Thinking DIY

So, after two attempts to build DIY guitars, having watched quite some hours of raw video materials on building guitars, sound tests, and other stuff, I have seen and found several good quality and several so-or-so materials, be it video or audio-only. This post is a quick summary of the best sources (which doesn't necessarily mean the best for you, I'm open to other suggestions on good videos on the topics). As a disclaimer, I am not affiliated with any of the below shops, channels, etc, I just recommend them as a simple viewer. They don't even know that I exist. Building guitars Ben Crowe @ Crimson Guitars - probably the most/best recommended European guitar building tools shop, custom guitar shop and luthery shares quite some tips, tools used, new ideas for guitar building, and carefully documents several custom guitar builds, so it's a fine source for information. I don't even dare to think how fun their guitar building courses could be (shortest being 3 da...

So, my guitar is complete. I've wired everything up, mounted everything inside the guitar, and done a full setup (well, actually several ones, as there are lots of sources, and when I wasn't satisfied I searched for another source). The setup was done using the following steps: with the neck set straight using a straight-edge cut at the frets with a dremel, gone over the frets with 600 grit sandpaper to level them, and fixing the curve of the 21th fret as that was the only one seriously sticking out setting neck relief to 0.004 (by using the strings as a straight-edge, E strings fretted at 1st and 14th frets, inserting a piece of xerox paper - theoretically 0.004 thick - below the 7th fret, checking that it doesn't lift up the strings at all, but it stays there without falling out in standard playing position) no change in the nut position. it's not the lowest, maybe filing a bit more would be doable, but I want a playable guitar already. set the bridge saddle he...

I've made a new wiring plate for testing the electronics, as the cardboard box didn't work well, and started desoldering/soldering the new electronics. The plan was to: * have a stereo jack wired up * jack ring signal being piezo output * jack tip signal being mix of piezo+electronic * volume for each pickup separately, with modern wiring, and dependent volume controls for the two magnetic pickups * toggle works as usual, bridge/bridge+neck/neck, and the piezo can be blended in any time with the piezo volume control First attempt went surprisingly well, after doing the complete wiring+soldering I only had one minor issue and one major: * the two volume push-pulls I have wired work inverse, rolling them down increases the volume and viceversa. Easy to fix, probably switching the stuff soldered to the outer lugs will solve it * the rolling up the master tone pot adds a background noise, which I don't want, not sure of the reason, some forums state that it might be ...

So, with almost all the parts being here already, I am getting close to the finish line (for this lap), and can foresee the next round already. I've done some polishing recently on the guitar, both the body and the neck, it turned out quite well, not the overly glossy look, not a mirror finish, but I like it. The guitar top somehow gained a lighter color, so it's an orange-ish color, and that's good, not too bright, not too dark. I have mounted the new black tulip keys, they look fantastic on the guitar neck. I saw another kit build on youtube with black keys being replaced with gold, and I am happy I didn't go with golden hardware. I love the contrast between orange-ish mahogany and black hardware. As for the piezo pickup bridge, I went on and painted it with a black permanent marker, as I didn't want it to pop out of the picture with its silver look. Even though if taking a close look at the bridge you can see that it's not defaulting to black from the f...

Testing box So, after having the piezo pickup the number of pickups grew to 3, and wiring them for testing which combinations I do like is not too easy if everything's mounted inside the guitar, I decided to build a wiring testing box for testing different wirings to find the one I like the most. All the electronics mounted inside a shoe-box, with speaker wire sockets on the side (4 sockets are just enough for 3 pickup live wires plus one ground, coming out from the guitar), plus the jack on the side. It's ugly, but and probably a bit noisier than the final installation should be, but it works for testing. I just realized that the 4 wires won't be enough for two coil split humbuckers plus the piezo pickup, but will think about that later. Guitar top sanded down for refinishing In the meantime, the parts still being on their way, I decided that I'm not ok with the finishing of the top, so I still have time to re-finish it. So I sanded off everything from the ...

Looking around for good piezo pickups, there are only a handful of options (most suggestions say that for blending with the magnetic pickups a preamp for the piezo is recommended, which I can agree with, based on my testing) * L&R Baggs piezo tune-o-matic ( T-Bridge ) with Control-X preamp * Graphtech Ghost piezo tune-o-matic with Acoustiphonic preamp * Schaller piezo tune-o-matic with a Bartolini preamp These might be good, but they cost a bit too much, any of these costs just as much as the full guitar did up until now, so they are way too pricey, as I didn't want to double the cost for an experiment like this. Looking around on ebay I found another item from a couple of UK sellers, usually priced around 40$, so ordered it, and it just arrived today (after having some fun with GDPR+ebay shipping: Royal Mail sent it from UK via a carrier called GLS, but due to privacy concerns Royal Mail doesn't hand over the phone number I specified, only the address, so the carr...

So, now that the guitar is finished and assembled, looks fine, but does it work? Well.. no. Why? * low E string ring fell off and made string unusable at first set-up - bought a cheapo nickel-plated light 9-42 set from Dunlop for the initial setup * 21th fret a bit higher than it should be, the rest is perfectly fine - might fix it later, but it's really not that relevant given it's towards the end of the fretboard, and not causing any fretbuzz or problems * tune-o-matic bridge weak, set-up screws held in place by a wire, but they can move up/down, and so can the individual saddles - will anyway replace it with a piezo saddle* one out of the six tuning pegs does not work as it should, it blocks each ~5-6 turns, you have to force it to move past that point, then it does it with a large click (probably a problem with the gear), so re-stringing is a pain due to initial tune-in requiring lots of tuning peg turns - have to replace the full set, so I am going with black LP-style...

After doing a quick test by screwing on the neck and two outermost tuning machines with strings, checking that they sound fairly OK, I decided that it is time to start finishing the thing, to make sure it's playable as soon as possible. So, based on the suggestions I've seen on youtube and read everywhere, I started by taping everything carefully: on the neck part masked the fretboard, bindings, tuning peg holes, neck joint getting inside the body, nut, and on the body masked the pickup holes, the f-hole edges, bridge post and tailpiece post holes, potentiometer holes, toggle switch hole, and the neck cavity. After everything being taped, I went on with two coats of ground for wood (sanded with 120-grit then 320-grit sandpaper) and then came the interesting part with mahogany-tinted odorless wooden lacquer. It looked quite dark brown, but when applied to the mahogany (started with the neck first) it turned out to be orange-y. So, I've applied several coats: one coat ...

In the first part of this series I told you about my quest for an electric guitar. If you read that post, you've already found that I am searching for a DIY semi-hollow/hollow single-cut guitar kit (with f-holes). TheFretWire semi-hollow LP kit Based on the reviews of DIY kits, TheFretWire would be the first resource to check, and there is a kit meeting my requirements. But let's have more requirements to meet, it would be too easy if the first one matched. Les Paul guitars are famous for Mahogany body+Mahogany neck combination, and the tonewood used for a guitar surely influences the sound. The kit from TheFretWire is Basswood/Maple body. Another point agains TheFretwire was import taxes, due to it being from outside of the EU. So, on to searching something in the EU. RockTile DIY kit from kirstein.de After checking several UK resources, and finding nothing matching my requirements, found one kit in DE matching most of my requirements, but is not a LP-styl...

Since quite some time I've been thinking about having an electric guitar. But not just one electric guitar, because I don't like the sound of most of them. But there was one, outstanding (it turned out there are more, but not at the pricepoint I could afford). Gibson Les Paul High Performance 2019 And that was the Epiphone/Gibson Les Paul form. It usually has a distinct fullness, warmth in its tone, probably due to a number of reasons, be it wood, design, pickups, scale length, etc. So, all I knew I wanted a Les Paul form, or maybe not even Les Paul, just a single-cut, to be more generic. The cheapest LP guitars from thomann (EU - no taxes for me) are 100-200EUR , with fairly acceptable quality based on reviews. As for the design, I love f-holes, so the plan was either hollow-body or semi-hollow body. And I wanted to also have the option to have acoustic sound (usually done with a piezo pickup), so I found that my dream guitar would be one able to blend acoustic and ele...