Backlund is a guitar brand built around the retro-futuristic designs of John Backlund, a self-taught illustrator and stylist from Rapid City, South Dakota. Backlund began sketching guitar concepts in the mid-2000s, drawing on the two-tone colors, chrome accents, and flowing lines of mid-century American automotive and aviation design. Early instruments were built in the United States in collaboration with Chattanooga luthier Bruce Bennett under the name J. Backlund Design (JBD), producing small runs of unusual electric guitars such as the JBD-100, JBD-200, and JBD-800 — models that paired mahogany or korina bodies with Lace Alumitone pickups and Hipshot hardware.

The designs have since been licensed to Eastwood Guitars, which produces the line at accessible price points. The Eastwood-built range includes the Model 100, with its cutaway body shape giving access to the upper frets, and the Model 400, a design Backlund has described as a happy accident that came from inverting an earlier sketch. Backlund himself has framed his work as styling rather than engineering — less about reinventing the electric guitar than about giving it new bodywork and trim.

Todd Rundgren has played Model 100s during Utopia reunion performances, with bandmate Kasim Sulton using a Model 400, and Joe Walsh has been reported among the designs' owners.

Backlund has 14 products cataloged on Equipboard, including Semi-Hollowbody Electric Guitars and Solid Body Electric Guitars.