The Bond Electraglide was a carbon fiber electric guitar manufactured by Bond Guitars between 1984 and 1985. It resembled a matte-black, 3-pickup Gibson Melody Maker (although with the 1962 onwards double cut-away), with a unique stepped phenolic resin fingerboard instead of traditional frets. Pickup switching, volume and tone controls were completely digital, powered by a large internal motherboard.
The player selected pickups via five pushbuttons; volume, treble and bass were incremented numerically via digital rocker switches, confirmed by a three-colour LED readout.
The guitar required an external power supply pack and given the state of engineering at the time, was relatively bulky; it never really caught on in the marketplace and only about 1400 units were ever manufactured.
British guitarist Mick Jones is known to have used a Bond Electraglide with his band Big Audio Dynamite in the mid-1980s. The Edge of U2 used his extensively on The Joshua Tree, including the solo on “One Tree Hill”, as well as on “Exit”, and “Mothers of the Disappeared”.[2] Will Sergeant, John Turnbull, and Dave Stewart were also Electraglide users.
Bond Guitars was set up by Andrew Bond (who died in 1999) in Muir of Ord, Scotland, in 1984. The company ceased trading in 1986.
Though being quite costly at the time the company was active, they never maintained their value on the second hand market.
The Dutch guitar manufacturer Aristides Instruments endeavours on a similar path since 2007. However, they use a specifically designed composite (dubbed Arium), rather than regular carbon fibre.
