he decided to use only power generated by solar and wind. The guitar was signed by most of the main stage acts including KT Tunstall!
Our Tent Before the Chaos
Yup. Building a guitar in a tent using a 4ft windmill, a 150w solar panel and 440ah of batteries (for the techies). All in a days work. The big windmill in the background is an 8 footer which will go up at the workshop as soon as we can get to it. It should produce 1kw in a good wind.
During
You can see the interest we attracted. People are fascinated to see the guitar emerge from raw wood into a guitar before their eyes. That’s Bills Mill in the background helping to keep the batteries charged up. Thanks Bill for lending it to us and doing such a great job of PR on our behalf. Also Thanks Jamie for helping out. Not forgetting Billy and Fionna for everything.
Mark Routing the Body
‘I used normal tools and techniques – the only difference was the power source (and the view!)
I wanted to to build the guitar totally using wind and sun power just to find out if it was possible. I had done some calculations and was fairly confident but you never know…..As it turned out I hardly put a dent in the batteries! This experience is really what convinced me it was possible to run the whole workshop this way.
The Finished Result with Signed Scratchplate
Thanks to the organisers of the famous Wickerman Festival for inviting us to their fantastic festival.
Also special thanks to KT Tunstall and all the other acts for signing the guitar.
The highlight of the whole event was when they raffled the guitar on the mainstage and Mark and Carol were invited up to pick the winning ticket. ‘It was the biggest stage i’ve ever held a guitar on and maybe next time they’ll let me plug it in!
July – End of split course started in June.
Scott continues with his acoustic. Brian, Tony and our Rock Radio prize winner Rebekah all completed their guitars. The guys from Rock Radio and Elixir strings came down to see R’s finished instrument. All were mightily impressed with the result.
Binding a maccaferri
Scot is about half way through his maccaferri. Binding is tricky and takes a long time and a lot of patience. The result will be worth it.
Brian Steele Rocks!
Brian is making a wild 6 string explorer inspired rock machine. Here you can see him tuning for setting up his Explorer style set neck guitar. Very nice guitar. Very rock n roll. Brian also plays gypsy jazz so he’s allowed to rock out occasionally. A nicer bloke you couldn’t meet.
Tony Porter
This is Tony on his last (Assembly) day (5) in the workshop. His guitar is strapped to the string tension simulator to make fret dressing more accurate. Only thing left to do after this is put the bits on, wire it up, and set it up. The last day is quite a full one! He will be emigrating to New Zealand with his guitars and his wife later in the year. Good luck Tony!!!
Rock Radio Winner!
Left to right: Rock radio DJ Tom Russell, Bruce Falconer(BYO 228) of Elixir Strings, Rebekah – rock radio winner, and Mark.
We all did our best cool rock radio pose…. obviously I think the guitar comes off best! Apart from rebekah of course…..
June BYO Course – Another First For Bailey
First thru neck bass in 5 days!
Also the first time we have had a bass, 6 string, archtop and acoustic all at the same time.
Nearly there Dave!
Dave returns once again to get some more done on his archtop. This pic was taken at the start of the five day course. During this time He managed to bind the body with Koa and complete the dovetail neck joint. He will return at the end of July to finish the rest of the woodwork.
Kenny Gluing the top plate
Kenny got his course place for a birthday present…not bad eh? He has opted to make a parlour style acoustic with rosewood back and sides. Here you can see him ready to join his cedar top plate. By the end of the five days he had bent his side, installed his rosette and braced his top amongst many other things. He will be back on the next two day course.
Ray's from 'Bareknuckle Pickups' guitar
Ray works at Bareknuckle pickups and is one of the best pickup makers in the country. It was an honour to have him on our course and as you can see he made a particularly nice blues machine. Of course he wound his own pickups for the guitar and brought them with him. This makes him the only Bailey builder so far to have done this. Nice one Ray!
Neil with finished product
In five days Neil built this 4 string thru body bass from scratch. The bass has a spalted maple cap, EMG pickups and preamp
combined with a ‘Ghost’ acoustic bridge system. This entailed many long hours in the workshop mostly working till 11pm or later to get the job done. Actually Neil stayed an extra morning to make some final set up adjustments as there was just not enough time on the last day. You can see by his face that he likes it and it certainly sounded amazing.
London IMS Elixir Stand – Jade Gallagher Joins Us
Bailey guitars used to demo Elixir strings at the London International Music Show. Jade Gallagher goes for a ‘B1’.
- LMI – Try out a Bailey Guitar!
Bailey Guitars on the Elixir stand!
We decided against going to the show this year and are putting the money into helping to acheive our solar powered workshop instead. Thankfully Bruce from Elixir asked if he could borrow a couple of guitars for their stand.Of course we said yes! We think Elixir are the best strings in the world so it’s great to be asked by them.
Cheers Bruce!!
- Some dude tries a B1…
Here’s a dude trying out our ‘B1’. We had a lot of good feedback about the Bailey’s at the show. It was fantastic to be able to have a presence there without actually having to go. This was made possible by a good friend of ours John Lockett who transported and collected the instruments for us.
Cheers John!
Jade is now formally part of the Bailey Guitar Experience extended family, and we are really proud to welcome her. There are already a few women out there using a Bailey but one more is only a bonus epecially when it’s someone with Jade’s calibre.She is planning to extend her current acoustic set to include some electric tracks… Check her out. We think we’ll all be seeing a lot more of her….
- More Jade!
Jade Tries out a Bailey
Early June Split Course – Rock Radio’s Rebecca
Bailey guitars teamed up with Elixir strings and Rock Radio as part of their ‘Rocktober’ promotion.
The winner designs and builds their dream guitar. This is the first half of the course.
Left to right: Scot, Tony, Rebecca and Brian. This was a very short extra 2 day course. We had to put on some extra dates because the course is so popular – We are now fully booked for 2008. Rebecca is our Rock Radio competition winner. Actually her dad won but decided he would give the prize to his daughter. Nice man….
Scott is doing very well. When the top is glued all he will have to do is bind the body before starting work on his neck which will be 3 piece laminate black american walnut. More on Scot’s and Brian’s guitar in the near future!
A lot of people are a bit nervous about carving their first neck – it’s really not a problem. Mark demonstrates how this is acheived by carving facets then rounding them off and blending them in to get the perfect neck shape. You can choose how thin or chunky you want to make it. Like most folk Tony was amazed at the results of his labours.
We were all on our best behaviour when David turned up. I think really he wanted to do the course himself but there was only one place. He came to help choose the wood and design at the start then had to go back to work. This course will be continued in July.
Other News….
We are currently working toward making Bailey’s the first guitar workshop to use only power generated by ourselves.
Solar Kettle
Mark had a spare 10 mins recently and built this out of scrap. It’s an old satellite dish covered with reflective mylar supplied by Duffy after a clearout of his shed. On a sunny day it will boil water in about 10 mins! Put the kettle on then………..
We are currently trying to aquire a 1.2kw solartracking pv array…… watch this space……..
Bill's Mill
This is the 3rd windmill to emerge from the workshop. It’s only 4ft and put out about 100w in a good wind. We will beusing it along with some solar panels at the Wickerman festival (end of July) to help generate enough power to build a guitar on site. We are currently working on windmill no.4 which will be up to 1kw and should supply a good percentage of the workshop power.
Chickens - one dead
Unfortunately we are now down to 3 chickens after one popped its clogs during the last course. It just keeled over. We reckon it was old age. Farewell Wilma you will be remembered. No we didn’t eat it. (Carol was quite upset but Dot, Freda & Wanda carried on eating… ah well..)
Our nearest village is Minishant. Here we are doing our bit. You can see the N0.3
Minishant Fete 2008
windmill on top of Jamie’s Van. We displayed our guitars. No building this time but we used the wind power for an out- door amp to test the guitars. Mark and Carol played some songs on the stage, and Carol ran a “Minishant’s Got Talent” stage for budding performers. Big Ta to all that helped ..congrats to Bill, Duffy & Billy for managing to escape to the pub !
May BYO Course
Patrick and Mike are the only brothers we have had on the course which made for all sorts of jolly japes. Dave making an archtop and Paul a ‘double cut’ made up the full compliment with Scott popping in for a few days to work on his maccaferri.
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Left to right….Dave, Mark,Patrick, Mike, Paul. Dave is on the archtop course which takes approx 20 days. He has been on the last 4 or 5 courses scraping away in the corner and managed to get his body glued together – more about Dave’s guitar soon.
Patrick, Mike and Paul were all making set neck electric guitars. We were joined for a couple of days by Scott who is making a Maccaferri style guitar (not pictured – next time!).
Coming to the crunch…will it play? Well it looks gorgeous thanks to Billy and his amazing spraying skills. Paul wanted a tobacco burst a carved top and a trem all in 5 days! Luckily the others were fairly simple guitars which helped make it possible.
3 brand new instruments fresh from the Bailey workshop.
Thanks to everyone involved – great people soup and guitars!