mickyg

yo. I got a saga tele kit not so long ago. Damn easy to put together, and to be honest, the finished guitar sounded damn sweet. I love it.

I really like the idea of making them and selling them on, although there are so many differant copies of tele's for pretty cheap I don't know how many you could sell. Although.... just an idea for you..... you could let people decide how they want the guitar finished and therfore people would pay more....

I still haven't routed the body for pickups yet, i was thinkin of waiting until I get the pickups so that I could get a better idea of what size of cavity etc....

Right so heres the dealeo.

I have a crap guitar that i am trying to do up at the minute.

The neck sits about 1/2 inch above the body. The body is completely flat.

I was gonna possibly cut a section out of the neck, but thought no.

So it is gonna stay this height above the body, however one thing i need to know is...................

Would the strings be too high off the body for two humbuckers to pick up the sound..... secondly would I be able to use one of these bridges on a flat guitar.

and this tailpiece?

Ok so here we go. Still haven't finished oiling it but here are some pictures of how she is lookin now.

Almost finished sanding here.

Stained and with first layer of oil on. She is looking alot better than she was..........anyone else agree? Just in case you can't remember, here is a brief idea of what she used to look like.

THEN

So i guess my next step is to buy the humbuckers, and the electrics. Damnit now i reach the hard part!!!!

Right. I completely finished sanding the stratobastard down. Smooth as a babys backside. I then got out the stainer from the old lemonade bottle in the back of the shed and stained away. she is now a deep orangey brown colour. I then got the danish oil out and have started oiling her. I have pictures but i will put them on tomorow. Now i need to buy:

Fretwire

Pickups

Few other things.

Shabby Old Guitar

£12

Two Humbuckers

£28

Wasting hours and

hours of my life, on

a piece of sh*te guitar,

sanding, staining and

sweating.

Priceless

I hate this guitar now. Such a heap of junk.

Basically its been ages since i've done anything to the b*stard, exams and christmas and stuff. I'm basically finishing off stripping the paint off the body, sanding and then im gonna treat it with danish oil.

The neck is getting there slowly, but it is the least of my worries at this point in time. My main conundrum is the pickguard or probably the electronics. Because the guitar is randomly sized, I can't just buy a ready made pickguard. I thought about sending a tracing to pickguards.com but thought that may turn out to be quite expensive. So basically I am gonna use the same one.

The pickguards I am gonna buy are two gold humbuckers

To put these pickups in I am gonna need to do some routing.

Ill be back soon to complain about the electronics.

Ok so for my second guitar i bought a piece of crap homemade thing from years ago. It isn't full size though.

I was gonna buy a new neck for the guitar but realised a new neck would be too wide. So i am sticking with the old neck.

However the neck seems to be pretty high off the body of the guitar. How would i be able to resolve this.

why don't you think staining it will work?

quilt maple veneer. yeah i would agree with you. but........i am trying to spend as little as possible, not only cause i am a cheap son of bitch, but to prove my friends wrong that it won't cost alot of money.....

piece of firewood?? This will look hot as F*ck when its finished. Just a bit foamy around the mouth.....

it just needs some time and attention....

i will make you eat your words..... maybe...

Right I took some pictures. You won't get to see the state of the guitar whenever i got it because i have already stripped a load of paint off, but just imagine it a more dirty black colour.

Here is a picture of the body of the guitar, notice the 3 completely different knobs on it. One of which doesn't even do anything, doesn't even move. bizarre.

Nice big hole here. Makes the guitar look like a mangled mess, oh no wait it is a mangled mess.

Here is one of the worrying love notes on the guitar. In case you can't see it says, 'i love you do you love me too?'

This picture shows a very rough idea of how i want the guitar to look. The body will be stained a dark red/brown colour. I will have two Gold humbuckers and all the other parts will be gold as well. The paper is just a template of the pickguard, i have just made a slight adaption to the old pickguard.

Maybe the guy I bought it off was trying to tell me something.ha ha

Im laughing on the outside, inside i am petrified. ha ha

Ill have some photos on tommorow hopefully

I can't remember who exactly on this forum said that as soon as I build one guitar, I will want to build another....haha its true. Straight after finishing a Telecaster i have moved on.

Whenever I was at one of my friends house, i would always see the vague figure of a guitar packed away in the cupboard. For ages I considered buying it, and then last week i purchased it for 15 english pounds. Now bear in mind I never took this guitar out to look at it in any detail, all i knew was that it was a guitar of some sort.

Well the guitar was a piece of Sh*t, basically. The guitar was handmade by someone in about 1978 or something. The body had been painted over in white ( badly). However the white was more a black colour due to the thick layer of dirt all over it. It stank of smoke because it had spent the last at least 8 years sitting in a smokey room. The pickups seemed to be held in place by a combination of small sticky pads and chewing gum....

There was part of a Mandolin attached to it.... The tremelo did nothing it was just screwed into the wood, had no contact whatsoever with the strings.

Whenever i took the pickboard off, there seemed to be messages written all over it by whoever made the guitar....an example... 'I love you, do you love me?'

The guitar is also not full sized, it is just a random size, which will make it hard to buy a new neck for, which was what i was planning on doing.... not enough time or money or skill to make a neck myself. hmmm

So as you can tell this is gonna be a strange project. I will post some pictures as soon as i can, just so you can see this.

Hi, due to a lack of money, a severe lack of money should i say, and tools and expertise. I have decided to hold off on my first guitar building project for a bit. However i have decided to buy a self assembly telecaster kit from craft supplies.

http://www.craft-supplies.co.uk

I was just wandering though what sort of quality these sort of kits offer, am i likely to get a good sound or is it more likely to sound like piss???????

Cheers

Michael

right i haven't yet started my first guitar project. but i was just assuming that

the edges of the guitar are sanded to give them the slightly curved finish if you get what i mean. however one of my mates was talkin about using a router to do it???? is this right or is he talkin balls????

michael

hi, cheers for all your suggestions. I have now decided that i am gonna buy an ash body blank for 25 pounds. Alder sounded good but was an extra 30 pounds and i am on quite a tight budget at the minute.....so ash it is. I will order it in the next couple of days hopefully. Can't wait to get started on this bad boy

cheers again

Mickyg

Yo, completely new to this whole guitar building thing. In fact i ain't even started yet. I am about to start a project on a strat style design and at the minute i am looking to buy body blanks from a site i found. (i thought this would be smart as it is my first try) I am just wandering is there any particular type of wood that i should use, are any easier to work with? I am looking at a wood called Zebrano....i am guessing this is the same as zebra wood????? or else i am thinkin about getting Amazaque??? does anyone know anything about these woods?

thanks Mickyg