Nice. The turtle pickguard is a dynamite touch.
Replacement TB 500 pickups are in the works.

What scale length is it?

scale length is 25.4inch. [647mm] 24 frets 16inch radius. thanks

that is so awesome. i remember you posting about this on the bean site. congratulations. if it sounds as good as it looks you could make alot of money!

If you change the headstock design I bet you could easily sell those for about $2000 each USD. Either way, nice craftsmanship. I hope it plays well and it's everything you want.

Cheers.

Ben Adrian

Fucking hell, I can't play guitar to save my fucking life, and never before have I wanted one! UNTILL NOW! That's amazing.

I just wish I could make stuff, like any stuff, THAT well.

thanks for all the feedback. i am looking into the possibility of making more guitars like this in the future. i would make asthetic changes so as they could never be passed off as an original travis bean. have to look into the original patent to see what that covers. [ anyone know where i can find that] i would like to get in touch with travis himself and get his thoughts on someone making similar guitars. if anyone knows how to contact him and can relay this message that would be gratefully appreciated. thanks,
gary

Hi,

This website -link now not working- http://www.lexiconoclast.com/bean/ used to have a whole section with the Travis patent, including wiring diagrams...

Maybe someone here know a little more?

That is a fucking gorgeous guitar.

Just went to the US Patent office website and searched for "travis bean" and got these: Patent number 4,915,003 and 4,915,004 both titled "Body for an electronic stringed instrument", but they seem to be for something else. The patents usually show screen shots of the original documents and technical drawings, so if we can get the patent numbers we should be able to determine which design features are protected. The site mentions that all Patents before the year 1975 are not searchable by keywords, you must have the actual patent number, so if anyone has any old marketing materials with patent numbers, post them here and let's see what we can find... because I'd really love to see someone do an affordable clone.

http://www.uspto.gov/