Introduction

Musical expression, fundamentally, is limited not by the musician but by the limits of musical instruments. The range of notes, dynamic limitations, and mechanical restrictions of the instrument set the framework within which the musician must form their art.

KVG is dedicated to fostering and advancing musical expression through bespoke musical instruments, effects and amplifiers. We're pushing the technology to widen the musical palette available to the artist.
“Unless you say otherwise…” (The standard configurations for our custom guitars.)
Unless requested, we use the standard 25.5" scale length for guitars, and 34" scale length for bass guitars.

We handcraft all our pickups for unexcelled tone. The sound of our pickups is unique and distinctive. We do not directly copy the tone of other pickups, although some of our pickups may be evocative of existing and vintage tones.

Standard necks have 22-frets, and we also offer 21 and 24 fret neck options. All necks receive our Sandburg SilkGlide neck treatment for fast, easy playability.

Bodies are crafted from swamp ash, alder or mahogany standard, but we will be happy to use any other wood you desire. Neck woods are usually maple with either rosewood or maple fingerboards, but we offer all suitable wood species.
Guitar Hotrodding Services (when out of the box is out of the question.)
Solid Body Electric Guitars and Basses only.

When we receive your guitar, we study its sound by playing it. Next, we use our proprietary Music Instrument Sound Analysis System (MISAS) to measure its sustain for each note, perform a spectrographic mapping analysis and a harmonic content analysis. Based on the results of these tests, we then recommend the modifications required to give your guitar more tone, more character, increased clarity, fullness, sustain, sensitivity and volume. Afterward, your guitar will be much more responsive and far more versatile while creating a unique sound that only you will have.

During your guitar's modification, we examine it for wear and damage, then undertake the necessary work to repair any wear or damage, and to make string bending easier and eliminate dead notes, including:
  • Fret Milling or Replacement (if badly worn).
  • Fret Leveling.
  • Fret Recrowning.
  • Fret Polishing.
  • Clean, repair or replace fingerboard.
  • Repair, reset or replace neck.
  • Repair or replace tuners.
  • Repair or replace output jack.
  • Repair or replace pickguard, rear cover, or control plate.
  • Clean or repair finish; refinishing may be needed with badly worn guitars and basses.
  • Repair cracks, slips, dents and other damage to the body.
  • Repair broken, oxidized or damaged bridge ground.
  • Repair or replace bindings, purfling, rosettes, and fingerboard dots.
  • Replace worn knobs and brights.

Some of the many modifications we offer are:
  • Installation of our proprietary Acoustron, MulTone or DuoTone pickups.
  • Installation of our proprietary SolidTone piezo pickup (transducer) system.
  • Installation of custom preamplifier or buffer.
  • Installation of onboard active equalizer.
  • Installation of onboard active sustain (optical or FET-type compressors).
  • Installation of onboard active fuzz, overdrive or distortion system.
  • Revised individually custom-engineered pickup switching, including phase and pickup mode selectors.
  • Revised individually custom-engineered tone control.
  • Compensation of volume controls to eliminate treble losses.
  • Installation of upgraded potentiometers.
  • Installation of upgraded tone capacitors.
  • Installation of upgraded switches.
  • Installation of upgraded wire.
  • Installation of cavity, pickguard and pickup cavity shielding.
  • Installation of our exclusive Brightener Switch.
  • Installation of upgraded Nut (Brass, Graphite, TUSQ, Locking or Bone as indicated by MISAS tests) cut and worked for proper string height.
  • Installation of upgraded Saddles (Brass, Graphite, TUSQ, or Steel as indicated by MISAS tests) adjusted for proper string height and intonation.
  • Installation of upgraded Tremolo Block, if present (Brass or Steel as indicated by MISAS tests).
  • Installation of our proprietary SilkGlide Neck.
  • Installation of upgraded string trees.
  • Installation of upgraded tuners - locking, calibrated or sealed vintage replicas.
  • Installation of Floyd Rose tremolo, nut and tuners.
  • Installation of Billy Bags tremolo.
  • Installation of upgraded strap locks.
  • Installation of upgraded or customized knobs.
  • Installation of custom decals or personalization.
  • Installation of custom pickguard.
  • Tropicalization of all electronics to ensure long life and reliability.

After each modification we:
  • Ensure your guitar is properly set up, including: Relief, Pickup Height, Nut Adjustment, Truss Rod Adjustment, and String Change with new strings.
  • Truss Rod Adjustment, resulting in a straightened fingerboard that has the correct relief.
  • Adjust Tuner Machine Tension and & Lubricate Gears (If Necessary).
  • Adjust Action, setting string heights at nut and saddles.
  • Adjust Intonation.
  • Adjust Tremolo, by adjusting tension and the balance between left-to-right and front-to-back.
  • Adjust Tremsetter by setting screws and resetting the zero position.
  • Compound, Buff & Polish Finish.
  • Perform Fingerboard Treatment.
  • Adjust and Lubricate Tuner Machines.
  • Reset the Neck, ensuring the correct angle.


Guitar Modification Services Rates: $100.00 per hour. We require a non-refundable $80.00 MISAS Fee to have our technician evaluate your guitar and draw up an estimate for modifications. The MISAS Fee will apply toward the overall modification fee, if you accept the estimate and ask us to proceed with the work.

BEFORE YOU SEND YOUR GUITAR TO US:
  1. Pay the MISAS Fee (click the Buy Now button below),
  2. Obtain a Service Receipt Authorization Number from our technician, and
  3. Pack the guitar according to instructions provided by the technician.

MISAS Fee: $80.00





Quality Assurance (a motivational speech.)
Music is the ultimate expression of improvement and change, achieved through the skill of its practitioners, appreciated by its fans. New sounds, new styles, new twists of “what has been.” These result from the inspirations that foster musical expressions. That’s why we create both new sounding instruments and improvements on existing instruments.

New technologies can result in meaningful progress and genuine improvement. We don’t adopt new technology unless it does something demonstrably better. We don’t cling to the old out of stubborn nostalgia but rather from our knowledge of what works and what doesn’t.

Do you have an idea for a new feature or new guitar technology? Tell us, we’ll do everything we can to make it work.

Our instruments are tested before they come to you in our working recording studio. The studio provides an ideal environment to test, then perfect, instruments and equipment in the same situations and for the same purposes that studio crews will use the equipment. It allows us to involve working musicians and experienced audio professionals in the inception, creation, refinement and perfection of a new product and also provides a training environment for our customers. This hands-on real-world experience ensures that everything we make will meet your needs.

We’re confident our work will be right, so every guitar we make has a 5-year warranty against defects (that excludes only obvious abuse). Once you receive your guitar, you have 45 days to decide how cool it is, but if you want to return it, you may — but it has to be as good as new, in the original packing - otherwise we have to charge a 25% restocking fee to fix it and clean it up.
Shipping and Delivery Times (excluding space alien abductions, Bigfoot raids and global apocalypse.)
Delivery times depend on the availability of the parts we need for your design, the length of time it may take to find a rare part or to have a custom-made part delivered, and the complexity of the design itself. Because each instrument is made by hand to your individual requirements we cannot simply pull an item off the shelf and deliver it to you. We will advise you of delivery time when we discuss your order with you.

We will ship your order to you using only one of the following approved carriers in order to ensure the safe arrival of your order:
  • United States Postal Service (USPS).
  • United Parcel Service (UPS). UPS is our recommended and preferred carrier.
  • Federal Express (FedEx).

Please do not ask us to ship your order using any carrier other than our approved carriers. Shipments by a non-approved carrier would mean that you would have no insurance, no recourse of recovery if your order was lost or damaged in shipment, and no warranty coverage whatsoever.

Before we ship to you, you will need to verify that the recipient ("ship to") address is correct along with a working telephone number at that address. We recommend you include an email address as well.

Note that you will be asked to sign for all orders having a value greater than $200.00 USD; this is merely an additional layer of protection against loss for you.

Should you have other questions or concerns about these shipping policies, please contact us.
Privacy Policy (because we hate snoops and spammers too.)
Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we make it available on our homepage and at every point where personally identifiable information may be requested.

This notice applies to all information collected or submitted on the [company name] website. On some pages, you can order products, make requests, and register to receive materials. The types of personal information collected at these pages are: Name, Address, Email address, Telephone number, Facsimile Number, TTY Number, TWX Number, Credit or Debit Card Information. On some pages, you can submit information about other people. If you order a gift online and want it sent directly to the recipient, you will need to submit the recipient's address. In this circumstance, the types of personal information collected are: Name, Address, Phone Number, etc.

We use the information you provide about yourself, when placing an order only to complete that order. We do not share this information with outside parties except to the extent necessary to complete that order.

We use the information you provide about someone else when placing an order only to ship the product and to confirm delivery. We do not share this information with outside parties except to the extent necessary to complete that order. Gift-cards are offered by which you can personalize a product you order for another person. Information you provide to us to create a gift-card is only used for that purpose, and such information is disclosed only to the person receiving the gift.

We use return email addresses to answer the email we receive and such addresses are not used for any other purpose and are not shared with outside parties. You can register with our website if you would like to receive our catalog as well as updates on our new products and services. Information you submit on our website will not be used for this purpose unless you fill out the registration form. We use non-specific identifying and aggregation information to improve the design of our website and to share with advertisers.

Finally, we never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways unrelated to the ones described above without also providing you an opportunity to opt-out or otherwise prohibit such unrelated uses.

We are committed to data security and work to prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

We are committed to Children's Privacy and work to protect the privacy of the very young, so we never collect or maintain information at our website from those we actually know are under 13, and no part of our website is structured to attract anyone under 13.

Should you have other questions or concerns about these privacy policies, please contact us.
Sales Terms and Conditions (will not leave your hair smooth and shiny.)
Some items have a Buy It Now button that will take you to our checkout system. For all other items, we will email you an invoice for payment by the Paypal payment system.

We want you to be completely happy with your Individually Custom-Engineered (ICE) product from KVG Laboratories. If you are not satisfied with any ICE product, you may return it for a refund of the purchase price (minus a 25% restocking fee), an in-house credit, or exchange for another product within 45 days of the date of invoice.

All returns or replacements require that you have a Return Material Authorization number, or RMA. To request an RMA, please contact us. You must include your order number when contacting us.

Returns must be in the complete and original packaging with all accessories and complete documentation (Owner's Manual, warranty card, quick start guides etc.), and show no signs of wear or use and include the Return Materials Authorization number we issued to you on the outside of the shipping box. Special Orders, discontinued products, close-outs, and blems are not returnable. Loudspeakers, transformers, and guitar or music instrument pickups are not returnable once you have installed them in your project.

Tubes are warranted for 30 days and cannot be refunded thereafter. All tubes come with a 30 day warranty against manufacturing defects. If you plan to shelve or store tubes for an extended period of time without using them, we suggest you test them upon receipt. Matched tube pairs or sets are tested and matched and considered in working order when they leave our warehouse.

If you are a reseller of our products, all warranties are voided once you transfer ownership to a third party. We encourage you to closely inspect your order before reselling.

No sales outside North America, the European Union, Australia, or New Zealand.
Legal Declarations (the stuff that makes lawyers happy and you bored.)
All material herein Copyright 2015 by Gainsharing Corporation of America, FEIN 43-1454160, Woods & Waters and KVG Laboratories. All rights reserved. The “KVG Laboratories” KVG Laboratories and Kermit Victor Gray;. logos, colophons, and all variations are Registered Service Marks of KVG Laboratories to denote its design services, loudspeakers, audio equipment, music instruments, acoustic products and derived ancillary products. All information contained herein is believed to be accurate insofar as possible. We cannot be held responsible for any consequences arising from inadvertent errors in content or from typographical or HTML coding errors, or from any use made of this web site or the information contained herein.

Individually Custom-Engineered (ICE), VariVox, Counterpoise, Varipoise, White Satin, Little Mayhem, Total Mayhem, Complete Mayhem, Utter Mayhem, and NeoCer are trademarks of KVG Laboratories.

We reserve the right to effect improvements and changes to any and all products and services without prior notice. The presence of any product or information represented by or connected herein as a HTML "link" does not constitute an endorsement of that information, company, individual, product, good, or service; or can be interpreted as a statement or guarantee of any of the same by the staff or management of KVG Laboratories.

The information presented within this web site is offered solely for informational and publicity purposes; no statement of, nor implied warranty of its suitability for any purposes other than that for which it is intended is made. Please note that our solicitations for bands or music should not be interpreted as an assurance that all Works submitted to KVG Labs will be accepted.

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, or to answer or to not answer electronic mail, telephone calls, letters, parcels, telegrams, or other transmittals at our discretion. All products described herein are subject to prior sale. Not responsible for lost personal belongings.

Not responsible for typographical errors or other errors. Although we strive to ensure all information herein is correct, we are not responsible for the consequence of your use, misuse or interpretation of any or all information herein.

Thank you for your understanding from the staff and management of KVG Laboratories.