Custom Guitars From BK Custom

Bryce Kneeland is a PR and advertising major at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, but when he’s not studying or playing the guitar, he’s crafting playable works of art.

After his Junior year of high school, Bryce wanted to do something with the extra free time. He then started playing guitar his senior year in high school. He was already familiar with music very well, he started learning in fifth grade when he joined his school band.

“I’ve been playing the drums and I decided I should probably try something that’s a little more musical, ” Kneeland says. “I would like to be able to play as good as Slash one day.”

The band Guns and Roses has also helped Bryce with his desire to play the guitar. After playing guitar for a while, he decided he wanted to try something even more different. Bryce then got into building electric guitars during his Sophomore year in college.

“I had an idea in my head for a guitar that I thought would be cool,” says Kneeland. ” I couldn’t find anything like that anywhere so I decided I would just build one.”

For  a first-time project like building a guitar, Bryce bought a guitar kit online and decided to customize it to his liking. Unlike first-time wanna be builders, Bryce put on a much nicer veneer on his guitar rather than just putting on typical spray paint that was lying around. He uses wood stains for most of the guitars that he builds.

“I’m actually working on one right now that I’m going to be painting,” says Kneeland. “So that will be interesting if I can paint as well as I can stain.”

As far as building a particular model of electric guitar, there really isn’t a specific model Bryce sticks to only building. He has built a hand full of different models, from solid body electric guitars inspired by the famous Gibson Les Paul, to semi hollow body guitars inspired by the Gibson ES-335 model.

 

“I’ve built an Explorer, a Les Paul, and an ES-335,” says Kneeland. “And I’m working on a Telecaster for a friend now.”

Building and customizing guitars is really something that can’t be done in a short amount of time, especially if it’s being built by someone who loves what they’re doing. Most of the guitars that Bryce has been building are electric guitars, he has thought about the idea in the near future of building an acoustic guitar.

“I think it would be really cool,” says Kneeland. “But I don’t think I’m good enough with wood working yet to do that.”

Bryce shows off his guitar building skills by posting photos of his guitar projects in the building process on his Facebook page, BK Custom Shop. On a lot of modern custom build guitars, there are mostly custom mother-of-pearl or wood inlay designs that make the guitar look interesting, as for Bryce, he has taken a different route to make his custom built guitars stand out.What makes his incredible guitars extremely unique are the wood burning designs Bryce has put on a lot of his guitars.

 

“I got into wood burning because I got a wood burning kit for like a $1.50 at a garage sale when I was in sixth grade,” says Kneeland. “I messed with it for a couple days and put it in my closet and never touched it again.”

He says around his Sophomore or Junior year of college he decided to make his little brother a present for his birthday that had a cool Legend of Zelda design burnt on it. Bryce then thought he could also burn cool designs on his guitars as well. And his outstanding wood burning designs on his guitars are what caught the attention to his future customers.

Bryce approached his first customer who is also a friend who plays in a church band and a touring band. Bryce heard that his friend broke off a portion of the headstock of a guitar and Bryce told his friend that he could custom build a new guitar for him.

“I had another friend approach me about building him a guitar too,” says Kneeland. “That one will take off soon as well.”

As far as the cost of the guitars Bryce constructs, the prices tend to very depending on the cost of materials used and the time he puts in to build them. Bryce says that just getting his name out there is the most important for him.

“Usually I like to make at least a fifty percent profit on it,” says Kneelad. “So I can have more money to keep doing this.”

When Bryce isn’t in school and building guitars, he plays in a small time band. Although the band doesn’t have a name yet, the genre  of music the band plays is what Bryce describes as Ska, a Punk-Regge genre with song lyrics that go from whinny and complaining to fun and chilling. Another one of Bryce’s friends approached him about the idea for the band and after giving it some thought, he jumped on board. Bryce says that in the future he would still like to keep building guitars as more of a hobby of the side with PR and advertising.

Building and customizing guitars takes a lot of time to build and skill to develop. Bryce has some advice for any aspiring musician and anyone looking to build guitars in the future.

“Don’t give up,” says Kneeland. “Find your goal and then go for it.”

Every once in a while, he sees a video on Facebook of someone playing really good on guitar and feel as though he should quit, but that doesn’t stop him.

“Make that your goal, just keep getting better,” says Kneeland. “For the guitar building, build what you want.”

 

Link To BK Custom Shop’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/BKCustomShop/