Built your own guitar?

I'm in the process of building 2. Unfortunately this is my busy time of year at work and have not had time to complete them, or the money. Check out my post in guitar repair and maintenence.
https://www.guitarnoise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=35406

I have made three lap steels to date. two are being refitted and the third someone else owns...and is having a ball playing.
you can see and hear that one on my soundclick site. acoustic lap steel test.
lap steels are easy to build. I do not have to worry about neck and finger board radius and fret wire. etc.

I do a lot of major modding to electric guitars -- both electronic and mechanical. This includes 2 of my 3 Squire '51s (pups, bridge/tailpiece design changes, neck attachment, wiring configurations), a Saga kit Tele (very different from stock kit) and a lost-in-my-attic unfinished LP kit (massive reshaping, routing of chambers, adding a maple cap ...). The only thing I'm currently building from scratch is a lapsteel. As Dogbite says, these are comparitively easy. The hardest part is getting a paint/lacquer finish I like. Sounds? The Saga Tele plays well and sounds good -- I use it to gig even though I have many more expensive guitars. The lapsteel will sound just fine, I'm sure.

When I was a teen, I did build an electric guitar from scratch using my own designs for everything. The neck was from chunk of maple, which I carved using anything that would work -- mostly a rotary rasp in a hand drill. (Though IIRC, I did have a friend run it though a planer in woodshop.) It was very tough work, as I didn't have a router to do simple things such as cut the channel for the truss rod. But it all came together and worked. And then I bought a better guitar and spent more time on playing ...

I've built many guitars from pre-existing parts. I've never carved one out of a fallen tree, but used parts available through Warmoth, MM, Allparts, etc... Most have turned out as good - if not better - than most sub-$400 on the market. I do enjoy putting the pieces together and tweaking to my specifications.

If you are planning on building from scratch I think you have a long road ahead of you. Building from professionally built materials (neck, body, hardware, etc) makes the process easier, faster, and probably more effective in terms of playability.

Building a decent acoustic guitar's harder than building a solid body electric or lap steel. Still, some do it.

I was not planning to built my own guitar, but was just curious, because my father works in a wood shop and could get me a nice piece of wood for free... And I like the idea of having a custom guitar made by myself :)

But I'll wait until I know more about guitar stuff, cause I still don't know how I would put the metal thing in the neck to ajust it (don't know the english name for that piece) :lol:

But for the other thing, I know how it works since the first time I tried to change the string... I was not able to get the string out of their hole and I took off almost every pieces that I was able to took off :oops: (but now I know how a guitar is made)

truss rod.

you can build a cool lap steel guitar without the hassle a regular acoustic or solid body electric brings in complexity.
a lap steel is tuners and bridge with a pickup in between. short scale a 22.5 inches and a plank of wood. easy stuff.

I have not built a guitar from the wood up. But i have put together a strat and a Tele Thinline from parts i have bought on ebay.

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This one, i have used a Mighty Mite Body, a Fender MIM neck, Grover locking tuners, graphite Nut, String Trees, and Saddles. Pickups, Neck/Fender Lace Chrome. Middle/SD Duckbucker, and Bridge/DiMarzio stacked Humbucker. I have 1 volume, 1 tone control, and the last pot is a distortion driver, with 5 setting, from mild overdrive to heavy distortion. Scratchplate is black 3 ply abalone, and the control knobs are black domed with abalone. The rear cover is also black 3 ply abalone. This guitar really is a dream to play as i have it set up perfectly for me, and i can play just about any style of music from Blues to Metal.

The Tele

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This Tele was a scrapheap when i bought it off ebay for a few pounds. I stripped it, and rebuilt it from the ground up. I stripped all the paint off the body and resprayed it in colbolt blue. Replaced the bridge with a Shaller string through. Replaced the pickups with Wilkinson Zebras, and replaced all the wiring and pots. The Knobs are gold domed, and the tuners are Kluson Golds.

I am now working on an old Squier Bullet which has been stripped for rebuild. I am also using gold hardware on this, and the single humbucker is being replaced with an SD Invader and i will also be fitting a coil splitter. There is no tone pot, just a volume. I want to keep this one as simple as possible.

very nice guitars.

OT what are you growing on those vines?

very nice guitars.

OT what are you growing on those vines?

He he, Runner beans, Nothing exiciting. :D

I am building my own guitar from the ground up in my schools wood shop. I resembles a Dean USA splittail, but it has a floyd rose and a 24 fret neck (which i am buying). I will be sure and make a pretty extensive post about it when I am done. It takes a lot of work, a lot of attention to detail, and having people around who know what they are doing really helps(I dont....). There is a mess of usefull information available online. Buying no name parts is a good way to save money ( http://www.guitarfetish.com , their tuners and bridges are really solid).

I am also going to be moding a Dean vendetta XM, which cost me $90 but it is really solid and really light.

Hey, if anyone knows of a really goodguitar painting tutorial/guide they should point me in that direction.

Hey, RickyB. Those are some nice looking axes. I like the mix of pups on the strat.

Hey, RickyB. Those are some nice looking axes. I like the mix of pups on the strat.
Cheers. Versitility is the name of the game, and the Strat sure has plenty. :D

My current guitar is home made--from parts left over from other guitars and some stuff from stew-mac. :D