Panterachat

I'm highly considering building my own guitars. I've been reading on it and it doesn't seem to be too awful difficult.
I think I'm gonna start with an explorer style body, or a jackson king v style. Then work my way up to arch tops like a les paul.

Anyone ever built there own stuff here before?

Are you going to start literally from scratch or put together a pre bought neck and body with your choice of hardware? I've never done either but am constantly considering the latter. Being a luthier would be a great job, until you cut a finger off.

I'm planning on starting from scratch. You can buy the body blanks and template and used a router with a guide bit to cut out the body and all the cavities. It's not all that difficult.
I just have to clean out my little storage area here and buy all the tools to do it with. Like a bandsaw, jointer, router, drill press, and other various things.

You can use my body.

do you like to take guitars apart? have you ever switched necks that weren't bolt-ons?

buy a fretboard already made and triple measure everything before you cut holes and shit. make sure the scale length matches the fret spacing, and the neck angle matches the bridge height. if you do that you'll be allright. dont waste your money on AAAAAAAAAAAA wood or any bullshit like that

I kinda dont want to do a fixed tunomatic style bridge just because of the neck angle. With a floyd rose or a fender style trem you don't have to worry about neck angle nearly as much.

Getting my little shop ready, got a 9" bandsaw, and plunge router, and router table and some templates. Drill press coming in, should be good to go pretty soon!

Nice. I'm sure all the other luthiers that frequent the PBB musician's corner that gets one new post every 17 days will be very excited to follow your progress.

Sky Black wrote:Nice. I'm sure all the other luthiers that frequent the PBB musician's corner that gets one new post every 17 days will be very excited to follow your progress.

Says the cunt that asked me to build her a jackson king v.

Sky Black wrote:Nice. I'm sure all the other luthiers that frequent the PBB musician's corner that gets one new post every 17 days will be very excited to follow your progress.

Chill out. I'm sure JJ has real life friends he can discuss this stuff with.

If only I could remember who the first to reply was......

Someone on the internet?

Yes.....someone on this very forum.

JesseJames wrote:I kinda dont want to do a fixed tunomatic style bridge just because of the neck angle. With a floyd rose or a fender style trem you don't have to worry about neck angle nearly as much.

you could always just sink the bridge into the body like godin does, but it normally feels much better playing a guitar with that angle. compare a tele/ibanez to your prs/lespaul kinda shit.. it might be worth trying the angle thing


i am uploading 3 luthier books scanned into pdf's , ill post that link in a minute

Oh, wow, thanks for that example. I never thought of that. I did decide to go with a one piece wrap around style bridge for the guitar. I don't feel like routing the tremelo out on my first build. Better to just keep it simple and learn how to do neck angle at the same time.

shitty connection, taking forever to upload but heres the best of the 3 ..
http://rapidshare.com/files/402097592/M ... ck__2_.zip

i built my first guitar out of scrap pine just for practice to figure out the angles and shit before i wrecked expensive wood, i never put hardware/fretboard or anything on it and it helped me figure out alot of shit. youll probly fuck up the first one so you might as well do a practice one first

Not all of us come from a wealthy family that can afford all of this, JJ.

Nigger I never drank milk out of wine glasses. Don't talk to me about family wealth.

That, and I grew up dirt fucking poor.

Jebodiah wrote:Not all of us come from a wealthy family that can afford all of this, JJ.

uh. he said build, not buy.

Thanks for that link. I have been reading the fuck out of that.

AoD wrote:

Jebodiah wrote:Not all of us come from a wealthy family that can afford all of this, JJ.

uh. he said build, not buy.

Still costs money...

Most things do cost money. What's your point?

Top wood came in today. I need to get it jointed then glue it together then get it planed. But looks like it will be pretty nice.
Not going to plane or joint it for 2 weeks to let it get acclimated to my climate.

ug. dont use contact cement on those untill you get used to doing it, try some slow epoxy or horse glue.. its fuckin hard to get the line to match up so you dont end up with a huge gap in there..

I'm going to just be using some titebond II after I get it planed and jointed, put it in my bar clamps and it shouldn't be a problem at all.

Don't do it, JJ.

Neck wood came in yesterday, it's claro walnut. I decided to do a scarf joint type neck and headstock because it was harder to do. I figure if I can get this right then I'm okay.
So I took it out, found the centerline, mocked up my templates around that, then just went for my cut. 13 degree angle. Now all I have to do is joint the cuts flat and route my truss rod channel and glue my heel stock in.

Jeb's gonna be mad.

So anyway, the top wood was reduced to veneer stock, I bought some new wood, got a really nice flame maple neck peice, and some flame maple top wood that I glued together tonight, gonna cut it out tommorow and attach it to my bottom piece of mahogany, progress should pick up from here. I got my scarf joint done, which was a total nightmare, I just gotta get the truss rod in so I can route the channel.
P.S. I hope this pissed you off.

cool man, good luck with that

Thank you Mr. Mo0se.
Here it is all clamped up.

nice clamps, dude.

Just stop putting that finishing job you have on your other guitars, it looks ugly and you should try something different. I'm sure you'll appreciate it more. Good job so far.

Lots of wood in this thread.

EvilisthenewGood wrote:Lots of wood in this thread.

I love that I can still laugh at stupid shit like this