Express yourself with a custom guitar design. Need ideas? We’ve collected some amazing examples of guitar images from our global community of designers. Get inspired and start planning the perfect guitar design today.
YouTube user Tim Sway posted a video recently of a bass built from a hollow door. Yes, really. That body hole you see in the image above is where the doorknob went. Is this build a monument to good tone? Obviously not. Rather, it’s just something to prove that when you put your mind to … Read more
An email from a customer arrived recently expressing gratitude that we were able to help out with a bass upgrade. It is not uncommon that we receive emails like this, but what made this one particularly special is how the upgrade happened. (The author wished to keep the names anonymous. Names have been changed.) Pink … Read more
(Note: While this particular build step is short, it’s important.) It is assumed for this step that you have already made or purchased an appropriate body blank. It is also assumed that you have a plan on paper. It might be a plan that you have drawn from scratch for your own custom design or … Read more
A helpful thing to do before even beginning the build is to draw a full scale (meaning full size, as in 1:1) drawing of the instrument you have in mind. Good reasons why the full scale drawing is the first thing you should do 1. You get an initial feel for the guitar While true … Read more
With our last wood hardness chart, several noted that there were certain woods missing that should be in the list, so we’ve expanded the list to 224 different species. Is this list complete? That’s where you come in. We’ve tried in our best effort to get this list as complete as possible, but of course … Read more
Many bass builders are very particular about the wood used for the body. Some choose specific woods for considerations such as weight, certain tonal qualities, how easy or not it is to carve, color, grain style, and so on. Wood hardness is determined using something called the Janka Hardness Scale. This scale (and the chart … Read more
When it comes to 1950s and 1960s design, that’s something pretty easy to figure out. If you do an image search for googie architecture, you will see many, many examples of that “swoopy” style that began in the 1940s and lasted all the way into the mid-1960s. Everything from houses to furniture to cars and … Read more
What makes a gold finish gold? Gold for all intents and purposes is a “light mustard brown” or “burnt yellow.” How do you take that color and make it gold? Metallic flake is added in… …and that’s where things get interesting. There is no established standard that states how much metallic flake is required to … Read more
For bass of the week feature instruments here at BBG, you’ve seen a lot of custom inlay work. And while we would all like custom inlays that look absolutely perfect, there is always the option to buy a set of inlays instead. Two things make buying an inlay set a whole lot easier. First is … Read more
You might have heard the term “bass ramp” before and not know what it means. This article will explain to you what it is and why you would want one. A bass ramp is a block of wood that is mounted under the strings, and is either mounted before the pickups (front-side mount,) between two … Read more
