A lot of players don't realise how much of a guitar's personality lives in that one bit of plastic. Change the wood, change the pickups, change the strings - sure, all good upgrades. But swap the pickguard and the whole instrument suddenly looks like a different guitar. It's the cheapest, fastest facelift in the business.
So whether you're nursing a tired old Strat back to life, shoehorning a Kent Armstrong SplitTube into your prized instrument or you've just looked at your white scratchplate one too many times and thought "I'm bored of you" - this one's for you.
Okay, But Why Actually Bother?
Fair question. Here's what tends to tip people over the edge:
It's an instant transformation. Pull off a scuffed white guard, drop in something in aged pearl or tortoiseshell and it'll give it a new lease of life. Five minutes, one screwdriver, total reinvention.
It solves the "my new pickups don't fit" problem. Upgraded to something chunkier like an EMG 85? Your factory guard almost certainly won't cover the new routing. We cut to your exact spec, so your tone choices don't get vetoed by a bit of plastic.
It fixes the ravages of time. Old celluloid guards have a habit of shrinking, warping and cracking as the decades roll on - and when they go, they can take your guitar's finish with them. A proper replacement protects the instrument the way the original was always meant to.
It corrects factory laziness. Plenty of guitars, even decent ones, roll off the line with guards that don't sit flush or have screw holes drilled by someone clearly in a hurry. A precision-cut guard sorts the rattles and the gaps in one go.
And honestly? It just makes your guitar yours. Mirror chrome, abalone, whatever takes your fancy - it's one of the only places on the instrument where you get to make a proper style statement before you've even plugged in.
Not All Plastic Is Created Equal
This bit actually matters, so don't skip past it.
PVC is your reliable workhorse. Stable, won't warp, comes in just about every colour under the sun. If you want something that'll behave itself on a gigging guitar for years, this is usually the call.
Celluloid is the proper vintage stuff - the material the originals were made from. Nothing matches its depth in tortoiseshell or pearloid. It's got character PVC simply can't fake.
Acrylic is for the showoffs (said with love). Mirror gold, smoke, even purple - if you want a guard that catches stage lights, this is your material. It's thicker, usually around 3mm, and tough as old boots against scratches, though it can be a touch more brittle than PVC if you're heavy-handed.
Bakelite is the heavyweight old-timer of the bunch - properly vintage and about as close to "they don't make 'em like this anymore" as plastic gets. Where PVC has a bit of give and flex to it, bakelite is rigid and unyielding by comparison, which is part of why it's stuck around since the early days of guitar making. If you're after genuine old-school character (and a decent conversation starter when someone asks what it's made of), bakelite's hard to beat.
Why People Come to Us
Everything's cut here in the UK on our own CNC machine, which means we actually control the quality rather than crossing our fingers with an overseas supplier. It also means if something's not quite right, you're talking to the people who made it, not a call centre three time zones away.
Our template library is enormous - replacement guards for Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, Rickenbacker, MusicMan and many more. And if your guitar's an oddball with no template on file, we'll build one from scratch with you.
How to Get a Perfect Fit (and Avoid the Classic Mistakes)
A few tips:
Get a template first. Email us and request a pdf of one of the templates that we already show as available. Print it at 100% scale (check this - printers love to "fit to page" without asking) and lay it over your guitar before you commit. It's the only sure way to know your screw holes will line up.
Leave the protective film on while test-fitting. We can't accept returns once it's peeled off, so resist the temptation until you're certain everything sits right.
Pay close attention around the neck pocket and control plate. It's the tightest parts of the fit, and even half a millimetre out here will stop the guard sitting flush. Always test before you start screwing it down.
Don't go full gorilla on the screws. Snug is the goal, not white-knuckle tight. Overdo it and you risk cracking acrylic or making the guard "wave" at the edges.
Got sticky residue from the old guard? A bit of naphtha (lighter fluid) will lift it cleanly. Steer well clear of acetone - it'll strip your finish faster than you can say "oh no."
Quick-Fire Questions
Does swapping the guard change my tone? No - that's down to the wood, the pickups and you. The guard's job is purely protection and looks.
What's a "scratchplate"? Same thing as a pickguard, just the British way of saying it. We use both, depending on which side of the bed we got out of.
My guitar's a weird, obscure brand - are you stuck? Not even slightly. Send us your old guard, or a careful tracing on paper, and we'll clone it to match. See here for more details about this.
Is fitting difficult? A like-for-like swap is a ten-minute job with a screwdriver. Changing pickup types might mean breaking out the soldering iron, but it's a genuinely good first project if you've never had the iron out before.
Go On Then
A new pickguard is about as cheap and fast as guitar upgrades get, and the difference it makes is completely out of proportion to the effort involved. Your guitar shouldn't look like it just rolled off an assembly line somewhere - it should look like yours.
Have a browse through our full range and see what catches your eye.