I Want To Make A Guitar, So Help Me Please!

[MrHammet]

Hi,

I am new to the forum and guitar building, and I decided to make an electric guitar. So I could use some help. What tools am I going to need, what electronics are needed (like pickups and stuff) and where can I find some plans?

[maull]

I would suggest doing a LOT of reading. This forum contains a lot of the information you are asking about and can be easily accessed with simple searches.

[MrHammet]

Yes I know.... but now I have a concrete question. I looked at how to make the guitar body, and I see everyone put a think layer of wood on a thicker layer of wood. Why is that and what kind of wood are those ( I know it can be many different types, but is the thin layer the hard expensive wood and the thick layer some lighter wood or what?)

[Prostheta]

Generally they are all hardwoods. Decorative woods are commonly put on top. Have a look at Warmoth for ideas on the common materials and for examples. Welcome!

[MrHammet]

Ok, so would this be good:

Alder body

Maple neck

Rosewood fingerboard

Maple top

[MrHammet]

And where can I find a plan for the guitar with dimensions?

[MAGGOTBRAIN]

Hello

What guitar are you looking to build? Strat ,Tele, Les Paul?

Before buying any tools or wood I'd look into purchasing one of these books. http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/0953104907

http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/1846091276 The second one comes with full size plans for a strat style guitar. Both books are very detailed and with the search function here, should answer just about every question you might have. Good luck with your build!

Peace

Jack

[Prostheta]

I have both of those books and can say that without a shadow of a doubt they are the best on the shelves for the first time builder. Martin's is great because it comes with a full-size plan for a finished instrument whereas Melvyn's is comprehensive, showing several building styles and techniques.

[verhoevenc]

I'd second buying some books and doing a LOT more reading. I can tell from the questions you're asking that you aren't yet prepared to actually go about building yet.

Chris

[MrHammet]

I don't see why I should prepare to much, I'll just get some wood draw the guitar cut it out and then the neck and then put in the electronics glue it all together and there you go, a guitar!

[Mender]

I don't see why I should prepare to much, I'll just get some wood draw the guitar cut it out and then the neck and then put in the electronics glue it all together and there you go, a guitar!

Haha. If only it was that simple, we could each turn out a guitar every couple of days

[Prostheta]

Best of luck to you, however if you don't prepare then you are unlikely to succeed or end up with even a moderately playable instrument. You posted this thread asking for tools and plans for which you have been offered some excellent advice for a first time builder, but you don't see the need to do any preparation work....I can't see this going well, plus you are likely to end up injuring yourself without sufficient forethought on your work. I'm afraid that we can't spoonfeed you instant guitar building, but that Search function and the books mentioned definitely will. All answers are contained within them.

PS. Fingers don't grow back and you can't stretch wood.

[MrHammet]

I'm just kidding ofc

I'll get the book http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/1846091276 and do some reading before I begin, thanks you all for this kind welcome (unlike some other forums). I'll turn to you fellas again if I have some further issues.

But still I don't understand why noone told me where I can get some plans (except in the book)...

Edited September 9, 2012 by MrHammet

[Prostheta]

No worries. I really would put aside 2-3 hours of your day and go through the In Progress/Completed Builds. All of the tools from the most basic to way up there can be seen in use with the corresponding benefits/drawbacks. Use this to your benefit and personal situation. If you are building just the one, you can easily pick up most of what you need from your local DIY store. A lot of people have made fantastic instruments using only the most basic of tools but with lots of prep work and research. Remember that being relatively faceless on forums as a new member doesn't give much for people to go on when it comes to helping you. By all means introduce yourself, your experience in whatever like music, building, DIY, etc. and you'll soon find that opens up a whole new world to you. "I want to drive a car, what car should I buy and where should I go" always results in RTFMs, GRTFAQs and "use the search" function rather than what you expected :-D

[MiKro]

With a little searching you can find most anything here.

Here is a thread I started way back. It has a link to plans

http://projectguitar...c=46333&hl=site

[Juntunen Guitars]

You can get plans through stewmac.com for some basic electrics, acoustics, archtops, mandolins, etc. You can also get tools and some woods from them, a warning on their woods though is that they cut it to a bare minimum of having workable materials and cut them to match their plans so say you get plans for some guitar they don't have plans for and buy wood from them it may not work out.

Technically you could build a guitar with simple tools such as scrapers, rasps, files, hand tools but it's nice to have a few power tools. Either way you are looking at spending several hundred dollars in tools for some basic ones, power tools obviously cost more. Some hand tools cost several hundred for one tool.

The books recommended are good books. The book I started with was http://www.amazon.com/Guitarmaking-Tradition-Technology-Construction-Steel-String/dp/0811806405 it is a book on building acoustic and classical guitars with mostly hand tools and the only reason I had it was because it was given to me for free otherwise I would have bought the books mentioned above. I found it very helpful for building electrics too because it covers mostly everything to do between the two types of guitars.

Like others have said though the search button is your friend, you truly can find just about anything you will need to know on here. I'd would look at some builds by RestorationAD he usually covers about every step there is in the guitars he builds and if you want he builds pickups you can buy too. Just browse the "inprogress and finished builds" topic and you will find a lot of info.

[Shelvock]

I'm also fairly new to the game, and I have been reading and researching online and in books for around 8 months now... And only just have I had a go at making a body from scratch. I only used really cheap softwood and I'm glad because I made a couple of mistakes that I put down to poor technique, which you can't really read about. There's so much more to guitar building than I ever imagined, every time I thought I knew enough, I realised there was another tool I needed or I read a build thread that highlighted something that I hadn't thought about! And this was just regarding making the body, I'm not even thinking about carving necks for now lol! I'm not saying this is the way it is for everybody, but as everyone says, you've gotta be prepared.

I did learn a lot from stripping and refinishing (with veneers etc) old guitars, which I would recommend before a scratch build. I'm not trying to put you off the idea at all, but it's not gonna happen overnight. Best of luck!

[Dean]

A lot of building guitars ,is learning how to fix your mistakes.Some can be fixed and some can not.But you will not learn if you don't try.I spent over a year on my last build.Before each stage I would read about it, then look on you tube on how to do it, then read some more,then do it.I still had to do things over.I built at least three fret boards, and three fret jobs.Just take your time.

[MrHammet]

I contacted a guy nearby where I live, just so see what kind of wood I can get here. I asked him what is the humidity of the wood. He said it is 10-12% but they weren't dried (I'm not sure if that's the term, what I mean is that they weren't kept in a dry place for some long time), he says they are naturally dry, whatever that means. Is that good?

From my point of view, if the point of keeping the wood on a dry place for like 5 years or so is to lower the humidity level to 8-12% then it doesn't make any difference.

[Prostheta]

10-12% is wet in comparison to what is required for instrument making. It sounds like he has air dried them rather than drying in a kiln and if they are at that level they could do with some time in a kiln or more time drying. Any reason you wanted to use your local guy, ie. cheap or easily available? You need 6-8% ideally so you might do better to look elsewhere but then again for a first time instrument I am sure it will teach you a lot whether you end up with a reasonable instrument or not. At those moisture levels (it doesn't sound like he actually measured it, or did he?) a neck would happily warp as it dried and a body could also cup or twist. Still, working the wood applying techniques is what you need right now, so balance these two bits out to get where you want to go.

Dependent on where you are, you might as well grab a relatively cheap Alder blank dried for the purposes of instrument making. My first instruments were made using Walnut, Mahogany and Ash blanks I sourced in the UK, made for that purpose. I did reasonably well, and after that I bought wood boards from a sawmill which had been kiln dried and left them to acclimate for a few months. They were still practice pieces however. I went through 4-5 projects trying my hand out at various techniques and methods, screwing up here and there but ended up with experience.

If you "get into" instrument making, you will end up storing wood and having a stash which will easily sit for a few years!

[MiKro]

So MrHammet, did you find a plan you liked on the link I provided?

[MrHammet]

So MrHammet, did you find a plan you liked on the link I provided?

I took a look at it but first I will order a book on building ellectric guitar which has some plans in it.

And I'm not actually Kirk Hammet, I just use his name cause I didn't come up with anything else.

Edited September 13, 2012 by MrHammet

[Jackyl]

Another thing you can do is try and find a local Luthier that is willing to take on someone and show you how to make a guitar. The advantage there is that they probably have all the tools that you need. Plus I know from my own experience that I am not a book guy, so having someone there to show me is definitely an advantage. I only need to see it once and I can do it, but I can read 10 books and never get it.

The hardest part for me is still the neck, I have an issue with the why part. Yes I am an engineer by trade and it is probably the root of my problem, but someday I hope to understand it to the point where it is not a mystery to me.

My last comment, learn to build jigs.

[Prostheta]

We could tell since Hammett has two t's :-D

Jackyl got it right on the nose. Talk to people with hands-on experience who can show you a thing or two there and then and supplement that with what you read on the Internet or from books, etc. Like most luthiers I do more work designing and creating workholding and operation-specific jigs than I do building instruments (or whatever I am building). In that respect, engineering is a key component in more advanced building!

[MrHammet]

Well I have a relative that is a carpenter, and among other things he does some stuff for this guy that makes guitars, so I might take a trip to his place.