The Bond Pitchboard
The technology that makes a Bond a Bond.
A conventional guitar uses individual metal fret wires.
A Bond doesn’t.
The Bond pitchboard is a continuous stepped playing surface, with each note defined by the geometry of the step itself.
Originally developed for the Bond Electraglide in the 1980s, the concept has now been re-engineered using modern scanning, CAD and CNC machining to create a precision-machined aluminium pitchboard for the Bond Rebel.
WHY A PITCHBOARD?
A conventional guitar relies on individual pieces of fretwire installed, levelled and crowned to create the contact points for each note.
The Bond approach builds those contact points directly into a single, precisely machined playing surface.
That means the note-defining geometry is part of the pitchboard itself, rather than a collection of separate frets fitted afterwards.
For Bond, that brings several advantages:
Precision
Consistency
A more direct relationship between string and playing surface
And no conventional fretwire to level, crown, dress or replace.
The hard stepped surface also contributes to the immediate attack and clear articulation that gives a Bond its distinctive character.
It isn’t different simply for the sake of being different.
The pitchboard is Bond’s answer to a simple question:
if the frets define every note on a guitar, why not engineer that geometry directly into the playing surface itself?
WHY ALUMINIUM?
Aluminium gives us the precision, rigidity, attack and articulation we want from the pitchboard.
But the Rebel is designed as a complete system.
The aluminium pitchboard is paired with an alder body, a string-through hardtail bridge and Bare Knuckle Black Dog humbuckers to balance that precision with warmth, weight and punch.
The precision of aluminium.
The soul of wood.
DOES IT PLAY LIKE A NORMAL GUITAR?
It feels different.
That’s the point.
But chords, vibrato, slides and string bends all work exactly as they should.
Experienced players have now spent time with the Rebel and demonstrated that the stepped pitchboard doesn’t limit normal guitar technique.
NO CONVENTIONAL FRETS
There are no traditional frets to level, crown, dress or replace.
The pitchboard itself is the playing geometry.