My Guitar Build

[Grem]

 

Let me state from the beginning that I have never wanted to build a guitar from scratch. I have learned from this build that it takes many years for someone to learn all the skills needed to really do that from scratch. All I ever wanted to do was to work on my own guitars. I mean I could already change the strings, rewire pickups, replace volume and tone pots. Even had replaced quite a few nuts and bridges. But the results were exactly what I did. Let’s just go ahead and call them what they were, hack jobs at best.

Every job I had ever done was with one thing in mind from the start, I need to get this done, now! So now that I have aged and mellowed, I can surely work on my own guitars with some patience and do the work that I am capable of!

Two things I learned real fast: 1. My eyesight is nowhere near what it used to be.  Even with reading glasses I still can’t see what is needed to do this kind of work. 2. I had not mellowed near as much as I had thought! No, I over estimated that quality of mine by many miles.

[Grem]

 

Edited August 1 by Grem

[Grem]

I got the StewMac S-Style guitar build kit. Opened it and was really surprised at the quality of the wood and the hardware. Neck looked good, but I couldn’t play it because the frets were too sharp. And I do mean sharp. I took everyone’s advise and used Tru Oil for the finish. I wanted a natural wood look and this proved to be the best and easiest solution.

Before I started sanding I used a wood rasp to take more of the upper bout out. It was thick and squared in shape which I didn’t like. So I smoothed that upper bout out and then had to sand it all out. I also thought I would put some dark stain on the body to bring out more of the grain. I would apply stain then wipe it off before the stain gets soaked up all the way. But this wood had lots of very small “pores” in it that I didn’t notice until I applied the stain. When I wiped the stain off, it did bring the grain out more, but it brought out the pores too. Really bad. So I had to sand all that out.

I did a lot of sanding.

I forgot how many coats I put on the body. It’s upwards of 15. After each application of the Tru Oil I would sand with 0000 steelwool. It looks really good. Grain has some depth to it.

I then took cooper sheeting that I got off Amazon and lined the whole pickup cavities including the jack socket. That was a job I tell you. I also lined the inside of the pickguard too. It does help. It really does. Glad I did it.

[paulo]

Custom Build Guitar FOR SALE - open to offers -  contact Grem.

 

[craigb]

Did you factor in the cost of having a luthier fix it at the end? ?

[Jonathan Sasor]

@Grem You're a brave man going all in with an unfinished body! Finish is fiddly work, good luck!

[Grem]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

@Grem You're a brave man going all in with an unfinished body! Finish is fiddly work, good luck!

I went with a "Natural Look' finish. I used a product called Tru Oil that is a great sealant and it has some other oils in it to help with the finish/shine. To get it looking good wasn't easy.

The level of difficulty for the whole project has gone from  about a 6 to 1,000 (that's on a scale of 1-10)!!

 

2 hours ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

You're a brave man

You hit on something there Jonathan, I had no idea what I was getting myself into!! LOL

Truth be told, I have traveled willingly down a rabbit hole! At times I am  patting myself on the back, impressed  with my ingenuity. Other times I can' believe how I got myself into this situation!! Again, truth be told, today something happened. I couldn't believe how I didn't figure out what the problem was before I did damage that will now have to be fixed!! Talk about highs and lows!

 

Edited August 2 by Grem

[Grem]

4 hours ago, craigb said:

Did you factor in the cost of having a luthier fix it at the end? ?

No, I didn't. It has passed through my mind more than several times!!

[T Boog]

5 hours ago, Grem said:

Even with reading glasses I still can’t see

Cheers Grem. Im also half blind even with reading glasses so like most luthiers, I use a jeweler's type magnifying headband with light. Like this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/334368400401?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=QUW8VKIlRj-&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=dyGovScWTMO&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Trust me, it's a must have and you'll end up using it for much more than working on guitars(like reading tiny print, splinters, brain surgery, etc)

Btw, I'm not a pro luthier but I've worked on guitars all my life and used to do repairs for my local guitar store. Ive built many partscasters in my life and yes, Tru oil is all u need for a good protective finish.

Ps. Dont beat urself up if u screw something up. It's actually to be expected when ur first learning. EVH said he had a whole scrap pile of guitars & parts he ruined while learning. I def ruined my share of parts too(esp necks). Just swallow the cost, chalk it up to a learning experience and keep moving forward. Good Luck Bud ?

[Wookiee]

@Grem oil the body, much easier to do, my Spacy Telecaster is oild, requires very little maintenance. Good luck gave fun.

[mettelus]

Tip of the iceberg... I am still waiting for the "As I got started, I decided to rework every guitar I own!" part ?

I think I left off at the replacement neck portion of things, but I forgot which guitar that neck was for now?

[Sheens]

Grem's adventure went WAY better than mine.

Ruined a few guitars and spent lots on parts/tools.

2 new Gibsons + taking them to luthier would have saved me money.

Edited August 2 by Sheens

[Grem]

13 hours ago, T Boog said:

like most luthiers, I use a jeweler's type magnifying headband with light. Like this:

Glad I am not alone in the 'hard to see" crowd!! Thanks for the link. I will try those out as I have found I need more than one visor. One for the garage where I do the dirty work, and upstairs in my studio where I tweak them.

[Bapu]

22 hours ago, paulo said:

Custom Build Guitar FOR SALE - open to offers -  contact Grem.

 

Me want.....

 

 

 

 

 

.... @Grem to keep it.

[Grem]

2 hours ago, mettelus said:

waiting for the "As I got started, I decided to rework every guitar I own!" part

You know that already!! LOL

I bought a custom guitar that a friend built. It was his first build. I played that guitar on stage exactly as I got it from him for years. Well it always had one semi-dead spot on the upper register on the high E string. I always worked around the flaw. So no that I know more about how to work on frets.... Yeah, you know it, I couldn't leave it alone.

Well  taking that neck off of the guitar opened up a can of worms I had no idea how to handle it!! The story of that neck alone could fill pages of this forum!! I mean one thing lead to another and another and... on and on!! LOL!! @craigb That's was the one time that I really considered bringing it to a pro.

BUT... I persisted and kept at it. Took my time, learned by watching a lot of Youtube videos, and my persistence paid off. That guitar is now in the best playing shape since I have had it. I even installed a few options in the electronics that weren't done when it was first built.

[Grem]

56 minutes ago, Sheens said:

taking them to luthier would have saved me money.

Yes!!! LOL! I learned that too!!

58 minutes ago, Sheens said:

Ruined a few guitars and spent lots on parts/tools.

I haven't ruined any guitars...yet! But I have come awful close!! Real close!!

I am going to list SOME of the tools/stuff I have bought since I started that "one" guitar build.

[Grem]

After I got the new StewMac guitar built first problems I ran into was the nut and frets. Seems that the B and high E strings had almost a sitar type ring to them. At first I thought it was frets, but it wasn't that. Then I was able to figure out it was the way the nut slots were cut. With a down slope towards the fretboard. Also there was several dead spots where frets were unlevel. I was hoping to be able to get away with leveling the frets, nope! 

So I started with the leveling of the frets. I had never done this before and I had misgivings about my ability to pull it off. Watched the videos, learned there are as many different techniques out there as there are luthiers!! Everyone had a different approach. So I decided to just go for it. 

It ended up being much easier that what I was thinking. And the results were better than I thought. However, I now see why that the frets need to be recrowned after!! And after I recrowned the frets I realized why they needed to be polished! Like I said, this just never ends! LOL. 

But the real trouble started when I went to replace the nut. See pics:

 

 

[mettelus]

:( I remember that guy well. One HUGE caution with a kit is the workers doing assembly might literally be hired off the street. Never before or since have I seen so much glue used on a nut :( It literally only needs enough not to fall out, but seeing that nut shatter into pieces was a shocker. Even reviewing kits for feedback from actual buyers, there can be massive variation in who did the work for assembly.

[OutrageProductions]

I know that it's too late, but one of my favorite luthiers would always cut a slot longitudinally in the middle of the nut with an x-acto saw and remove the nut in two pieces by tapping them loose from the fretboard side and then the head side. Never failed.

[Starship Krupa]

On 8/1/2024 at 3:51 PM, Grem said:

I forgot how many coats I put on the body. It’s upwards of 15. After each application of the Tru Oil I would sand with 0000 steelwool. It looks really good. Grain has some depth to it.

Nice! I was probably one of the people who recommended the TruOil finish. Amazing stuff that can be wiped on with an old t-shirt.

It's also great for the impatient because you can throw on the next coat within hours. The interior of my car smelled like it for weeks because I was using it to cure my TruOil'd guitar in the summer sun.?

And you can either do what I do and just throw it on and come up with a lovely semi-gloss finish or polish between coats and build as high and deep a gloss as you want.

Then after all the coats are on, it continues to cure to a rugged, ding-resistant finish.

What kind of wood is the body?

1 hour ago, mettelus said:

Even reviewing kits for feedback from actual buyers, there can be massive variation in who did the work for assembly

This. Leo Fender was the Henry Ford of the electric guitar manufacturing process, got it down to interchangeable components.

Yet there can still be variations 70 years on. The ones put together by Sally or John in America have the fewest, followed by the ones put together by Rosa or Jose in Mexico, followed by the ones put together by Thuy or Zhiyu wherever in Asia.

But if Zhiyu has the skill and intuition to pull bodies and necks off the pile that "go together" and that axe goes to his friend Mei on the final finishing line, who knows enough to spend an extra 5 seconds taking the fret ends down, you can wind up with an amazing guitar.

Case in point: I have the cheapest of the cheap in Fender's line, a Squier Affinity Tele made in China. When I bought it, it was literally in pieces. Some dirtbag had tried to smash it on stage (I can tell from the placement of the dings), the pickups and tuners were missing, neck and body apart. A pile of the cheapest possible parts in maybe the worst possible condition.

But it had found its way to the guitar rescue ranch. And I subscribe to the Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang theory: "....you will never regret buying that car. She’s going to give you the time of your lives. You’ve saved her from the scrap-heap, and I’ll eat my hat — if I had a hat to eat — if she doesn’t repay you for what you’ve done today.”

Sure as the sun rises n the East, once I put a $20 AlNiCo pickup in the bridge, a set of used Schallers I had in a drawer, got the neck back on, controls wired up with the volume knob toward the neck as all Teles should be, holy mother. It must have at one point had a pro setup, because I didn't have to touch the frets and the nut was just right. The guitar just has it, that quality you can't quite put into words, but I can say that there's a "waiting list" about 5 deep of friends I've handed it to for a twangle, and they got this look in their eyes and said "if you ever go to sell it...."

And some of these guys are corksniffers with guitars in the over $1000 range, who research for hours trying to find the best kind of bridge for their Jazzmaster, new pickups in the Flying V, etc. People who actually make money playing music among them. One even owns a beautiful Affinity Tele, similar model but clear butterscotch finish. "Doooood, you already HAVE one!" Nope.

She had big chunks of that thick poly blonde finish, deep and sharp-edged so that it scraped the inside of my right arm, so I have dripped Krazy Glue into the divots layer by layer and polished it out. Not so much "relic'd" as "abuse survivor'd."

My thanks go out to the skilled workers in that Chinese factory, who I just hope are making a decent living from what they do, hope at least some of them are guitar players who are interested in their jobs.

She's not the only one, I have a Johnson Strat with the mojo, and even a Behringer that I refretted. The best-playing and sounding guitars in my collection all originally came with crappy practice amps.?

I think I will go play her right now....

Post glamour shots of the final finish!