Machine Your Own Guitar

Step 14 Finished!

If everything works, great! Your guitar is complete and ready to play!

I hope you enjoyed this Instructable.  It's quite complex but not too difficult if you use a little common sense and problem solving.  Thanks for reading!

Please let me know if you see any issues with what I've written, have any safety concerns or other issues.  Thanks.

Comments

[guitarpicker7]

Good Job! Suggestions: The body grain is perpendicular to the line of stress (string pressure) - it might crack across the grain. I do not know a fix other than replacing the body. I have been very happy with Duplicolor automoticve finises for many years- get them at your local autoparts store. Really tough and buff out well. Let hem dry for about 2 weeks before any final finish work. I much prefer high ohm control pots- 500K is usual for humbuckers- personally, I use 1 Megohm or more. I never put in a tone pot, just a volumn control, maybe - anything that bleeds tone out of your signal is bad! A pickup selector switch will give you more range of sound and, if your humbuckers are wired to allow split-coil operation, you can get Strat and Tele single coil sounds with 2 mini-switches. Another option is a phase switch, a simple DPDT will add another more layers of sound opportinities. Rock on!

[mattthegamer463]

Like I said in the write-up, the grain is horizontal because I was limited by the wood I had.

[quadracer]

Thank you, Im in the process of building a guitar and this helped me figure out some problems im Having.

[mattthegamer463]

Great, I'm glad to hear that. Feel free to ask me directly if you have any more issues and I'll try by best to help you out.

[Schmidtn]

Nice build and nice guitar! It might cost a little bit more, but if people are looking for some place to get custom necks built, I've had terrific success with Warmoth. And Seymour Duncan's got wiring examples for every type of guitar known to man on his website if they want a setup other than HH with two knobs.

[nickodemus]

Have you ever used a Mighty Mite neck? I've seen a lot up on ebay, but I've never gotten to try one.

[Schmidtn]

So I did a little Googling... seems Mighty Mite necks come pretty rough and need to have the frets leveled and people complain that the finish only lasts a couple months. BUT they are only $80-ish bucks on eBay. A lot of people recommended Allparts necks (they're around $180-ish) but I've never dealt with them so I can't attest to their quality of work. I did go to Warmoth's Showcase (premade, waiting orders to finish) necks and found some nice ones.
Here's the Showcase link: http://www.warmoth.com/Pages/ClassicShowcase.aspx?Body=1&Spotlight=1&Path=Neck
And here's the neck I really like.  If you get it with 6150 Vintage Jumbo frets, white Corian nut and a clear stain nitro finish it'll cost $265:
http://www.warmoth.com/Showcase/ShowcaseNeck.aspx?i=SN7672&Body=1&Path=Neck
Pretty, pretty

[nickodemus]

Thanks, that neck is gorgeous btw.

[Schmidtn]

No, the only guitar I ever put together was a Warmoth body and neck, but I can attest to how amazing the quality of their work is. This is their cheapest, no thrills Rosewood fretboard wood and it's the most beautiful I've ever seen!

[mattthegamer463]

Yes, Seymour Duncan's site is amazing. I based my wiring scheme off a SD scheme.