I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; If you plan to undertake the effort to build a custom electric guitar, you should invest in quality parts. I know some of you will be limited by a budget, but if you can’t equip your guitar with solid, well tested parts, the end result may not live up to your expectations. Below is a list I’ve compiled, which is intended to help you spend your money wisely. I’ve listed each item from the most important to the ones that you can skimp on cost wise if you budget dictates.

1. Wood. If exotic wood is out of reach price wise, consider Alder, Poplar or Basswood as an alternative. All three are good for tone and can be purchased cheaply. The wood you’ll use is permanent. Think of the body and neck as a platform where most of the parts you’ll be adding can be changed out later on.
2. Bridge. If possible, don’t skimp on a bridge. Since it needs to support the strings under tension and because it’s mechanical by design, you should try and budget for a quality, name-brand part. If you have to purchase a cheap, pot metal bridge, plan on replacing as soon as the funds become available.
3. Tuning machines. Again, it’s mechanical, so you need to aim for quality. Otherwise, like the bridge, they can be replaced at a later date.
4. Pickups. There are a lot of excellent pickups ranging from cheap to expensive, so do your homework and pick a pup that’s both affordable and reputable. If necessary, consider buying used since pickups don’t have any moving parts to wear out. If you go the used route, make sure the magnets are good and the connecting wire is long enough.
5. Fret wire. Once the fret wire is installed, it’s a pain to replace if it isn’t what you’d hoped for. Fortunately, you can get good quality without breaking the bank.
6. Hardware (i.e. screws). There’s nothing more frustrating than screws that strip or break during assembly. You can go with the cheap stuff from your local big box home improvement store, but be careful when tightening them down!
7. Pots, switches and the output jack. Even the good stuff is fairly cheap. Plus, these parts can be replaced if you don’t think they’ll stand up to constant use.
8. Nut. I buy bone blanks in bulk for cheap. That way if I blow the nut–quit giggling–I can always make a new one. Really, it’s not that difficult.
9. Finishing materials. If cost is truly a factor, a single quart of Danish Oil will give you an attractive finish at a very low cost.
10. Strings. For the most part, strings are very reasonable in terms of cost. I usually stock up on the high e, b, and g strings since they break more often than the wound ones.

When planning your budget, if the money’s going to be tight, think about which parts you can easily replace. Obviously, wood is permanent, as is the fret wire for the most part. However, most of the other parts can be swapped out down the road if all you can afford initially are imports made from pot metal. After all, how many times have you changed out the parts on that banged up Les Paul knock-off you so desperately want to replace with a custom-made beauty?

Yeah, like that is even possible. But I don’t mean to tease. If you need a free source if information on building guitars, check out my Luthier’s Checklist page for a bunch of articles and links to my videos. In fact, I just added a 12 page article on how to make the body for an electric guitar. I don’t promise to be the ultimate source of information on the art of electric guitar building, but I can say the methods I describe work quite well as I done them myself many times.

Ask my wife how her weekend went and she’ll roll her eyes. Why? Because her husband stormed around the house in a terrible mood as each effort to build homemade pickups ended in failure. Now, when I say homemade, I really mean homemade. That includes the bobbins, baseplates, spacers and mounting hardware. In the end, I just couldn’t get what I wanted with simple hand tools and a drill press. Therefore, I have decided to wind my own pups using ready made parts. This will still allow me to experiment with the number of windings and mismatched coils in order to get the tone I want.

Later on, down the road, I’ll take a look at fabricating the tooling I would need to make my own parts. The design I have in mind isn’t possible with off the shelf parts. Anyway, I’ll be sure to detail the entire process of making the pickups both now and down the road.

Murphy paid me visit today. Murphy as in Murphy’s Law. I should’ve known he’d pay me a visit today as the last time he came around was when my first guitar neck for the Caractacus suffered a cracked fretboard. This time he succeeded in fouling up both my pickups. 

What he did was totally unforeseen. As I reflect on my effort to pot both of my homemade humbuckers, I can’t really understand what happened. After submerging them in a bath of melted wax for 20 minutes, the coils began to unravel. All I can surmise is that they must have been wound to loosely. I tried to gently work the fine 42 gauge wire back into place, but it was a lost cause.

At first, I thought about chucking the whole idea of using homemade pups, but my do-it-yourself mentality just won’t let me. Therefore, I plan to purchase some more coil wire, make new bobbins and give it another shot. Of course this will set me back a few weeks, but the learning experience will be worth it.

In the meantime, I can do some additional touchup work on the guitar’s finish as well as make the nut. Stay tuned!

At this point, the Caractacus guitar is almost completely assembled. However, there are a couple of key items, which need to be addressed. One is the nut and the other is the final assembly of the pickups and wiring. The nut is pretty straight forward in that it will be  a classic bone nut. The assembly of the pups and the required wiring is another matter. For this guitar, I’ve made my own pickups. The reason I did this was to experiment with some ideas about functionality, installation and aesthetic design. Actually, I have to approach this part from two different directions; the pickups on one side and the wiring on the other.

With regard to the pickups, I wanted to be sure the cavities would hold a standard size humbucker just in case my pups didn’t do the trick. You’ll see in an upcoming post how the method of installation will be markedly different from what’s normally done. This will be done for both aesthetic and functionality reasons. It’ll make sense when I share the photos and an explanation in a future post.

The wiring, however, is always a challenge. I’ve always been a believer in keeping things simple when it comes to guitar controls. If I want radical tonal capabilities, I know I can add an effects processor downline to handle that responsibility. On the guitar itself, I feel the controls need to be somewhat minimalistic in order to preserve the integrity of the pickup’s base tone. In fact, I’ve thought about building a guitar where the pup(s) are wired straight into the jack. No volume, no tone pot, no switch, nothing. Just a pure, uninterrupted signal. Then, if I want to manipulate the tone and volume, I can add a Line 6 Pod or a Digitech effects pedal to the chain.

Of course the obvious alternative would be to build the effects into the guitar itself, but I feel the guitar, effects and amp need to be separate.  That way luthiers can focus on the guitar while the digital geeks design the effects and the sound boys put all their talents and knowledge into the cabs. If I tried to build a do-it-all guitar, I know at least on aspect of the design would suffer. Either the aesthetics or the functionality wouldn’t live up to the potential I expect.

Anyway, I hope to get my 4 conductor wire in the next day or two so I can pot my pups and finish this guitar. Stay tuned!

I know I had said in a previous post that I would let the body cure for a week, but the wipe-on-poly I’m using dried rock hard in only 48 hours. For that reason and the fact that I’m really anxious to see how the guitar will look all nice and shiny, I went ahead with the wet sanding and polishing. Check out the action:

I let the body and neck, which you can see on the chair in the background, cure over the weekend.

These are the Micro Mesh papers I used. They range from 1,500 grit all the way to 12,000 grit.

I used just enough water to get the paper to grab the surface. Too much water and the paper just slides around. It took 30 to 45 minutes to sand the whole body with each grit of paper. Obviously that means wet sanding with Micro Mesh was an all day project.

I used the foam rubber block that came with the kit.

From 1,500 grit up to 3,600, the effort produced a slurry of water and poly residue. Once you pass 4,000 grit, the slurry tapers off to almost nothing. When it got to this point, I washed away the residue with a damp cloth and continued on. I experimented with different strokes, but found it was best to sand in the same direction as the grain.

Ugh! No matter how I sanded, scratches were everywhere. After a few hours of contemplation, I decided to start over. However, I fell back to using regular wet dry paper instead. I started with 400 grit and worked up to 1,500.

Then, I used a foam pad attached to a hand drill and polished the surface with scratch remover. I tried some rubbing compound, but it was way too aggressive. In the end, the body and headstock came out very shiny and reflective, without any scratches.

I was so excited with the results, I went ahead and glued the neck into place.

The fit was extremely tight and I had to use a lot of force from the clamps to get the heel seated.

Tomorrow, I’ll do some cleanup sanding and polishing. It’s getting close! Stay tuned!

Today I applied the final coat of polyurethane on my guitar, the Craractacus. This final coat was done a little differently than the 19 that went on before it in that it was laid on thick. Allow me to recap the process.

Each of the 19 coats was applied one at a time with about 3 to 4 hours between coats. In order to cover the entire body in one shot, it was suspended by a coat hanger from a sturdy photo tripod. This allowed me to wipe-on a thin layer of poly to the front, back and sides during each coating session. Just before I applied each coat, I rubbed down the surface with 0000 steel wool to abrade the previous layer, which was necessary for the proper adhesion of the subsequent coating.

After the 19th coat had dried overnight, I inspected the surface for any problems such as pits and scratches. There were a few, which I took care of by dabbing on some poly from a loaded Q-tip. After the repairs had dried, I sanded them down with a small piece of 220 grit paper and followed up with a thorough rub down using the 0000 steel wool.

At this point, the body was ready for the final coat. Instead of hanging it as I had done for the previous 19 coats, I laid the body, backside up, onto a rolled-up bath towel. Then, I poured–that’s right–I poured a generous amount of poly onto the center of the body’s back. Next, I used a clean cloth to spread the pool of poly around the entire back. Of course, some of the poly ran down the sides, but that wasn’t a problem since I had planned to finish this portion of the process by wiping around the entire perimeter.

With the back and sides covered, I let the poly dry all day. When evening finally arrived, I flipped the body over and repeated the process to the top and once again, the sides.

As it stands now, the body is lying top side up on a table, supported by the rolled up towel. I checked it about an hour ago and I have to say, it looks pretty awesome. Now comes the hard part; waiting a week for the poly to cure. Then comes the fun part; wet sanding. Stay tuned!

BTW, another way to follow my progress is on twitter. Check it out.