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Brutal V with Floyd

This V shaped beauty was made for a very proficient technical metal player who wanted to move away from the Dean Dimebag guitar he has played for a number of years.
Much as he still admires the player who made that Dean guitar famous - but he wanted a guitar that he could make his own statement with, and this is what it will look like....

The guitar features a maple cap on a mahogany body - bound in black (as is the headstock)
The guitar also features an original Floyd Rose Tremolo and a pair of Bare Knuckle Warpig pickups

Huge frets on a dark ebony board with pearl block inlays, and a tighter more angular head stock that has a touch more aggression that the older style V head stocks

 

Big Mac Lion

Here is a nice guitar we built for one of the guys from the Bare Knuckle pickups forum
He wanted a version of our Lion guitar with some personal preferences, and some special kit to boot.

Features mahogany construction with a beautiful 5A flame top maple cap -looks spectacular
First of all the neck profile is based on his trusty 1980s Charvel model, also featuring stainless steel frets - the same as we modified his Charvel with.
Sperzels, Tone pros and Earvana nut handle tuning stability, and intonation.
However this axe features Piezo saddles for acoustic sounds at the flick of a switch and also full Midi-access via Graph-tech's Ghost system.

A pair of Bare Knuckle Rebel Yell pickups power this beast of an electric guitar.

 

Angular Explorer bass

This bass guitar is for a player in a high octane sleaze/glam rock and roll band
The shape of the body is a little sharper than the traditional explorer shape
Custom Maltese Cross inlays spice up the neck.
A pair of hand wound pickups power this beast and with lightweight Hipshot tuners and a Badass bridge (I think the customer wanted that for the name alone) keep the strings in place

Lion - The Emerald

We wanted to do a special Lion model with a bit of a Thin Lizzy vibe - Brian "Robbo" Robertson style
So we built this beast with an ebony board to be much like a Les paul custom
We have long admired the Bare Knuckle Emerald pickups which are based on the higher output pickups that were found on the Les Paul Customs of the early to mid 70s but always fancied putting them in a guitar that suited them.
And they sound just great!

We decided to go for a translucent green and let the wood shine through.

Whilst not a AAAAA grade flame or quilt the top was pretty looking with plenty of character

LION FLAMETOP

This Lion model features a lovely flamed top and a macassar ebony fingerboard
We had this finished in a classic amber much like our first review guitar.
As we often do we double stained the top to bring out the flame as well.
Some Bare Knuckle Mules will provide the tone and using Vitamin Q capacitors it will be pure vintage
Plays like a dream - quite a heavy guitar - just over 9 pounds but with a tone to die for

Silver burst Lion

Another fine axe to be shown at a very early stage here(it has moved on a bit since).
This is based on a late 1970s style single cut guitar and feature a silver burst finish which has discoloured and gained a bit of a greenish tint to it.

The neck however features a 3 piece mahogany construction rather than the 3 piece maple often seen at the time for sonic reasons.
We also did a stripped neck on this guitar as the player favours an unfinished neck and has played many older guitars that have had the finish removed and liked them.
We managed to get a nice played in feel on the guitar as ever

About as close to relicing a guitar as we ever get - i prefer guitars to get beaten up the natural way - through lots of playing and I'm sure this one is going to get that

SOUTHPAW JAGUAR

Iain has gone for a guitar best known for it's 1960s surf music origins or 1990s grunge , but I doubt either will feature much in his playing once he gets this completed Southpaw

It features Bare Knuckle pickups- a Rebel Yell at the bridge and a Mississippi Queen P90in a Humbucker shell at the neck

Sometimes when you are left handed - custom built is the only way to go

But you end up with a killer axe so it has it's advantages

Bill Asher 1988 Custom (major repair)

This beaten up looking beauty has been transformed back to it's original glory- we have done the repair work and our friend Nick Smith is doing the restoration of the original Patrick Nagel airbrush art.
Unfortunately where a previous luthier had done a conversion from Floyd equipped guitar to hard-tail , they made a mess of the classic 1980's artwork.
We have re-routed out the trem cavities, ready for the artwork to be repaired and a new lick of paint.

You can see that Nick is making good progress on the paintwork

 

Feline John Petrucci inspired axe

 

This mahogany bodied beauty is an interesting project

It features a lightweight mahogany body , a 3 piece maple neck with a rosewood board

The fingerboard is scalloped from the 17th fret up for extra control and high-end technique

It features a pair of humbucker pickups which will be controlled by the same switching that John Petrucci had on both his Ibanez and Musicman axes (a 3 position toggle switch that auto-coil taps both pickups in the middle position)

LION CUB

Another of our popular Lion series made for stock and ready to sell

This one is a flat fronted all mahogany version - still featuring our all access neck joint, Earvana compensated Tuning Nut & Schaller hardware.
The mahogany is from the same plank of 30 year old Brazilian stock mentioned below.

The unusual knobs shown in the picture are special Gotoh made units in ivoroid and feature a rubber strip for better grip , but may not be to everyone's taste- don't worry - they can be changed in a minute for whatever you may fancy

Quite a weighty guitar but a great tone, with Bare Knuckle Mule pickups supplying the firepower.

 

Quilt Top Lion- real class

Sometimes some really nice wood turns up just when you need it , but hardly surprisingly the stunning bits do carry a hefty price premium, sometimes to the tune of several hundred pounds extra for such a spectacular piece.

This is another Lion project where the customer was wanting us to go the extra mile to get spectacular wood and I don't think he'll be disappointed.

As well as the super stunning quilted maple the mahogany is a 30year old piece of Brazilian stock that we came across from a retired cabinet maker - sounds fantastic

Sometimes you think you know exactly what colour you want your guitar to be, that's until you see the wood itself and then seeing the grain and patterns in the wood can cause a change of heart.

The customer went with a faded burst that looks pure class

 

CUSTOM ML

This Metal Machine is for a customer in Belgium

It features a thicker than normal spec for this kind of guitar since we were trying to get more of a Les paul vibe from it.
It features a neck based on the profile of an old Charvel and similar in feel to his Wayne Rock Monster guitar
It will feature Tone Pros hardware , Sperzel machine heads and an Earvana nut.

The finish will be a natural oil finish to try to keep it as organic as possible

 

 

BIG HANDS NEED A BIG NECK

Here is a very special guitar for a customer who had some specific requirements.

This customer has large hands and has become very comfortable paying his classical guitar which features a wider neck that allows him to play without feeling cramped on the fingerboard.

So he wanted one of our Lion guitars with a similar spec neck so he could enjoy playing blues and rock guitar as well. The fingerboard is 50mm at the nut going up to about 60mm at the last fret.

This guitar is like a sister guitar to the one shown below (titled Purple reign) apart from the wider neck .

 

SOUTHPAW TIGER

Here we have the completed photos of a fabulous guitar - and a left handed one at that

This was be for someone's 50th birthday, and as such will be a bit special.

It features a high grade flamed maple cap, beautifully carved.

We finished it in an amber colour with the edges of the maple cap left untinted to give a beautiful natural "faux-binding" effect.

 

Poison PH1

Purple Reign

Quilted maple cap on mahogany body & 3 piece mahogany neck with Ebony fingerboard
All access neck joint - easy access to higher frets
Split Mother of pearl/Black pearl inlays on ebony board with Dunlop 6100 frets
BKP Rebel Yell pickups with coil tap switch & Hovland Musicap capacitors

Korina Lion - Aquamarine

Ok - once in a while I build something with myself in mind
This Korina bodied beauty was built in exactly the same way as we build our other guitars of this design.   A one piece back and a two piece top, elegantly carved.
It also features our wonderful all access neck joint which makes getting up to the top frets a breeze.  We used extremely dense ebony fingerboard loaded with huge Dunlop 6000 fret wire.
Tonepros hardware and Sperzel tuners give great tuning stability and tone.

An Earvana Compensated tuning nut makes the guitar's intonation more in tune than would otherwise be possible.
Still experimenting with pickups but currently loaded with Bare knuckle VH2s - sounds great!

Southpaw Dinky 7

Decent left-handed guitars are hard enough to find when looking around local guitar shops, but when you want a high quality left hander that is also 7 string then there is only one way to go : CUSTOM BUILT

Here is a project we made for a player who knew just what they wanted but couldn't find it until they hooked up with our custom shop.

He said "I need a 7 string tunomatic, thru body stringing and twin EMG 81-7s, reverse head stock, lightweight American alder body with a carved top and a silky satin black finish"

We said "No Problem" and here it is in all it's glory. ..

Gothic Rock Monster

Alan from the band Ligature asked us to make him this custom 7 string SG type axe after playing our Gothic warpig guitar. This is fitted with EMG 707 active 7 string pickups, all black hardware and feature a dark blue burst finish fading to black at the edges.

Andy Richardson s-type

A classic double cutaway hard tail design with a couple of twists.
The customer went the "Updated Classic" route with this one and chose to have an all access heel on his swamp ash body as well as an unusual pickup selection. He chose Bare Knuckle pickups but went for a mix that suited his needs: A P90 in the bridge , an Apache in the middle and a Mother's Milk at the neck (as well as a push pull switch to allow bridge and neck & all 3 options too)

Jon Hayward Classic 52 style single cut

Here we have another "Updated Classic" but this time a classic singlecut design.
A swamp ash body, with a birdseye maple neck and fingerboard and looks that hark back to the 1950s.   We have used the Wilkinson designed bridge that allows for the old school tone but with more accurate intonation.  The all access heel makes for easy top end playing and a slightly flatter radius fingerboard and larger frets add to the creature comforts.

Electrically the pickups are Bare Knuckle Brown Sugar wired to a 4 position switch.

Paul Crump Custom Jaguar double cut

This beauty in British racing green was built for a customer who enjoys working on old Bentley racers  of years gone by with his father.
Based on our Jaguar design and built from a one piece lightweight swamp ash body.

We worked very closely with the customer getting all the small details right- very important when working at a distance and relying upon emails and phone calls to communicate such stuff.

We used a hipshot tremolo her along with the LSR roller nut and Sperzel tuners and were really impressed by the bridge. Power comes from a BKP VH2 pickup and two Kinman single coils.

You can read the customers own review of this guitar here on Harmony Central

JACKSON /FELINE HYBRID FUSION

This project was a custom rebuild of a nice Jackson guitar whose neck got damaged.

So we built a new neck for this short scale (24.75") guitar and gave the whole thing a new lick of paint - the paint finish is part of a new range of metallic colours we are producing>
We were trying to get a modern look whilst retaining strong masculine appeal in the colour.
It is a kind of Gun metal/pewter hybrid that looks very sophisticated indeed.

None More Black Explorer

Here is another Black rock classic - this time influenced by James Hetfield's(Metallica) black album era Explorer guitar.
Classic mahogany construction throughout with a dark ebony fingerboard.
Huge Dunlop 6000 frets make rock playing a breeze, and string bending a dream.

EMG81 and EMG60 pickups each with it's own separate volume control supply the power for both aggression and subtlety.  Tonepros hardware and Sperzel tuners keep things stable tuning wise and the inclusion of an Earvana Compensated Tuning Nut means this guitar will have way better intonation than a normal axe - even when playing with a ton of distortion.

See the customer's own review for the last one we built like this HERE
This guitar is available to buy now!

Blonde Explorer

 

Another guitar with a bit o a Metallica Flavour in some ways but there is so much more to this beast.

We used a Brazilian Parana Pine body with black binding and gave it an oil finish to avoid heavy paint coats.
Warm to the touch and with a silky oil finish on the neck also, a dream to play.
The neck is a 3 piece maple neck with a rosewood board with an ebony overlay on the headstock.

Bridge is a tonepros one and pickups are some older Bare Knuckle Holy Divers for classic rock and metal tones.

Judas Priest / Glen Tipton  inspired SG rebuild

Here is a great example of our Custom Rebuild in action
I was excited about Bare Knuckle releasing the Painkiller pickup set - named after a classic Judas priest album, and I wanted a perfect guitar to try some in. Judas priest are one of my favourite classic metal bands and once I saw Gibson do the extremely limited edition Glen Tipton model I knew what i wanted to do:

We took a Gibson SG studio and stripped it down with the intention of making this beast.
(you could say this guitar was a "Victim of Changes") .
Here's what we did:
The neck was slimmed down and white binding added to the fingerboard.
The neck was refretted with huge Dunlop 6100 wire, and an earvana nut added
We changed the tuners to chrome tulip design ones, made mirror scratchplates and truss rod covers and finally gave the guitar a satin black finish.

Oh - and we fitted Bare Knuckle painkiller pickups too!

Painkiller V (more Judas Priest inspired stuff)

We couldn't do a Glenn Tipton inspired guitar and not do something KK Downing style- could we?

So we build a super sexy Flying V from scratch with a few nice updated features
The headstock was slimmed and made more angular and fitted with Sperzel machineheads.
All mahogany construction with an ebony board
As ever we used an Earvana nut for improved intonation, as well as Tonepros bridge and tailpiece.
The Jack input socket is on the inside of the upper horn so there is no cable flopping around to trip over .  We used a smoke bronze mirror scratchplate to offset the gloss black finish.

And of course we used Bare Knuckle painkiller pickups too - pure British Steel!

Purple "RONNIE" Jaguar

 

This was a fun guitar to make, and it is a lot of fun to play.

Consisting of an alder body with a maple neck/rosewood fingerboard combination with big Dunlop 6100 fret wire, we also fitted an Earvana Compensated tuning nut to make it sound sweet as can be. The all access neck makes the top end no effort to play.

Tuning duties are from the higher spec Wilkinson tremolo and Sperzel machineheads.
We also used an EMG Zakk Wylde set but chose to install them with the EMG85 at the Bridge and the EMG81 at the neck. This results in a bigger bridge sound - a bit more Gary Moore/Steve Lukather  in some ways whilst having a nice tight /fluid neck pickup for soloing 9the ceramic magnet keeping it tight and not bloated)

 

 

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