Guitars Made by Guitar Players for (Still Other) Guitar Players.
Broncos Electric Company is a small, 3-person guitar studio located in Louisville, Kentucky. We started out building guitars for ourselves, the kind we wanted to take to shows or sessions: versatile and reliable with comfortable easy-handling necks, sturdy hardware, high-quality electronics, and cool, hand-polished vintage finishes.
We’ve kept on making guitars like that. We cut, carve, assemble, finish, and set up each one with the care we’d take if we were taking it onto a stage or into a studio ourselves.
Choose the Wood That’s Best for You.
We offer guitar bodies in a range of hardwoods because no single wood is right for everyone. Some people are into tone wood. Others are more concerned about weight. Still others just want a great-looking grain. To all of those breeds of guitar players we say: yes! If you like the easy heft of paulownia or mahogany, we’ve got it. If you’re chasing classic tone, then alder may be what you want. For a dramatic grain, swamp ash or limba. Don’t really know? Cool. Go with poplar, an all-around great wood.
We Carve All Our Necks by Hand.
We shape all our necks using simple hand tools because it’s the only way to ensure that every neck feels great in your hand.
Hand carving means we can produce neck shapes that are virtually extinct in the present day. If you’re a rhythm player and you love the way a 50’s-era V-shaped neck cradles in your hand, you don’t have to mortgage your house to get one, we can make it.
If you’re a lead player that likes a modern, shallow C-shaped neck, we do those too. A baseball bat-thick D-shaped neck? Sure. If that’s your thing, we won’t judge.
We can carve a neck out of most any wood you like. We like walnut quite a lot, but we also do mahogany, cherry, maple, and others.
We Hand Wire Using Only the Best Stuff.
We put the hardest working, longest-lasting components we can find into our guitars: CTS pots, Switchcraft toggle switches, vintage-style cloth wire, Orange Drop capacitors, and multi-contact Electrosocket jacks. We also cover every inch of cavity space (and the backs of all our pick guards and cavity covers) with real copper shielding to ensure an absolute minimum of hum and buzz.
Our stock pickups are mid-priced P-90s and humbuckers that we think sound better than what you get in even some of the most expensive production guitars. But if you have a favorite boutique pickup type or brand you like, odds are we can put them in (and coil split them too if you want).
We use sturdy hardtail bridges with thick, block saddles (at least most of the time). Tuners? Locking. Frets? Stainless. Nuts are hand-shaped and filed from blanks made of real bone.
What About Hardware?
Most Any Look You can think of
Vintage nitrocellulose is all we use for our solid colors and clear coats. We use it because nitro looks great new, but looks even better old, wearing and checking and chipping like the classic guitars of the 50’s and 60’s. It’s something modern guitars with their thick coatings of polyurethane can never do.
We offer the Broncos body shape in most any color, which we can complement with a range of pick guard plastics and edge bindings (we’ll even paint a headstock if you like). We also do grain-revealing stain finishes and sunbursts.
Glossy, satin, natural, new, relic…we can do just about anything.
So what does all this awesomeness cost?
Probably quite a bit less than you think. We're musicians too. We know how life is. Get in touch.