Brutal V with Floyd
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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
Angular Explorer bass
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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
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Lion - The Emerald
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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
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LION FLAMETOP
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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
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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
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SOUTHPAW JAGUAR
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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)
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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
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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
Quilt Top Lion- real class
CUSTOM ML
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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
SOUTHPAW TIGER
Poison PH1
Purple Reign
Korina Lion - Aquamarine
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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!
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Southpaw Dinky 7
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| 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. ..
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Gothic Rock Monster
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| 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
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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)
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Jon Hayward Classic 52 style single cut
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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
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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
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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

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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!
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Blonde Explorer

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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.
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Judas Priest / Glen Tipton inspired SG rebuild
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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)

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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!
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Purple "RONNIE" Jaguar
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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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