Don Bell Custom Built SG Style

The snapshot above was taken with the built in flash on my pocket-size digital camera and really doesn't do this guitar justice.  When I get a chance to set up some decent lighting I'll take better pictures, right now I'm having too much fun playing the guitar.

First, let me qualify this "review" by saying it's not typical of my objective reviews.  After all, how can one truly be objective about a guitar that one has designed from the ground up and then commissioned from the most skilled, detail-oriented craftsman one knows?  So, if anything this "review" is more of a story about going after a "dream guitar" and finally attaining it.

I was introduced to Don Bell by a mutual friend a few years ago.  At the time, Don was working as a model-builder for a major defense contractor and was building guitars part-time.  The fact that Don was serious about his guitar building even then was evidenced by the presence of a large flat-bed CNC mill that took up half of his garage!  Don had just built a gorgeous LP-style guitar for the guy that introduced us.  A photo of that guitar is on the Bell Custom Guitars website.  When I finally decided that I "needed" a custom built SG-style guitar I naturally thought of Don.

So, a while back I asked Don to build my dream.  He was in the middle of taking his business full-time, moving to a leased shop, and so on, so it took a little time but the result was well worth the wait.  Yesterday the custom-order pickups came in and after work I dropped by Don's shop in Mansfield, TX to pick up the guitar.  He was just putting on the finishing touches so I got to watch the last pieces (pickguard, etc.) as they were fabricated and installed.  I have all the fabricating skills of a handicapped bull so it was a real treat to watch an expert at work.

I asked Don to build me a guitar shaped like an SG but with a chambered mahogany body with a maple cap.  I love the double-cutaway shape but all-mahogany stock SGs can be a bit dark.  The chambers in the body lighten the body and more importantly, they soften the attack a little and give the guitar a more resonant quality without greatly affecting sustain.  The chambered body with the maple cap is a little thicker than an SG so it fits very snugly into the SG case.  This guitar is going to be my "daily driver" so I asked for a solid opaque finish instead of a fancy flame top.  An opaque finish can be more easily touched up when the guitar suffers the occasional inevitable scrape or ding.  I asked for a rosewood fretboard and abalone trapezoid inlays and an aged white paint job and gold hardware, and left the choice of knobs and pickguard up to Don's judgement. The black knobs, black-white-black pickguard, white neck binding, and black headstock were his choice and I think they complement the aged ivory paint very nicely.  I may regret choosing gold hardware for a "working" guitar because I know the plating doesn't stand up well - but it looks so good I'm glad I went for it anyway.  I'm hoping that keeping it well waxed with Renaissance wax will prolong the life of the gold plating.

The pickups are a matched set of Seymour Duncan "59's" ordered with the four-wire leads and the gold covers.  I've had these pickups in a few different guitars and with the exception of the out-of-production Bartolini XV3 stacked humbuckers for Strats, these are my favorite pickups.  I've yet to find a guitar that they didn't sound fantastic in, and this one is no exception.

Not surprisingly, the workmanship is basically perfect everywhere on the guitar.  I kind of doubt that the phrase, "close enough," is even in Don's vocabulary.  I own or have owned many guitars over the years, including a few rather expensive ones and one "boutique" production guitar.  Not even the boutique guitar can really compare with a guitar lovingly created by a single craftsman like Don.  The binding and frets are so perfectly formed it looks like plastic magically changes to metal without a seam.  The abalone fret markers are polished until they glow.  Even the access cover on the back of the guitar is a perfect fit to its routed cavity.  I watched as Don made the routing template for the access cover and he must have made a dozen trips to the sander to get it just right.

The nice thing about working with a custom builder like Don is that you get exactly what you want and, if you are able to pick it up in person, he'll take the time to set it up so it suits your playing style perfectly.  For example, initially the action was amazingly low and there was no buzz when Don was playing it - even when he was playing ZZ-top covers.  But, let me pound on it with my ham-hands and there was a little buzz so we worked the action up a little at a time until there was no buzz when I was playing it (I tend to play with all the finesse of a sledgehammer, unfortunately).  Even after adjusting it for me, it has a lower action than any other guitar in my stable.

In my opinion one of the greatest indicators of how much attention to detail has been applied to a guitar, custom or production, is the nut height.  Generally, in low- to middle-range electric guitars it is fairly unusual to find a guitar that pulls less than fifteen cents sharp when properly fretted at the first fret (i.e. fretted immediately behind the fret with just enough pressure to get a clean note).  Even higher-end guitars often pull more than ten cents sharp.  I generally work on the nut slots of my own guitars until I get them so they don't pull more than a few cents sharp and consider that pretty decent.  I was surprised to find that only one string on the Bell Custom guitar pulls measurably sharp on my tuner at all, and that one is just a bare flicker of the needle.  I didn't think it was even possible to cut a nut that low without getting fret buzz and that just illustrates how good the fretwork on this baby is.

Don does wonderful work with wood, but he really loves to work with Lucite and he has produced several neck-through guitars with clear lucite bodies.  I've played some of them and, somewhat to my surprise, they actually have great sound and sustain.  Visually they aren't my cup of tea because I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy, but they sound great.  If you're looking for something a bit unusual, or just a meticulously crafted traditional guitar, you might want to contact Don through the Bell Custom Guitars web site.

Update - March 2008

Well, I've had the guitar about four months now and the honeymoon still isn't over.  In four months I have only picked up one of my other electric guitars once - I grabbed my seven-string Ibanez to check the bass response of an amp.  This guitar has literally spoiled me for anything else, and I am planning on having Don rework the neck on my Bartolini equipped Strat.  I love the sound of the pickups on that guitar but the Don Bell guitar is so much more playable.  I used to joke that I kept buying guitars because eventually I would find one that made me a better player.  I'm discovering that's not as big a joke as I thought...