Hey, first of all I want to say this site is Awesome!
Now, I've been thinking a lot about building my own guitar for some time now. However, with my limited funds ( I'm 16, have about 400 bucks but im getting a job this summer) its hard for me to find things that I can reasonably afford, since I would like to build a JEM style body with AANJ and a Floyd Rose Type Bridge. I've been looking to alternatives to cut the price down, like a hardtail and building everything myself (my dad has a nice workshop setup, and he's quite a good woodworker), but as I do that the appeal of the project goes down as well.
Then, I remembered Ed Roman's site and that he has a Kit of Original Ibanez parts. It's it looks to be a RG body with AANJ, TRS trem, and it comes with everything I'd need to put a guitar together for 300 dollars.
kit guitar
This seems like a good buy to me, as I could use the RG to JEM tutorials on this site (grip, lion's claw, jack, maybe the fret scallop) and then refinish it, probably Material top and solid color back and sides (I love the swirl, but how much experience would this take to get any good results?).
Has anyone here dealt with Ed Roman? He seems to run a good business, high quality control, but somewhere I think I heard not real good things about him.
Anyways, this route seems like it would be a better way for me to get into guitar building, and stay away from so many precise tasks on the first try, while ending up with a nice looking, probably well playing guitar. However, I think anything could beat out my GSA20 (although I just put in a sweet Duncan Custom Custom that I got for my birthday ).
I'd like to know what people think of this, rather than constructing everything on my own.
Thanks a lot.
