Rebirth of a Dead Beast

Salvage, Soul & Sonic Rebellion

Rat Bait Guitars reimagine apparently unsalvageable guitars, morphing them into new designs, retro and rugged.

‘When you pick up a guitar, you're not just holding wood and wire—you're gripping history. Not just the hands that played it, but the scars it carries, the timber it was born from, and the battles it survived. Rat Bait Guitars don’t chase perfection. Each component has its own previous life story, resurrection and metamorphosis. If you’re interested in an instrument with a story, Rat Bait Guitars are worth considering.’

Built from Ruin, Made to Scream

Take the body featured above: a Frankenstein of salvaged wood—fence post, roof offcut, shed panel, and the carved heart of a hand carved guitar that had been ravaged by woodworm and twisted out of shape. Treated, reshaped, and reborn into a retro 60s/70s silhouette inspired by Teisco and Kay designs, it’s a slab of tone with old-world charm and unapologetic grit.

• Neck Pickup: from a Manson Guitar (Matthew Bellamy)

• Bridge pickup: early 2000s ceramic single pole.

• Tailpiece: retro chrome clamshell, because why not?

This isn’t a museum piece. It’s a relic with soul. Read more here...

Imperfection as Identity

Rat Bait guitars are built in a shed that smells of glue and sawdust, not sterile polish. Parts are from the 1970s to the 2020s, mixing eras to create instruments that sound better than the homogenised clones flooding the market. They’re rugged, battle-scarred, and ready to scream.

• Reclaimed materials: furniture, fence posts, roof timbers, flooring.

• Custom-built bodies: Telecaster, Stratocaster, and the occasional Japanese oddity.

• Body prices start at £35.00. Each one is unique. Each one is alive.

What Players Say

• “Lovely Telecaster copy in scavenged wood, looks great and plays beautifully! Rat Bait are great luthiers!”
• “Arrived on time—very good guitar, best I’ve ever had. Sound is deep, all perfectly set up.”
• “Item was very well packed, as described and arrived very quickly. Excellent comms all round. Very happy—thanks! :)”
• “A really nice guitar, unique and obviously made with great care. Exceptional value. A great addition to my collection!”
• “Awesome, I would deal with again… lovely looking guitar, leaving to settle and look forward to playing it.”
• “Perfect little Telecaster body.”
• “Lovely Telecaster copy in scavenged wood, looks great and plays beautifully! Rat Bait are great luthiers!” 
• “Arrived on time—very good guitar, best I’ve ever had. Sound is deep, all perfectly set up.”
• “Item was very well packed, as described and arrived very quickly. Excellent comms all round. Very happy—thanks! :)”

These aren’t just guitars. They’re outsider art. Punk relics. Sonic protest pieces.

Why Salvage Matters

Every salvaged guitar is a strike against waste. A nod to sustainability. A celebration of character over gloss. By repurposing discarded timber and broken parts, a voice is given to materials that would otherwise be silenced.

Each guitar built is a story stitched together with defiance and solder. And if you’re the kind of player who values raw tone over showroom shine, welcome home.

Because each guitar body is handcrafted, genuine Rat Bait Guitar products are few and far between. Their rarity is why purchasing one of these creations should be seen as an investment.

Rat Bait Guitars 

Rat Bait Guitars are usually recognised for their distinctive relic builds, heavily inspired by classic Fender-style electric guitars that wear their age and character with pride. Yet on the track “Lay Back” the spotlight shifts. Instead of the snarling bite of a distressed Strat or Tele, the foundation is carried by a stripped-down, almost hypnotic bassline played on a Rat Bait PJ bass. The line is deliberately minimal—more pulse than flourish—creating a steady undercurrent that leaves space for the bubbling synths and vocals to breathe. This restraint gives the track its laid-back swagger, a sense of cool detachment that feels both raw and intentional. It’s a reminder that sometimes power lies not in complexity, but in the confidence to hold back, letting tone, texture, and silence do the heavy lifting. This is the way to make music - leave some spaces and use Rat Bait Instruments…

 Review: “Lay Back” – This Window

“Lay Back” unfolds like a half-lit confession, its pulse slow and deliberate, as though each beat is a breath taken between memories. The track doesn’t just reference Leonard Cohen’s Favourite Games and Beautiful Losers — it seems to inhabit their rooms, borrowing the scent of their cigarette smoke and the weight of their silences.

The vocal delivery is intimate yet detached, a voice speaking from the edge of a bed at 3 a.m., where desire and disillusionment lie tangled in the same sheets. The instrumentation is sparse but deliberate — synth tones and low, percussive murmurs that feel like the hum of a radiator in winter, or the faint static of a radio tuned just off-station.

Where Favourite Games toys with the erotic as a form of self-discovery, and Beautiful Losers drapes its characters in the sacred and profane, “Lay Back” channels that same duality. There’s a sense of bodies as landscapes — not romanticised, but mapped with scars, pauses, and the occasional flash of tenderness. The lyrics (or their implied imagery) seem to move between the tactile and the symbolic: a hand brushing over skin becomes a metaphor for the way memory brushes over time, never quite touching the same place twice.

The song’s pacing mirrors Cohen’s prose rhythms — languid, elliptical, and unafraid of stillness. It resists the modern urge to fill every space, letting the listener linger in the gaps, where the real intimacy happens.

By the time the track fades, it leaves you with the same aftertaste as Cohen’s novels: a mingling of beauty and ruin, of longing that doesn’t seek resolution. “Lay Back” isn’t just a song — it’s a room you step into, dimly lit, where the air is thick with the ghosts of lovers and the quiet ache of things left unsaid.