Vance Custom Guitars

25/01/2026

Here’s Mark Bartel doing his thing with his brilliant new amp - Cool stuff and his new Vance “Problem Child” is speaking in there as well - 🙏😎

28/09/2025

This should be taught at schools.

28/08/2023

Hi, We are shut for a couple of weeks until 18 Sep to do some essential reno's and maintenance to the Factory and to Rusty who is showing his age. I look forward to getting back on deck and thank you in advance for your patience. Take it easy peeps and Ill see you soon. R.

26/08/2023

Robyn here, Rusty’s daughter! Guess what?! It’s Rusty’s birthday today. Woot woot! If you have a moment, please leave him bday message below ☺️ Thank you so much. Y‘all rock 🎸

27/02/2023

22 was a year for our classic Clonakilla Wines inspired finish and Alan Hing's take on our Shepherd offset was no exception. It was a cool custom build with a Honduras Mahogany VCG Traveller body and neck capped with a Madagascar Rosewood board fretted up with Jescar Stainless frets and a neck heel spoke adjusting truss rod.

Bare Knuckle Pickups provided the vintaged Painkiller bridge and Emerald neck pickups - a combination that is all about powerful drive and definition whereas the mid weight body further focused the tone set. The rest of the guitar contains all the usual suspects and AH had some nice custom inclusions to cap off a really pretty piece of Mahogany. I'll let the imagery do the talking here:
Regards and hope yr all enjoying 23. Rusty and Robyn

23/01/2023

A picture is worth a thousand words - Luke Wheeldon from outstanding Country Rockers Hurricane Fall giving his Vance LW401 a work out - and also congrats on the band giving Tamworth a big taste of things to come - you peeps are just the best and wishing you all the best for 23 and beyond.
Rusty and Robs.

At our show on Saturday 21.1.23

📷
Thanks to team for the top shelf production!!

Our new HF single, Unbreakable, is released on Friday the 27th

http://lnk.to/HFUnbreakable

19/01/2023

Customer Info: Ivory Tuners Far Cup.
If you have a Vance Custom Guitar fitted with Ivory look-a-like buttons as imaged you may experience loss of function (nice name for you keep turning them and nothing happens to the string tension). We have identified this issue and we will be working with Sperzel Guitar Tuners to fix this problem. Richard Emms just had an off-pissing failure with his new S2 Bluesy and has been kind: "Its still my fave guitar"...but that means very little to Rusty. We will fix this problem as soon as Sperzel ships replacements and even tho you may have a good set you will get a replacement set of Metal tuners as required (message us here thanks).
Bummer, hope you still love us. Rusty.

18/01/2023

OK, everyone knows Jason Phelan, killer guitar master, (if you don't, look im up) from such monsters as Dog Eat Dog and Live Evil and lately I've been working on his Brian May Guitar which is an absolutely cracking replica.
But what you may not know is that his boofull little boy is called Vance - so he gets his own bumper sticker and the promise of a Vance guitar and endorsement if he chooses the dark art of guitar playing sometime up track. Hopefully he may just get a good job and a future, but you never know.

06/01/2023

This Clonakilla S2 for Blues lover Richard Emms broke some new ground for Vance Custom Guitars. It's a truly dedicated "blues guitar' from the ground up and Richard set the bar by choosing the Bare Knuckle Pickups Peter Green blues in Chrome as the start point. We wanted to keep the original "Junior" feel that the S1/S2 Vances were inspired by with a wraparound bridge. In this case the brilliantly engineered Schaller Signum - as near a perfect design as one could hope for.
In keeping with reinforcing the blues tones that Richard sought we used 22 Nickel Silver frets rather than the super slippery, wear free Stainless frets - different drag for blues vibrato and bending equals different tone and grit.
Ditto the titanium reinforced laminated Honduras mahogany neck -all blues oriented with the correct "give" to smooth the fundamental pick attack and enrichen the harmonics. The Madagascar Rosewood neck just further sweetened the deal.
Enough Tech Talk tho.
This guitar worked and there is nothing more pleasing to a guitar maker than to hit the spot that we were aiming for . Many thanks to Richard for his faith and patience in this build. Nice one.

03/01/2023

We just delivered our take on a down-tuner Vance SSG for Guitarslinger Dave Drynan of Lucifungus. Dave loves his SG's but they struggle for serious down-tuning. The skinny is it's a 25.5 inch scale "looks like a" SG with all the Vance features which make this configuration work down scale. Its the perfect solution to players who are comfortable with the look and feel of the traditional instruments but need the performance of modern custom guitars.
As usual these days its a 'Traveller" which comes apart for air travel in a standard suit-case with a simple to use neck heel spoke trussrod adjust and a bound ebony neck with stainless steel Jescar frets. The Queensland Walnut laminated neck is reinforced with carbon fibre and has a striped ebony face plate over a 17 degree peghead break angle.

Bare Knuckle Pickups provided the "Radiator" covered Ceramic Warpigs which are killer for working at the doom end of the scale while still articulating all the strings and complex chordings. Nice.

Best get was the design and fitting of a unique "full size" upper bout pickup selector switch. This is where is where the switch should be for quick access and we inset it a bit to keep it out of the way.

Lotta work and a lotta fun this one and ably assisted by our Custom Guitar Manager Tompa at Better Music and Liv our training Tech. C'ya in 23, Rusty.

02/01/2023

After grinding out 2022 I couldn't really think of a better way to start the new year than to show off Luke Wheeldon and Hurricane Fall earning the spot as Lee Kernaghan's new Touring band. Blown away seeing Hurricane Fall's hard work, dedication and full-on effort being so richly rewarded by this honor. Luke and his LW401 up there doing their thing with Lee ain't too shabby a look either. HNY Comrades, Liv, Robs and Rusty.

Great gig on Saturday! Can’t wait to start touring the show!

📷 .sweeney_
🎸

08/06/2022

It’s been too long Bartel Amplifiers