Tag: partscaster

A Skip + Rat Bait Guitars

Build a Partscaster – from a Skip, Rat Bait Guitar: Reclaimed, Rebellious, Real

Looking to build a guitar that’s more than just a clone? Skip the sterile factory vibe and dive into the world of skip sourced material —where every body tells a story, and every scratch means something.

Why build from a Skip? Rat Bait Guitar?

A skip Rat Bait Guitar is built from salvaged materials—wood rescued from skips, old furniture, fence posts, roof beams, and floorboards. It’s not just recycling; it’s reclamation. These guitars carry the scars of their past lives, reimagined into instruments with soul.

At Rat Bait Guitars, each body is shaped in a rat-infested shed in North Devon, using whatever the world throws away. It’s punk, it’s raw, and it’s good for the planet.

 

Rat Bait Guitars

Building a partscaster can indeed be a rewarding and enjoyable experience! Here are some key benefits and considerations:

Benefits of Building a Partscaster

  1. Customisation: You can tailor your guitar to fit your playing style, tone, and aesthetics. Choose from a variety of parts like neck shape, pickups, body wood, fretboard radius, and hardware. Mix and match different models and brands to create a unique combination.

  2. Cost Savings: If you’re looking for a high-quality guitar with specific features that are either unavailable or too expensive in the market, building a partscaster can be more economical. You can also use parts you already have or find second-hand parts at a lower cost.

  3. Learning Experience: Building a partscaster can be a fun and educational process. It helps you understand how a guitar works and how to adjust it to your liking. The hands-on experience can be very satisfying and give you a sense of accomplishment.

Difficulty Levels

  • From Scratch: This is the most challenging and time-consuming method. It involves sourcing all materials, cutting and shaping them, assembling and wiring parts, finishing and painting, and setting up the action and intonation. This can take months or even years.

  • From a Kit: The easiest method, as kits provide all the parts needed to assemble a guitar, with some pre-made or pre-fitted. Tasks include finishing the body and neck, soldering electronics, attaching hardware and strings, and adjusting the setup. This can take a few hours to a weekend.

  • From Parts: This method offers more customisation and flexibility but requires more skill and knowledge in fitting parts together. Tasks include selecting and ordering compatible parts, drilling holes, routing cavities, soldering electronics, attaching hardware and strings, and adjusting the setup. This can take a few days to a few weeks.

Rat Bait Guitars

Rat Bait Guitars, based in Devon, UK, makes hand-built guitars from recycled materials like salvaged wood and furniture. They also sell new and used guitar parts, tested for quality and functionality. Their online shop offers a variety of parts for vintage, relic, or partscaster guitars, with free UK shipping and international shipping on request.

 

Rat Bait Guitars

Why Build Your Own? A Recap

  • 🛠️ Custom Fit: Choose your own neck, pickups, and hardware.
  • 🌍 Eco-Friendly: Reuse waste wood instead of buying new.
  • 🎸 Authentic Vibe: Every dent and grain tells a story.
  • 💥 Skip – Rat Bait Spirit: It’s DIY with attitude—perfect for players who want something real.

How to Start

  1. Find a Body: Look for reclaimed wood or check out Rat Bait’s bodies.
  2. Choose Your Parts: Neck, bridge, pickups—make it yours.
  3. Assemble & Adjust: Bolt it together, tweak the action, and plug in.

Rat Guitars: Built to Mean Something

If you want an instrument that’s more than just polished wood and chrome, consider Rat Bait Guitars. Bodies made from recycled timber, shaped with care and chaos in equal measure. These aren’t just guitars—they’re statements.

Follow us on Instagram

HSH Blue Sunburst Strat Style Body

Blue Sunburst Stratocaster-Style Electric Guitar Body – Part Loaded

Unleash your vision with this striking Blue Sunburst Stratocaster-style electric guitar body—a premium, part-loaded foundation that fuses classic design with contemporary edge. Whether you’re crafting a one-of-a-kind Partscaster or reviving a cherished beast, this body offers the perfect blend of style, substance, and sonic potential.

The finish is a bold two-tone sunburst, shifting from deep oceanic blues to black edges, with a high-gloss lacquer that catches the light and accentuates every curve. Its contours are smooth and true to vintage Stratocaster proportions, offering both ergonomic comfort and visual impact. This is a body that demands attention—on stage, in the studio, or hanging proudly in your mancave.

Specifications and Included Components:

  • Neck pocket width: approximately 56mm
  • Body thickness: approximately 43mm
  • New tremolo unit
  • Tremolo springs, screws, arm and claw
  • 1 fully loaded SSS scratchplate (single-coil configuration)
  • 1 spare SSS scratchplate for future swaps or experimentation
  • Jack plug socket and chrome boat
  • Screws for both boat and scratchplate included

Crafted to accommodate standard Stratocaster necks and hardware, this body is likely made from basswood or Paulownia—both known for their lightweight feel and balanced tonal response. The wood resonates beautifully, offering warmth and clarity without excess weight, making it ideal for long sessions or live performance.

Condition-wise, it’s been carefully maintained and shows only minimal signs of use—just a couple of tiny dings that do nothing to diminish its overall shine or integrity. The finish remains vibrant, the routing is clean, and the screw holes are solid – all ready for assembly.

Whether you’re a seasoned builder, a gigging musician, or a curious newcomer to the world of custom guitars, this body invites creativity. It’s more than a component—it’s a canvas for your sound, your style, and your story.

Mythology and Wood

Rat Bait Guitars: Two Telecaster‑Style Bodies Born from Salvage and Spirit

Bodies in the North Devon workshop, waiting for their final touch. Soon they’ll be finished off, waxed, and dropped onto eBay—two Telecaster‑style bodies are more than wood, they bring history to the party. These aren’t factory‑fresh slabs of tonewood; they’re fragments of forgotten lives, reshaped and reimagined into instruments with battle scars, and soul.

Each body is a genuine Rat Bait Guitar Body, built in October 2025 from salvaged materials and shaped in a rat‑infested shed in North Devon. They’re not showroom pieces—they’re artefacts of survival and reinvention. Their silhouette nods to the quirky Woolworths guitars of the 1960s and ’70s: Japanese‑made, budget‑friendly instruments that were once dismissed as cheap knock‑offs, only to become cult classics decades later.

This is the same spirit—taking what the world throws away and turning it into something that screams.

Materials & Origin

Every body carries its own layered history:

  • 1970s Austrian dining table – once a place of family meals, now a resonant slab of tone.
  • Old roofing timber – beams that sheltered lives, now reborn as the backbone of sound.
  • Exmoor Spruce – local wood with a wild edge, grounding the build in Devon’s landscape.
  • Sections of an Ikea bookcase – mass‑produced flatpack, now carved into something utterly unique.

All reclaimed. All reimagined. All finished in natural beeswax, giving the wood a warm, tactile glow that honours its scars rather than hiding them.

What Is Exmoor Spruce?

Exmoor Spruce is a native softwood found in the rugged uplands of Exmoor National Park, known for its resilience and character. Grown in harsh, wind‑beaten conditions, it develops tight grain patterns and a distinctive tonal quality that makes it ideal for musical instruments. Unlike commercial spruce varieties, Exmoor Spruce carries the imprint of its wild environment—each piece tells a story of survival, shaped by the moor’s unpredictable weather and ancient soil. It’s wood with attitude, and it fits the Rat Bait ethos perfectly.

More than just a local material, Exmoor Spruce is a statement. It’s the sound of wind through trees, the weight of rain on gorse, the echo of hooves and history. When carved into a guitar body, it doesn’t just resonate—it growls. It’s not about purity or polish; it’s about presence. And in the hands of a player, it becomes a voice for the untamed.

The mythology of Exmoor runs deep—feral, windswept, and defiant. These bodies channel that outsider energy: rough silhouettes, raw finishes, and a stance that feels more like a weathered figure on a moor than a polished showroom piece. They wear the look of the land—scarred, elemental, and proud of it. The guitars don’t just echo the landscape; they embody its folklore.

The Beast of Exmoor

Lurking in the shadows of local legend, the Beast of Exmoor is said to roam the hills—a phantom predator with glowing eyes and a taste for livestock. Descriptions vary: a black panther, a spectral hound, a creature born of fog and fear. Whether myth or misidentification, its presence haunts the moor’s psyche. These guitar bodies carry a whisper of that gothic energy—feral outlines, claw‑like grain, and a sense that something untamed lives within the wood. They’re not just shaped by tools, but by stories. By the idea that even in the age of algorithms, something wild still watches from the bracken.

 

Specifications:

  • Style: Telecaster Type
  • Routing: Standard Tele neck pickup + Tele bridge pickup
  • Finish: Hand‑waxed, raw, and ready for players who want character over perfection

Why Rat Bait?

Because these guitars aren’t about sterile precision. They’re about defiance. About taking discarded scraps and proving they still have a purpose. About building in a shed where the rats scuttle in the corners, and still managing to carve something that can make you look good on stage.

Each body is a reminder that music has always thrived on the margins—punk, blues, garage rock, DIY scenes. These guitars belong there too.

Two bodies. Two chances to own a piece of reclaimed chaos. They’ll be up on eBay soon—raw, handmade, and unapologetically imperfect.

 

Barnwood Hardtail Stratocaster Style Body

 

This Strat body is a genuine Rat Bait Guitar construction, which was made in September 2025. This guitar body is made from salvaged material and a broken Stratocaster type guitar constructed and shaped in a rat infested shed in North Devon. The design and shape is reminiscent of ‘Woolworths’ guitars from the 1960s / 70s – Japanese, retro homage. Please see photographs to view the rugged finish and texture of the body.

This body is part loaded with a white scratchplate from a new guitar, new electrics and new pickups.

 
Stratocaster Body made from recycled materials – body weight 1.85kg (unloaded).
Materials:  Old roofing timber, bits from an old bookcase and a broken Stratocaster body.
This body is routed to take standard single coil pickups. This handmade body has dents, scratches and old paint in places. You might have to fettle this body to suit your needs.
 Hardtail Stratocaster body SSS routed – UK Made
  • Body made from a salvaged material
  • Approx. Thickness: 42mm
  • Approx. Neck Pocket Width: 55mm
  • Approx. Weight: 1.85kg

The Hardtail Strat Barnwood Guitar Body by Rat Bait guitars is a unique and eco-friendly choice for electric guitar enthusiasts. Made from recycled material in the United Kingdom, this body features a natural, red, and black colour scheme that adds a touch of character to any guitar. With a weight of 1.85kg, this UK-made body is designed to fit most electric guitars seamlessly, making it an ideal choice for customising and creating a one-of-a-kind instrument.

Barnwood Nashville Style Body

Hybrid Stratocaster body routed to take Nashville Telecaster hardware

This Nashville Tele / Strat body is a genuine Rat Bait Guitar construction, which was made in September 2025. This guitar body is made from salvaged material and a broken Stratocaster type guitar constructed and shaped in a rat infested shed in North Devon. The design and shape is reminiscent of ‘Woolworths’ guitars from the 1960s / 70s – Japanese, retro homage. Please see photographs to view the rugged finish and texture of the body. 

Telecaster / Stratocaster Body made from recycled timber – body weight 1.99kg.
Materials: Part of a 1970s Austrian table, old roofing timber, bits from an old bookcase and a broken Stratocaster body.
This Nashville style body is routed to take a standard neck pickup, single coil middle pickup and standard Telecaster bridge pickup. This handmade body has dents, scratches and old paint in places. You might have to fettle this body to suit your needs.

 

  • Body made from a salvaged material
  • Approx. Thickness: 43mm
  • Approx. Neck Pocket Width: 56mm
  • Approx. Weight: 1.99kg
  • Light Nitro Cellulose tint coat in places
This guitar body blank is made from reclaimed wood in the United Kingdom, ready to be crafted into a unique and environmentally-friendly electric guitar. The natural and black colour offers a rugged looking, versatile, barnwood choice for a contemporary unique Partscaster, perfect for customising your instrument to suit your style. Designed to fit standard electric guitars, this body blank is a great choice for luthiers and musicians looking for a sustainable and distinctive sound.