Guitar Building Kits

Love it, certainly a piece to spark some conversation :D

or read a magazine on..... :D

Hi everybody, new guy. Whatever kit or parts guitar you decide to build, you have to be prepared (or at lest expect) to use more than a screw-driver to assemble the kit. Double that if you are working with raw or unfinished wood. Wood expands, contracts, shrinks, warps and twists under even controlled environments. A 60 year old les paul in a case in your climate controlled studio will react to temperature, moisture and pressure imagine what a ride through the midwest in the back of a fedex truck on a hot summer day will do to your $100 SAGA kit. At the vary least you should expect to do some sanding (outside of the ton of sanding you will need to do once you are finishing the guitar.) Most kits/parts will be CNC machined and will need ruff sanding and shaping to smooth out burrs. More importantly you will more than likely need to enlarge the neck slot, possibly a little with sandpaper and a block, but often chiseling and/or drilling mouse ears is needed to get the initial fit. Tuner holes will in almost all cases need to be reamed (unless you are buying a neck with bushings installed), Hardware mountings may need to be filled, redrilled or fine tuned. The list goes on and on. All of this is par for the coarse and nearly every kit/parts maker will tell you this in the fine print. It has little to do with the quality or the honesty of the builder, its just the nature of the beast.
Do a little research, lots of people have documented their builds and there is a ton of info out there. But don't be afraid to learn some new skills in the process. Working on and building guitars is exactly like playing guitars, you can spend $100 or $100,000 on it but the end result has more to do with the effort you put into than the money.
THATS MY CAVEAT - HERE"S MY ADVICE>
Buy an unfinished body rather than a kit. In my experience kits need more prep work to get to a work work finish and they are usually of a lesser quality mostly in the hardware department. If you accumulate the parts to finish the guitar over time your generally going to end up with decent stuff you can trade or sell it latter if you find its not what you want, but no one will ever want to by the $5 specials out of your SAGA and your not going to want them in the guitar you worked so lovingly on, will you? Plus, If you get a nice chunk of wood to start with you can begin to work on it straight away. Source out the other parts as you go. I recently picked up a beautiful 2 piece super light ash strat body on E-b@y. It's a musicraft and if you don't know about them you need to look into them, (much better than warmoth or mighty might, better wood, faster service, more accurate product at half the price.) They sell on the "bay" as jameson or jammerson or something, search musicraft and you'll find them. Anyway, I watched a few bids, studied how the went and what they went for and won one for $88!
I'd suggest getting a finished neck as well. Less hassle. You can get a squire neck with tuners for $50 and don't knock them until you've tried them. If you don't like it you can up grade latter but it will get you to the point where you can set up and play it.
If anyone here is serious about building a parts guitar or assembling a kit you absolutley need to check out the guitar reranch. Great articles on finishing guitars as well as tools, tips and one hell of a forum. But even more so check out Ron Kirn's website and guitar building tutorial. Ron is the master (Yoda really!) and he shares so much info it's almost unfair. Plus it's a funny and interesting read.
My last piece of advice, if you're still awake, Do It! Absolutely worth it.

This still seems like something I'm really interested in doing but the more I read all the advice/suggestions and what-not the more I realise just how little I actually know about guitars ... kind of like being able to identify the head from the tail of a horse doesn't mean you know anything about horses (or whatever). I saw some very cheap guitar building kits on ebay and was (honestly) suspicious of what kind of quality (or lack thereof) the things inside would be ... sure they say the finished guitars are playable but that doesn't mean anything :P

I'll keep nosing around to see what comes up but I think my FIRST action will be to find some reading material (again, thanks for suggestions) on the subject so I know a bit more about what's involved. My wood-working skills are somewhat limited (I could always press my husband into service in that area...or bribe him :twisted: ). Always time to practice those as well, lol.

This still seems like something I'm really interested in doing but the more I read all the advice/suggestions and what-not the more I realise just how little I actually know about guitars ... kind of like being able to identify the head from the tail of a horse doesn't mean you know anything about horses (or whatever). I saw some very cheap guitar building kits on ebay and was (honestly) suspicious of what kind of quality (or lack thereof) the things inside would be ... sure they say the finished guitars are playable but that doesn't mean anything :P

I'll keep nosing around to see what comes up but I think my FIRST action will be to find some reading material (again, thanks for suggestions) on the subject so I know a bit more about what's involved. My wood-working skills are somewhat limited (I could always press my husband into service in that area...or bribe him :twisted: ). Always time to practice those as well, lol.

I would read up on repairing and doing setups on guitar. Maybe pick up a cheap fleemarket, or used guitar, and start lerning how to set them up to play well. Might still end up with a junk guitar.... but you will learn how the diferent steps work to improve the guitar.

Hmm, also a good thought.

I think a really cheap guitar from a yard sale is a great idea to learn adjustments and setup. Setups aren't hard once you understand the concept of how and why things are adjusted. For what it's worth, that red guitar in my pictuer has a very good body. It is 3 piece alder and has a standard Strat route, not a "bath tub" or universal route like many cheap bodies have. (A universal route is where under the pickguard there is just one big cavity cut out for the pickups and elctronics.) Mine has 2 chevron shaped routes to accomadate two single coil pickups and one square humbucker sized route at the bridge position, that are connected by a chanel and there is a route to the side that accomadates the pots and switch. American Strats I understand have 3 piece bodies and Mexican made ones have 5 piece bodies. I was looking at bodies but I got this entire guitar for $99. Now mind you not all guitars from this place have this nice of a body. I have an ash one that has a universal route. This particular guitar had the specs for the body listed so I knew exactly what I was getting. I might some day buy a new neck for it but for now the one on it plays quite well and has a 2 way adjustable truss rod.

It is fun building a guitar even if it is just from parts.

Thats what I did TR. my nephue had this REAL nasty ebay strat copy, and he did not want it any more. He gave it to me so I could give it to my daughter. Well this thing was a REAL POS!! I did a lot of reading on line, and also picked up a book... Not 100% sure the name right now... its burryed in my shop, but its somehting like "make any guitar play great" I jumpped in, and got to work. The neck was mounted at a wrong angle, and was warpped BAD!, the electral hummed so bad plugged in, that anything over "in a room with a sleaping baby" vol was unplayable. Well I found sawdust under the neck/body joint that was angling the neck up, plus it was badly cut at that. A little bit with a chisel had that fitting.... resolderd all connections, and lined the inside with foil tame cut down the hum, and MANY times working on neck/nut/bridge adjustments had her playing not that bad. Its still a junk guitar.... and still has the same BAD pickups and scrachy pots in it... but it plays 100% better, and i learned a TON on that thing!!! And if I messed up? no big loss. It was expendable. Things ive learned ive used on all my other stuff. and im still learning more as I go along. ive cut my teeth building a lap steel, and now im planing a cagar box guitar just to mess with. then im planing on working on building a tele type guitar... still planing that one... I want it a little diferent.. so havent figured out where to go with it yet.

For reading material, check out http://www.stewmac.com
Under "books" they have a wealth of literature (um, yeah) on repair and building guitars of all construction. They also have tools and plans and what not. More so, they have great article and columns by the likes of Dan Erlwine, that are free.
As much as I like Stewmac and have spent decades lusting over some of their products, they are severely over-priced and I wouldn't buy anything form them. In the latest catalog they have a device for lifting knobs away from pots for $14 (I wedge a folded paper towel under the knob and pull up.) But check them out, find a book and search the isbn#. I'd suggest Build Your Own Electric Guitar by Martin Oakham (ISBN 1-84566-193-1) It's not too heady, covers everything, acts as a good desk reference and comes with full size plans as well as detailed instructions on making templates from the plans. $20 on amazon used right now btw. But there isn't anything in any of the dozen or so books I have that I haven't found on the web, the books act as good reference in the work shop though. I would dissuade any body form buying any book from a guy named T. A. Swike, they are not of any value at all, but I see them everywhere.

RE TRGuitar's post on number of pieces and routes. Vintage strats and most other vintage reissues (AVRI and CIJ) have routes for three single coil pickups. Today I see most fender routes with a humbucker, single coil, humbucker (HSH) or SSH like TRguitar described. I think the original Jeff Beck signature model had a swimming pool route but I think that's the only fender guitar I have ever seen with such a route. On a side note, routes from the 50's and into the 60's were shallower than they are on current single coil routes, and they featured a crude "wormhole" route from the bridge pickup to the control cavity.
Regarding the number of pieces joined together to form the body, I have never seen any evidence that the number of pieces is connected to where the body was constructed. The vast (vast) majority of strats I have encountered are two pieces of wood. I have seen a handful of one piece vintage guitars (tele's anyway) and I have encountered some three piece bodies from the seventies as far as vintage and some imports and mexican as well as one squire tele I own. But I can honestly say I have seen only one four piece strat body and it was a 70's Burney and the forth piece made for a small scrap of the lower bout. But having made guitars I can say that joining anymore than 3 pieces would be more time consuming than cost effective. If they are out there, they're rare and not good rare I would say. You have think that guitars are only about 12 inches wide, if you look at a vintage sunburst strat you'll see they are general two pieces and hardly ever aligned at the center, so you have two pieces probably 5-9 inches wide. The two pieces get their faces planed, glue is spread on the faces and the two pieces are clamped together for a few days. Than a worker sets the template over the nicest grain pattern (you'd hope) and the body is cut out of the blank. This would be even more true up until '65 because all strats started life as sunbursts back than. If you have three peices (leo hated waste) you have a center piece where the outside faces would be planed and the two "wings" glued and clamped to it, if you bump that up to four you start to see the difficulty in extra steps and more so in clamping, why bother doing all that extra work to make an arguably less desirable product? Guitars with more pieces are out there I'm sure, but not from Fender in my experience and the number of pieces is not a reliable way to determine the country of origin. I have custom shop, a CIJ RI and a mexican standard right now and they are all two piece alder bodies. BTW The mexican has the nicest body of the three.

http://www.guitarstop.com/tour/guitar.htm

Here is the source of my information. I dunno,maybe it is wrong????

Blocks of Alder for Mexican guitars come laminated with an Alder veneer and the top
beveled direct from the lumber supplier.

Rough Ash block and contoured body. USA Ash bodies are usually made out of 2 pieces of wood, USA Alder bodies are usually made out of 3 pieces of wood.
:?:

Yikes!! Yeah, I stand corrected. I have a left handed MIM start body made in 2001. I'll sand that down and post some pics. The newest of my three working strats is an '89. I can assure they were not botched together and topped like these newer ones. I stand by what I said about vintage guitars (I guess that means up until the 90's now) I wouldn't buy one of these newer ones if I were any of you. It appears that they have as much glue as wood and I doubt the lumber yard that is matching up the blocks and gluing them together is doing any kind of a knock test. Sad. Thanks for the post.

and my newest strat is a '96 (not counting a squier). I think my wife may be right, I can't keep track of all my junk.

I'd suggest Build Your Own Electric Guitar by Martin Oakham (ISBN 1-84566-193-1) It's not too heady, covers everything, acts as a good desk reference and comes with full size plans as well as detailed instructions on making templates from the plans. $20 on amazon used right now btw.

I found that my local library has the book in, wonder of wonders, well...they're getting it in from another branch for me. :)

Awesome.

My MIM Strat is a 1992 and I have always suspected it is much closer to a made in USA than the newer ones. I got nothing to back it up, just seems that way.