How difficult would building my own guitar be, I have no DIY skills however, I’m just curious what would be involved in the future if I would take it up
Building a guitar
How difficult would building my own guitar be, I have no DIY skills however, I’m just curious what would be involved in the future if I would take it up
not too hard, guitars are pretty straight forward and unfrickupable
Solidbody guitars are beginner level easy
Hollowbodies are more intricate that take more care, but in reality arent THAT hard to make.
If you set your mind to it, learn the building blocks of each woodworking process you need to know, you could do either.
There are countless videos on youtube of the build process, go watch and learn.
Well that’s really good news, I would like to but I really seem to struggle with any sort of diy stuff
>but I really seem to struggle with any sort of diy stuff
Nobody is born with skills, its all learned.
Make a box and go from there
The hardest part of building a guitar is the neck and fretboard. Tons of people build guitars, it's a thing - be prepared to spend a bunch of money on tools if you want something good in the end.
Your first couple of guitars will suck. Just bank on it. But you'll learn all you need to build a better one.
Check out Crimson Guitar on Youtube, he's built many guitars from scratch, and is currently working on a no-powertools build, to get an idea of what it will take.
Adding onto this - I'm talking electric guitars. Acoustics are harder, because you have to bend the wood with steam, and let them dry in forms. THE hardest guitars to build are hollow body archtops, but a basic electric is easiest. You can also buy kits with all of the cutting and carving done for you, you just glue it together and stain/finish it, and put the hardware on.
The only components that really matter are the pickups, the fretboard, the nut, and maybe the bridge. Guitarists like to claim their $2000 fender sounds so much better than basswood but the reality is the body has zero effect on the sound of the guitar.
The fretboard is highly technical and requires microscopic precision, one wrong fret and the whole guitar is affected. To that end you could purchase a fancy neck and slap it on a homemade guitar and call it a day.
Of course professional guitar bodies are quite beautiful and feel really good. At the end of the day it is a musical instrument, and musical instruments have a sort of regality like art objects.
Can you PrepHole art? Maybe. Perhaps it’s better to have something you can be proud of.
Nonsense, it is easy to show the effects the wood has on the guitar, the denser/heavier the body the less dampening and the higher sustain, same goes for neck stiffness which is partially alleviated by the truss rod but not completely. Take a light bodied guitar and play an E on the A or D string, the E strings with resonate sympathetically (assuming it is tuned and setup properly), repeat that on a heavy guitar, no where near as much sympathetic vibration which leads to longer sustain since the string is not expending as much energy into the body/other strings.
Have some high gain fun with an SG and a LP with the same pickups, very different sound because that SG has more coupling between the body and strings, gives it a less articulate sound, fuller but tending to get messy because of those sympathetic vibrations unless you are careful to mute the string you are not playing. You will really notice the difference if the pickups happen to be an unpotted and microphonic sort, this is the sound of the old department store electrics like the Silvertones and Airlines, the wire in the coil starts vibrating along with the body and you have that very dirty sound people like Jack White are known for. Stick those microphonic pickups up a LP and it is a very different sound, those coils do not get moving much and the sound is much cleaner.
>Nonsense, it is easy to show the effects the wood has on the guitar
Not for an electric. See Jim Lill:
>same goes for neck stiffness which is partially alleviated by the truss rod but not completely.
That's not how truss rods work. And stiffness of the neck has frick all to do with tone.
You are utterly full of shit, parroting the nonsensical "tonewood" bullshit. The only thing that matters on an electric guitar is the string moving in the magnetic field of the pickup. That's it. See Jim Lill again.
Yes for an electric. I am not talking tonewood, just simple physics, specifically avoiding the entire idea of tonewood and reducing the wood to just its weights. Basswood was a much greater dampening than maple, simple fact and anyone can demonstrate this effect at any music store, just go pick up a few guitars and experiment. The idea of tonewood in electrics is nearly impossible if not impossible to quantify, that different woods color the sound differently. The effects of dampening is stupid simple to quantify and I highly doubt Jim Lill would disagree here. Not going to bother to watch that video just to explain why you are wrong, just go to a guitar shop and demonstrate it to yourself.
I did not explain who a truss rod works and if the neck flexes it takes energy from the strings, once again simple physics. Strum a guitar with your hand lightly touching the back of the neck, you can feel it vibrate, the more flexible the neck the greater the vibration you will feel and all that energy going to making the neck vibrate is lost to the strings, they can not vibrate as long.
Wood has frick all to do with tone. At best, it influences sustain, which is not tone. Stop gargling at me like a fat neckbeard, you're clueless.
anon, I was talking about sustain and coupling between the strings, not tone, you are the one who brought up tone and tone wood. Did you not embarrass yourself enough in the banjo uke thread last week?
>You are utterly full of shit, parroting the nonsensical "tonewood" bullshit.
Agreed and the entire heavy/dense = better thing and the "sympathetic resonance kills sustain" argument is pulled from the deepest recesses of his ass too.
Fact is that woods used in instruments are often chosen for structural and wear and stability and working qualities far more than for subtle nuance of tone, and where they are used to affect tonal and other qualities like sustain, crisp attack, etc. they are often used in combinations of "better" more exotic species and "lesser" quality woods to fine tune resonance and other qualities in certain frequency ranges.
Cedar is very soft and not dense and is used all the time in acoustics for guitars used in music that favors its sonic qualities, like classical guitar.
Some highly prized woods like mahogany sound like shit if you build an entire guitar out of them, and need a super stiff dense wood like a maple or ebony fingerboard or body cap to give it any attack and brightness at all.
Conversely an all hard maple guitar will be all bite and attack and treble with minimal depth and warmth.
tl;dr: sustain isn't everything and there is such a thing as too much of any "good" sonic quality in a guitar; balance is what matters...but only if the thing is structurally sound and stable, which matters most.
>The fretboard is highly technical and requires microscopic precision
LOL, no. Any adjustments can be made by filing the fret, and adjusting the crown, which is an incredibly rare thing.
It's not that hard but a lot of work from scratch that will likely not produce anything very nice on the first couple of tries for a rank beginner.
For that reason I'd highly recommend starting with a kit or if you have access taking a class or workshop just to get a hands on idea of what's involved without wasting a bunch of time and materials to get something that's a chore to play.
You don't say whether you want an acoustic or electric, acoustics take a bit more accuracy and finesse to get something playable, if you want to learn to build those another option is to start with something like a ukulele that uses the same techniques but is smaller and cheaper to screw up- you can get uke kits for under $50.
Everyone rips PrepHole, but where else could you find this level of advice for a beginner, you guys are really great
Yeah funny that. Extra class amateur radio guys post here. Pro woodworkers post here. Luthiers post here.
Yeah I appreciate it, I grew up on a farm and never learned any handy man skills, always fashioned myself a intellectual, through uni now and deeply regret that, hopefully this board can help me catch up
/DIY is one of the few forums here that actual discussion happens. We get a lot of autism and trolling and the usual homosexualry, but it's also useful on occasion.
this, cept the autism, trolling, and usual homosexualry are relevant and funny most of the time.
Go to stewmac they have a shit ton of kits and tools. They are the luthier tool place to go.
It is not that difficult, just takes some time and effort and the willingness to make mistakes and start things over, even acoustics are not that bad. Personally I would avoid the kits unless you are the sort that gives up easily. Tell me what sort of guitar you want to build and I will make a thread building something of the ilk with no specialty tools* and go through all the steps. I will improvise the entire build with a few basic handtools which anyone can buy for around $100 total.
Actually I will use calipers to layout the fret slots but I will explain how to do it without calipers, you just need a printer which I currently lack.
>even acoustics are not that bad
Acoustics require some intermediate skills, for a traditional curved side acoustic - you need steam to bend the wood, and forms to hold the shape as it dries. Definitely not a beginner /diy project. Also, knowing where to put braces, how to shape them, etc. Once you have some experience, sure, but for a complete newbie I wouldn't recommend. A square sided travel acoustic design, sure - then the only reach challenge is the neck carve and fingerboard.
You do not steam bend sides directly and generally you try to avoid water/steam if you can manage it since it often causes staining in some of the woods common for guitar sides and rippling along the grain in thin sides. The old way to bend sides is over an iron pipe with some coals dropped down it, these days purpose built bending irons are more common and various other heat sources like light bulbs and propane torches are common for the hobbyist who does not want to spend $150 on something they will rarely use.
Bending sides is not that difficult, you just need to get some wood to practice and break a few. Bracing a top and back is not that difficult either, just follow the plan, sure it might not be a tuned top but the vast majority of guitars lack a tuned top.
I built my first acoustic when I was 15, found a book at the library, pillaged my fathers wood supply and had at it. It is not that difficult, you are not going to end up with a $20k hand built guitar and probably not even a $2k mass produced guitar, but you will learn a great deal and you will enjoy that guitar.
Well PrepHole, I was hoping OP would have answered my question in so I could do something a little more tailored to his interests but I am going to go ahead and do a guitar building thread and hopefully a some anons will join in and make their first guitar as well. I will do some sort of acoustic, minimal tools, no bench, scrounged materials, even if you have to buy everything including the tools it will be doable for under $200 and can be done for under $100 for those who are resourceful or have some of the supplies/tools already. Tools will be a smoothing plane, two chisels, coping saw, ryoba, drill, scraper, rasp or spoke shave, couple hand screws and I think that will be about it, a few simple specialty tools will be made along the way but those will only require scrap wood and a couple dollars for odds and ends from the hardware store.
I will cover the basics for those who have no prior experience and we will work through it all right to a finished guitar. Should be fun. Will probably make the first thread this weekend and go over all the preliminary stuff, and working wood starting the following weekend or maybe the next since that is a holiday for many of us.
Nah, it is all true and I am not talking about people who were just born with an innate ability.
lol. samegay.
>tl;dr: sustain isn't everything
who said it was?
you won't do it.
guitar makers apprentice for years.
>guitar makers apprentice for years.
Some of the most famous names in the classical guitar world started out by building guitars in their kitchens and never had an apprenticeship. OP just wants to build a guitar for himself, loads of people do this and do it with no real experience in wood working, just the desire to build their own guitar.
Your second sentence is true, but your first is meaningless. 99.9% of luthiers need to apprentice first, some random story about a wunderkind isn’t applicable. A, OP isn’t likely a genius artisan, and B, those stories tend to gloss over the years of experience they had in other fields, and the parent/uncle/local hermit who was also an expert in the field.
I imagine it would be best to get pretty good at building normal boxes first. Try out woodworking for a while and see how it grabs you, the skills will all be directly applicable.
I built a bolt on neck electric and had to drill all the holes in it. Fricked every single one up, I don't think I've ever drilled a hole on-center in my life. Bought a drill press and fricked up with it too.
The resulting guitar is a piece of shit and I can't believe I wanted to build it so badly. I should have never even considered it.
Also, I'll add that the only parts I found easy were finishing and wiring. Anything that needed drilling, cutting, or shaping was next to impossible though.
I've built an electric kit, generic inexpensive tele style. The only woodworking I had to do with it was shape the headstock blank. Did alright but I got some splintering, probably because I went yolo with a tenon saw - I'm not much of a carpenter - but enough sanding solved the worst of the damage. For me most of the work went into the paintjob, in that I wanted to get a really good solid finish, which I achieved to my satisfaction, over months of spraying, drying, sanding, spraying, drying, sanding, etc.
The rest of the build was just bolt the parts together, so nothing complicated. Finished the neck with Danish oil, had to get a set of files to adjust the nut, try and get the whole thing set up nice. It's not a great player, or else I'd look to invest in better electronics than the cheapo stuff that came with the kit, but it's fine. Reckon it'll make a nephew a nice first guitar Christmas present or something.
I'm sure I could probably spend some more time working on the set-up to try and get a better action out of it - what's nice with a cheap kit is that I'm not at all concerned with giving the truss-rod a good crank to see what happens; if it snaps the neck I can just replace it, or even take my first foray into repair.
Reckon my next project would be along the lines of doing a strip and respray. I've got an old genero-caster hanging around that plays well but the electrics are shot, might make the perfect victim.