Phillip Campbells WarPig's Installed

Just got the Bare Knuckle War Pig's from DHL (Sent overnight last Wednesday - arrived the following Monday morning....) I have installed them (see picture) but I will let Tim Butcher do the final soldering etc. This is turing into a seriously sexy guitar.

Customised Series 2 for Phillip Campbell of Motorhead

We have been busy customising another Series 2 for Phil Campbell - it began life as a White Translucent Flame Maple Series 2 with a 1 piece mahogany body. We have removed the Jimmy Page wiring and replaced it with tradional Les Paul wiring, Sprague Orange Drop capacitors and some CTS Pots. Bare Knuckle Pickups are winding some "War Pig" pickups for it which will be slightly different from the regular War Pig's as they are going to be uncovered - looking forward to getting them installed. The guitar has been heavily shielded with Aluminium foil shielding tape.

Mantis Hollowbodys

A few more pictures of the Mantis Hollowbodys - this is a very limited production run of only 15 instruments:

Mahogany / Maple
Headstock matched top wood / colour with mother of pearl logo inlay
Single Binding
2 x Humbuckers or Fat P90's with traditional LP style bridge
Rosewood Fretboard with tree of life inlay
Bone Nut
Gold Hardware

Coming Soon

I am hoping to have the following available in approx. 6 weeks:

Mantis Hollowbodys:

Hollowbody Necks with Matching Headstocks and Tree of Life Inlay:



Quilted Maple Hollowbody's:

Spalted Maple:

"Explorer" Style - Mahogany Body's with Maple tops:

RR Flying V's:


Spalted Strat:


Flame Spalted Strat:

Production Pictures - note the Custom Explorer in Black Flame, Oil Finish - (This Mettalica inspired guitar is a special one off production for a customer)

Phil Campbell of Motorhead gets a Series 2

Its been quite a while since my last post - I hve been really busy setting up the new workshop and finishing the Series 2 Guitars. I have been very fortunate to be intorduced to Tim Butcher who has been a Guitar Tech for Motorhead for the last 30 years (Lemmys personal Tech). Tim is helping out in the Workshop, setting up Guitars and teaching me a few tricks he has learned over the years, along with some great tales of life on the road with Motorhead!

Yesterday we had a visit from Phil Campbell, Motorheads Guitarist - he loved the guitars and took a nice red quilted Series 2 for himself - great experience to watch him play one of my guitars!

The Series 2 are now ready so please contact me if you are interested - I have many colours to choose from etc - for more information please click here

New Workshop and Series 2 Update

Hello to everyone following this blog. I just need to do a quick post as I am somewhat unavailable at present. I have taken a lease on a new workshop location and am in the process of kitting it out with my tools etc. The workshop also serves as a small retail outlet so you can come and try out my guitars, amps, and pickups as well.

I am sorry if I have been a bit unreachable lately - its taking up all my time. I have the Series 2 guitars in stock, but I am not 100% happy about the fretboard inlay markers. The inlay material is real Mother-of-Pearl which is very detailed and colourfull, but a few of the markers are not perfect so I am still working on them. Everything else about the guitars is excellent - the top & back woods are really breathtaking - the pickups are excellent with the enhanced electronics package giving a wide range of tones from the guitar & as always they play really great.

Red Quilted Strat Build - Part 6

This blog post did not transfer from my old blog at akaguitars.com so here it is:

Finished the Strat today - my customer Elliot just collected it and he was very happy. Here are the final steps in the build:Setting the bridge saddles to the same radius as the fretboard and pre set the saddles for intonation (just a guess at this point):

Pickups arrived - really impressed with the quality and service from Bare Knuckles - Tim Mills hand wound these pickups specifically for this guitar. On his advice I went with just a zinc base plate on the bridge pickup. The base plate gives the pickup more high frequency response and because it is grounded, it helps to shield the pickup from unwanted signals. On a side note - when CBS Musical Instruments owned Fender, the reflector plates were omitted. Bridge pickups from this period without the base plates tend not to cut through a mixture of instruments well, but they still sound the part i.e. Hendrix etc.

Here are the pickups installed into the pick guard - nice cloth wire on the Bare Knuckles.

Installed the Pickguard - now its time to do the final setup & adjustments. Here I am taking a reading of the action at the 12th fret - looks a bit high..

Tweak the truss rod to allow very slight relief - in this case 0.006" that's 0.15mm - it seemed to be the ideal setting (after much testing and adjustment):

After setting the action at 0.065" (1.65mm) for the Bass E and around 0.050 (1.27mm) at the treble E I was happy. Here I am setting the final intonation:

Tested the guitar and it plays great - I am really happy with the build. It went quite smoothly and the guitar is a real pleasure to play and hear. I find the Bare Knuckle pickups to be of excellent quality, superb sound and excellent value - better than any other big name pickup I have used. If you are interested in a Strat build, please give me a call - the price is less than a USA Standard Strat. Here is a close up of the finished guitar - click on the picture for a bigger version:

Thanks for Elliot & his Family for allowing me to use his build on my blog - take care of the Guitar and if you have any questions or concerns just give me a call.