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Latest News  

 
 
Latest News - click the images to see full size

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!

Kenny Gluing the top plate

Ray's from 'Bareknuckle Pickups' guitar Neil with finished product
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 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 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!

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'.

Bailey Guitars on the Elixir stand!

Some Dude

Jade Tries out a Bailey More Jade

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!!

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 Gallagher is a very up and coming singer songwriter and a great guitar player. She was booked to demo at the Elixir stand. In between sets she tried our 'B1' and became instantly attached to it. She loved the way it played and sounded so much that she got her manager to contact us about it........After several phone calls ..we made a deal.

Cheers Jade & Guy !

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 alot more of her..

 


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.

Everyone hard at work

Binding a maccaferri

Tony Carves his neck Rebeccas dad turns up to check progress.
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....

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 is making a wild 6 string explorer inspired rock machine.

More on Scot 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. 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

Bill's Windmill

Chickens - one dead. Bailey stand at the Minishant Fete

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........

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 be using 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.

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 windmill on top of Jamie's Van. and 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 perfomers. 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.

Work in progress.....

Pad and Mike carve their necks

Paul sets his intonation Finished!
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 Scot 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!


North West Guitar Show - Manchester 11th of May

The Bailey Stand always causes a bit of a stir.

Electrics

Archtops& Acoustics

Steve Lewis and his new S2 Who plays your guitar?
Like us NWGS is celebrating it's 10th anniversary year - the new 1 day show and venue were a great success. These shows are a good way to try or buy a Bailey guitar. Pictured are some of our electrics. Check here to find out where you can see us next.

The acoustic and Archtop side of the stand - Thanks to Chris Pritchet (CA008) for demoing the archtop for half a morning - sorry no pic! Also thanks to Paul Cairns (CA007)and Alex Munro (CJA001) for lending us their guitars for display.

Thanks Steve! He bought the first left handed version of the new S2 - made using only renewable energy. Steve (S2-31) is a working musician/ music therapist and we are delighted to welcome him to the growing number of Bailey players. www.deepcabaret.co.uk Our stand was opposite Patrick Eggle. It was great to see him as he was and still is a big inspiration to Mark - I asked him what he thought of the B1 he tried out . He said 'Lovely' - That made Mark's day.