Built by a player. Refined by engineering.

Fabian Borg was a young lead guitarist who wanted a more aggressive stage guitar. He built it himself with hand tools and took it from the workshop to rehearsal and the stage.

That instrument became the beginning of the Lightning idea.

Decades later, Lightning Mark II turned the original idea into a focused study of posture, balance, weight, neck geometry and access.

The design was developed as a performance tool, lightweight, ultra low profile, balanced and ergonomic. In 2023, the FB Lightning Mark II received the Malta Intellectual Property Creative Innovation Award.

Mark II is a development prototype and will not enter production. It predates ToneVector, but the lessons learned from it continue into Lightning Mark III.

Lightning Mark II has been played and tested by Maltese guitarists including Sean Vukovic, Alistair Galea and William Attard McCarthy. Their comments relate to the prototype they actually played, not to later production models.

“The care and thought that go into an instrument like this really come through when you get to play it.”

William Attard McCarthy

Meet the players and see the performance stories

Work on ToneVector began from a question about pickup placement and instrument geometry. It grew into a proprietary analytical system that helps FB Guitars refine pickup choice and placement for the guitar and player.

The same mindset connects physical and tonal engineering: do not accept a convention simply because it is familiar, ask whether it serves the player.

Discover ToneVector

Customers choose an original FB Guitars model, then we develop the configuration around the player.

We do not copy another brand’s guitar. We use the player’s references to understand tone, feel and function, then build within the FB Guitars design language.