First Partscaster

shaunyshaun1234

I'm looking at putting together a parts caster.............my 1st one.

I have never even had the neck off a tele, let alone put a whole guitar together but I'm willing to invest the time and money to put together a beaut.

I'm looking a buying a bare strat style body and neck and then adding some wudtone magic.

The question really is - where is the best place to get the neck and body from. Love the Warmoth stuff but don't really want to be buying parts from over the pond.

Are there any specialist tools or skills that I will need? My soldering isn't too bad and have rewired a couple of guitars.

Thanks

impmann

Guitarbuild are exceptional value and quality - check out eBay for their bodies.

shaunyshaun1234

Wow, they have some really nice stuff on there!! A single pickup walnut Tele style may now be the one!!

Any advice on tools and skills?

Roland

If you are doing a first build then a Harley Benton kit from Thomann is a good place to start. First, they are very cheap. Secondly the wood is reasonable quality. Metal and electronic components are a bit naff, but you can choose which to swap, and whether to do it now or later.

Having said that, a walnut Tele is always attractive.  Would you go for chrome, nickel, black or "gold" hardware?

shaunyshaun1234

I was thinking about the HB kits but then thought that I would rather make something a bit more luxurious and then hand it down to my son in years to come.

I would go for satin nickel hardware.

If I do start to balls it up, I can also sell the parts on here!!

Andyjr1515

+1 for guitarbuild.co.uk Top quality routing and some nice wood options

shaunyshaun1234

What I'm really asking is, if I go out and buy a nice body and neck with some mid range hardware, how bad can I mess it up? Main pitfalls etc.

Thanks 

Andyjr1515

shaunyshaun1234 said:

What I'm really asking is, if I go out and buy a nice body and neck with some mid range hardware, how bad can I mess it up? Main pitfalls etc.

Thanks 

If it's a pre-carved and drilled body, such as from guitarbuild, then it is unlikely that you will mess anything up badly enough to have to throw anything away.  Unless you are trying REALLY hard, the worst that can happen is that it:

• might look a bit rough
• might sound a bit rough
• might play a bit rough

...all of which is fixable.  

The most likely issue will be that buying the individual bits might cost quite a bit.  The alternative is to get a kit (like ones in the Summer Challenge last year from gear4music) and use that as a learning tool before either progressively upgrading the bits to make it fabulous, or before investing in something upmarket wood-wise or supplier-wise.  

For sub £100 you have something that you can assemble as is if you want - which I am sure you would not mess up at all - or for the extra cost of a bit of finishing material and new strings could be perfectly usable as is, or upgrade tuners / pickups / etc, to produce a very presentable result or use merely to learn how they all fit together before starting anything more ambitious 

The Summer Challenge build I did from gear4music's offset kit (although significantly modded and upgraded per epic War and Peace thread here) is now my main gigging guitar, prompting me to sell my Gibson Studio p90's Les Paul on grounds of lack of use.  I love it!

  

But the point is, I could have just built it from the fully complete kit totally unmodded and it would have still played pretty well

Megii

I've been very happy with the Guitarbuild bodies I've used to make four guitars now (2 strats, a tele, and one of my own design). As to the advice, I guess my main one would be to take your time, and plan carefully. Measure twice (at least) and drill once, would be another - if I'm honest, a lot of the "skill" involved in building from parts is simply drilling holes of the right diameter, and in the right place. I always have used just a small hand drill for this also, and have got by fine - I like the control it gives.

If building from parts, do be careful to make sure they are compatible - things like string spacing on the bridge, where the string-thru holes are located on the body, etc. do vary, and there isn't just one standard used. A bit of internet research into the parts you're getting helps here. Sometimes I've had to do a little careful re-shaping of a strat scratchplate (for example) to get it to fit around the trem bridge or neck pocket just right. Sometimes I've found myself just needing to extend a pickup routing very slightly - these sort of things really - I guess over the years there have been so many variations to the specs for the Tele, Strat, and others, that slight part mis-matches are almost inevitable. But I had no experience  before I started, and I've always been able to make things work.

Re neck to body fit, it is worth noting that if you're having Guitarbuild make a body from scratch, then you can send them the neck, and they will ensure the pocket is cut to give a perfect fit. Otherwise, again, just be careful, as dimensions do vary. It is worth paying just a bit more to get a really decent neck too - doesn't have to be super-expensive. My walnut strat used a one-piece maple strat neck, which has been very good indeed, and IIRC cost about £90 from www.axecsaster.co.uk. I've not used one, but I'm told the necks from www.northwestguitars.co.uk are nice also (they sometimes list on ebay and/or amazon as well).

I ran a thread for my walnut strat build on the forum here, if of any help: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/7423/walnut-strat-build/p2

and also a really detailed series of blog posts for the same build on another forum - I'll just link to the first in the series here: http://forum.rguitars.co.uk/blog/building-a-walnut-strat-part-1

Not holding these up as anything other than a record of the efforts of an amateur parts builder, just for what they might be worth in helping someone embarking on a similar kind of project. As you can probably tell, I start to waffle on a bit on the subject of parts building, so I'll leave it there for now.

shaunyshaun1234

Thanks for all the replies folks!

Some really informative stuff.

I don't think I will be going down the Harley Benton kit as I would like something a bit more upmarket (no intended snobbery) and I will also know that I will be able to sell the parts if I get fed up half way through.

I have saw a few of the guitarbuild bodies on ebay for a let less than on their website so its looking like I will plump for one of those in the near future.

Whats the best way to go about nut files? Buy some (to make 1 guitar) or pay a pro to do it for me? 

Megii

For one guitar, blowing £100 or so on a set of posh nut files seems excessive to me (although I have done that, since I've had a lot of guitars I wanted to work on). But I think it could be worth getting a cheaper set via ebay - I'm sure they would get the job done for one guitar, and would probably be useful to have thereafter. I did a quick search on there and a few candidates popped up: 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l2632.R2.TR3.TRC1.A0.H1.Xnut+files.TRS0&_nkw=nut+files&_sacat=3858

I do prefer being in control of things like this myself, rather than having to take my guitar to a "pro", and of course they can charge a fair bit anyway. Getting the frets level and nice is another area to consider - I show how I do this here: http://forum.rguitars.co.uk/blog/building-a-walnut-strat-pt-18-fret-level-and-dress . This is just my approach, but advice on such things, and other guitar-building issues also available on this forum of course.

hobbio

Thanks for that link @Megii, I need a set of nut files for occasional use and I can't afford £90 at the moment. I have a set of the really cheap nozzle cleaners that are sold at nut files, but they're dog shit.

Megii

Just looked again at my ebay search results, and I'd just add that I'd avoid things like this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Guitar-top-nut-file-tool-set-new-improved-XL-version-cuts-better-and-cleaner-/161783061566?hash=item25ab059c3e - what these actually are is welding tip cleaning files - I've tried them in the past, and imo not quite up to the job of cutting a bone nut properly. Probably better to spend an extra tenner.

Megii

hobbio said:

Thanks for that link @Megii, I need a set of nut files for occasional use and I can't afford £90 at the moment. I have a set of the really cheap nozzle cleaners that are sold at nut files, but they're dog shit.

No worries - lanc on the other forum just got such a set, and he reckons they're pretty good - same as the first set in the search result IIRC. Weren't available back when I started my building, or I might have given them a go myself.

hobbio

That's the exact thing I have (EDIT - I was referring to the cheap tip cleaners), and to be honest they aren't really up to cutting a plastic nut let alone a bone one. They're no good for working on guitars imo.

Roland

hobbio said:

Thanks for that link @Megii, I need a set of nut files for occasional use and I can't afford £90 at the moment. I have a set of the really cheap nozzle cleaners that are sold at nut files, but they're dog shit.

I think it was Ron Kirn who suggested getting a set of feeler gauges, and putting a rough edge on them.  You should find the reference if you Google it.

shaunyshaun1234

That's a great blog @megii and will have a read of the whole lot before buying bits!! 

Megii

Cheers, all my blog entries (why does that sound rude?), and some good ones from other people, including @Andyjr1515 , can be found conveniently listed here http://forum.rguitars.co.uk/collection/guitar-builders-work-in-progress

Bloody hell, I don't think I've ever read through the whole thing myself, hope it's not too boring... I think there are some worthwhile tips in there somewhere.

shaunyshaun1234

The fret levelling one is a great post. I wouldn't know where to start before reading that but it looks like a straight forward guide that even I can follow.

 

jimification

Lots of good comments already but I’ll add my two penneths…

I actually finally built up my own strat a couple of weeks ago (maple neck, sonic blue, mint green pickguard, EJ pickups, Callaham trem etc.) I had considered maybe a Fender CS and some other nice options but in the end decided that I really wanted to put something together and paint it myself. I didn't skimp on anything and just specced everything I thought would make me the nicest sounding & playing guitar. Here’s some notes that might help from what I think I did right / wrong:-

 

Thing I did right:

-          Neck: I wanted the best made neck I could get and my research led me to USACG. Tommy there was amazingly helpful and the neck they made to my exact specs (quartersawn maple, lowered peghead face, '54 soft v to a c profile, 6105 frets, 12" radius, rolled edges) is the nicest I’ve ever played.

-          Shelling out for decent hardware: Callaham trem, Gotoh vintage staggered tuners, EJ pickups. It’s hard to pinpoint one thing but the guitar overall sounds fantastic and has the right tonal character that I wanted from each of the 5 positions. (this is one of the obvious downsides of DIY – you never quite know how those parts are going to combine)

-          Setup: I didn’t trust myself with the critical stage, so gave the thing to Henk Philipsen in Horsham to fit the neck to the body and fit a tusq nut. The neck pocket in the body wasn’t deep enough and he had to rout the body to get it to sit lower and correct the neck angle. That all looked pretty tricky to me and he did an outstanding job with it.

-          Painted it in nitro…time will tell how it wears but I have to say I’m really disappointed with how my poly finished 1987 ’68 reissue has worn in over 25 years of playing and wouldn’t buy another poly-finished guitar as a “keeper”.

 

Things I did wrong:

-          Body: - The single biggest mistake I made was starting with a nice looking, lightweight alder body I couldn't resist on Ebay. It worked out fine after some tweaking (thanks Henk!) but that fitting is so critical that I would definitely get the body matched from the same place as the neck next time.

-          Spraying the nitro went fine but in sanding it I went through it in a few spots and so had to buy more paint and respray: clear coat, vintage tint, under coat and 2 tins of sonic blue, all at £15 per can that added up. The nitro took ages to dry, too.

-          Didn’t quite get the tinted laquer right on the neck - there is some spray “shadow” of it either side of each fret (though I’m not sure how to avoid that)

-          EJ Pickups: I love the sound of them but the B and E string pole pieces are very low and those strings are noticeably quieter as a result.  I’m considering tapping the pole pieces gently with a Birmingham screwdriver but it sounds like that is somewhat risky…

 Good luck! Would be pleased to read how you get on. A surf green tele is next up for me…

shaunyshaun1234

So in a complete u turn (and the washer dryer breaking recently) I have decided that I will start off by building one of the Harley Benton kits after all...........a p bass style!

I have always had an itch for a bass guitar but never fancied spending too much money. This kit will allow me to build a guitar and own a bass guitar for £70