Brubaker B1

I traded for this. It's a 24 fret, bolt-neck (his own design with an extended portion of the neck going into the body for increased sustain), solid alder body with maple/rosewood neck. Two Duncan pickups (look like Screamin Demons) with coil taps, volume and tone. Stop tail, graphite nut, non-locking tuners.

Played thru a variety of amps (Emery Superbaby, Roccaforte 50 watt, Fender Deluxe Reverb) it has good volume, nicely voiced tone an volume controls, functional coil taps. Lot's of bass with the neck pickup, bridge can get quite raunchy or smooth down with a touch of the tone know. Good variety of tones and really amazing sustain. I've got neckthru and setneck guitars that have much less sustain than this. Very cool guitar, not truly in the Gibson/Fender line for sound.

Came with 11s, I think, I'll eventually go to 10s. Plays great, though-no buzzes, no fretting out, no sharp edges, intonates well. Nice job! Neck is a wide, thin thing with a bit of a peculiar profile that I like a lot.

Seems bullet proof. I'd gig with it.

No idea, never contacted them...

A very well made and resonant guitar with a little different shape and sound than the run of the mill. Recommended.

Don't let that low price cause you to wonder. The original list was closer to $3000 as it was part of a matched set of custom designed indigo quilted maple topped instruments: a 4 string bass and a 6 string guitar.

Seaford Music was selling it for the original owner (a bass player) who chose to part with the guitar since he wasn't playing it enough. This B-1 came up on eBay with fairly poor pictures but was described by the seller as being in very good condition with only modest wear; so, his impeccable eBay rating coupled with the fact that I know Kevin and his work made it an easy decision for me to jump at the opportunity to grab one of his earliest guitars for an incredible price. Somebody not knowing what Brus were all about probably wouldn't have given those pictures a second glance. I just got lucky.

This was the 21st guitar Kevin Brubaker made in 1999. The instrument is a 6 string, 24 fret, double cutaway, solid ash body guitar with an indigo dyed AAAA grade quilted maple top, natural binding, thin and fast maple neck with a matching carved headstock. The urethane finish is hard, yet thin and very lustrous.

The body has an eye catching top carve not at all like PRS, Warrior, McNaught, Zion and others that follow the body shape or carve the 'horns'. It is my personal favorite of Kevins designs and was another compelling reason for me to jump at the chance to snap up this guitar. This design is currently a special order.

The maple neck is a single piece of wood (true of all of his guitars) with an angled headstock whose signature carve is graceful and elegant and is further enhanced by the matching indigo quilt top. The wenge fretboard is unadorned except by side fret markers. The neck joint is Kevins patented 'neck thru-bolt on' where the neck basically disappears 7 inches into the body of the guitar and is bolted in with 4 large countersunk screws. The scripted Brubaker name is hand signed on the headstock (again, true of all of Kevins guitars to date).

It has 3 on a side gold locking Schaller tuners (he's using Sperzels today), a gold Point Classic tremolo with compression spring mount (the opposite of a vintage tremolo setup that stretches the springs), a Fender Custom Shop Texas Special in the neck position, and Lindy Fralin single coil and humbucker pickups in the middle and bridge positions. It has a 5 position switch and a coil tap (integrated with the tone control).

The guitar came with the original custom fit hardshell case and tools.

The tone, as with my other Brus, is unique. None of them sound the same and if I include the couple that a friend of mine owns, all 5 sound completely different.

Brubaker guitars don't generally work to have the Fender and Gibson tones that so many other manufacturers want to cop in order to grab a piece of the Strat and Les Paul market. Kevin appears to want to separate his work from others and so, his guitars tend to have their own unique voices. Now with that said, that doesn't mean that somebody couldn't filk another tone, because the original owner specced this guitar with the Fender pickup with the obvious intention to include in its tones an authentic vintage glassy Strat tone. It does so incredibly well in fact. The positions that do not make use of the Fender pickup give pure, cool Bru tones from hollow single coil (the Lindy Fralin single coils are pure vintage in tone) to bright, powerful lead tones when using the humbucker in it's native mode.

The single coil tones in all 5 positions (when splitting the coils of the humbucker) offer a wonderful platform for my principal style of play, classic rock and blues, but I think that in the hands of a metal head, the Fralin humbucker cranked wide open could blister paint. It can really scream.

My rig (for the moment) consists a modded TS-9 Tube Screamer (TS-808 spec), Morley Bad Horsie wah, Tech 21 CompTortion, Dano chorus, and two amps: a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and a Vox AD60VT.

Because I bought this used and the strings hadn't been changed in at least a year, I needed to readjust the trem but that's it, and that was a piece of cake because of the design of the with Point Technologies tremolo.

The action was set up just as I like it (somewhat low, but high enough to catch a good bend), so there was nothing to do there.

The finish, the bookmatched top and workmanship is flawless. There's no bleeding into the natural exposed binding and the 'cut from the same piece of body wood' trem and control cavity covers are a beautiful touch (again, true of all of Kevin's guitars, not just Customs or Xtremes). The finish is hard, rich and lustrous and makes the peaks and valleys of the quilting look even more 3D. It came with a couple of small dings but no checking resulted.

This is the oldest of my Brus, somewhere close to 3 years and has been well cared for and doesn't appear to have been gigged out. Kevin uses the best parts (just check out the monster trem mount compression springs and 7 inch neck thru bolt on joint) and builds very solid gear. He's a bass player and gigs himself so he knows what a working musician needs in terms of reliable, durable instruments. That's probably the biggest contributor to his high standards. The oversized strap buttons ensure the strap won't come off, another obvious working musicians touch.

I've visited his shop quite a few times now and he will work with you on all the details to make sure you get exactly what you want. I've watched him make trem and setup adjustments with a customer testing and checking the adjustments each little step of the way until the customer had it just so. He says "Customer satisfaction is job one" and it isn't just a mantra. He follows through. If you can't get him on the phone, you leave a message and he calls you right back. He answers email within a day.

His guitars come with a 2 year warranty, but that's just a formality. He'll back his product until the cows come home.

Kevin hand makes around 10 guitars and basses per month in a 2000 sq ft. facility in a bucolic rural setting just South of Westminster, Md. His personal standards for building guitars are far above production line standards and are rivaled (in my opinion) only by other noteworthy small scale builders.

The craftsmanship of this custom B-1, or any guitar coming out of his shop, is the same as the Xtreme guitars he builds. Those models include off the scale quilt tops (David Thomas McNaught caliber), fretboards and colors. The quality of Kevins guitars is nothing short of Private Stock or Gibson or Fender Custom Shops and his work is thousands of dollars less for comparable quality instruments. Kevin is a musician who builds high end guitars and basses for musicians who want something that people notice, something different from the run of the mill and mostly want something that they don't want to put down because everybody needs inspiration to play. Buying a custom Bru puts you in a position to talk to the guy who's building your guitar, who cares about how you like and play his product, who will give you your moneys worth, and in the final analysis, provides a product that just flat out has the features, beauty, tone and playability that just outperforms anything else for the money. He's not content to build real nice guitars like many other small scale, terrific luthiers around today (and there are quite a few out there) but is creative and innovative. His neck thru-bolt on, compression spring tremolos, split fretboards and colors are examples of not just building guitars like everybody else but taking the design a step further.

I have been playing for 20 years and have had guitars from Gibson, the Fender Custom Shop, Warrior, PRS and others and have found my 3 Brubakers to be among the best in quality and surely the best bang for the buck competing in that segment of the market.

The fact that so many Brubaker owners own more says a lot about Brubaker quality, value, support and the confidence Bru owners have in Kevin and his work.

1998
24 frets
Red tiger maple top/mahogany body and neck
Electronics One Volume, One Tone, 5-Way Selector
Cocobolo fingerboard
Schaller locking tuners/Point Technology Tremolo
Pickups Seymour Duncan
Bridge Hipshot Chrome or Point Technology Tremelo Bridge
Tuners Schaller Locking chrome
Nut Graph-Tech
Neck Width at Nut 1 11/16"

I play the blues - Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray, and Jimi would fallen in love with its sound
I use a Line Six Spider 2-12 100w and a 68 Fender Princeton Reverb tube
It is the quietest guitar I own - I mean NO NOISE!!!
Sound is so damn bright I have to re-set my pre-sets after playing my Strats and Tele's (turn them down because the B1 blasts)
It has the range of a standard Strat with much more depth (5 way switch as well as coil tap treble) I can also be "bassed up" without loosing clarity
No such thing as "dislikes" with Brubaker

It was not set up the way I play when I got it, but it was set up well. I loosened the tremelo spring tension, readjusted the intonation, put lighter strings on, and it now plays flawlessly.
I don't think the pickup could be any better adjusted from the factory.
To say the top is "properly bookmatched" is a severe understatement - that would be like saying a Ferrari is "adequate."
Again, with Brubaker there is no such thing as "flaws." The man pours his soul into producing the finest instrument in the world.

I have played this guitar steadily for 3 years now and it just keeps getting sweeter. It is bulletproof. The finish is not as thin as Fender, but not as thick as PRS so it has incredible durability, but not a "muted" sound like my PRS Santana had (before I got rid of it).
The finish of this guitar is something you have to see up close (especially compared to high volume production guitars like Fender, Gibson, PRS) to see that it doesn't have the orange peel, sand scratches, stain variations, etc like the others do.

Read the comments about Kevin in these pages and you will find that he will do everything in his power to ensure that you are completely satisfied with your guitar now and into the future. He has offered numerous times to perform any adjustments (even the simple ones I have done) painlessly and quickly. I don't know what the warranty is - that would be like asking: "How long will this Stradivarius hold up?" Its pointless at this quality level.

I have played for about 32 years and I am a "seasoned" veteran - having traveled the road from Robert Johnson and Howlin Wolf, through Led Zepplin I - into the Van Halen era - off on a country music tangent - through Smashing Pumpkins and AFI - and back to my roots in the blues. I have played live all over the US to as many as 20,000 people and in bars with 2 patrons cussing me out cause I didn't know a Michael Bolton song (and wouldn't learn one). I have owned a Jimi Hendrix original Strat from his 1967 performance at the Portland Coliseum, I have had a Peter Frampton Les Paul from a concert 10 years late, I own old (very old) Martin, Guild, Goya, Washburn acoustics, a few Strats, Teles, a 68 SG Custom (rumored to have famous roots), some oddball electrics (older DeArmond, 60's Supro, etc.) as well as a Brubaker B2.

I collect art glass, fine automobiles, watches and many more things and this guitar is my most prized possession. I will be glad when I retire in the near future and get rid of the other stuff just to focus on playing. I cannot imagine what I would do if something happened to this B1. It has become a part of me and I miss it when I am away from it. I have always been a Fender guy and still love my Strats, but this guitar is in a class of its own. When I want to play for myself - and hear something no one else except another Brubaker owner can - nothing can satisfy me like that sound.

1999, Made in Westminster, Maryland, USA 24 fret bookmatched flame maple top volume/tone/5 way switch/coil tap/point technology trem s/s/H Lindy Fralin passive/mahogany body and neck/gloss finish on body satin finish on neck locking schaller tuners wide/thin neck 25" scale, med jumbo frets/rosewood board

I play sleaze bag rock and roll, and although this probably wasn't what the maker had in mind, it sure as heck works for it. I go straight in to my mesa boogie dc-5. The pickups sing with very little noise. Nice round tone. The output isn't as large as other pickups, but I just jack the V and it's all good. Makes every darn sound a guitar makes. I have no complaints whatsoever.

Setup was immaculate. Perfect all the way up. Stays in tune forever, and I play it hard. Pickupa were adjusted perfectly, the bookmatching was fabulous, the brdige assembly was flawless. No complaints--only praise. No flaws whatsoever.

The neck-through bolt on gives it loads of lateral stability and growl. Tons of sustain. It has loads of push when I push it and it is delicate when I am.

I have had no problems, but my dealings with the company regarding ordering and specs were great.

This is the sleekest, nicest paying guitar I've ever held. Period. The care and craftsmanship are outstanding and I wish all guitars were made to such tight specs.