If you ever wanted to build your own guitar but have no experience and no workshop full of tools, try a kit for your first effort. There are all kinds of kits to choose from.
A beginner just getting his or her feet wet could choose a guitar kit with all the woodworking done and all the parts included. Just add your own screwdriver!
Would you like a kit to build a strat or telecaster style guitar? No problem. A bass guitar kit is also available. Maybe you prefer an arched top single or double cutaway.
Imagine how good you’ll feel strumming a guitar you made yourself. Have a look at the Instrument Build Kit pictures here and see which one strikes a chord with you.
Singer and songwriter Guy Clark has built ten or twelve guitars in his basement in Nashville, Tennessee. He gives away most of them.
This flamenco-style nylon-string guitar has Cambodian rosewood back and sides, giving it a remarkable deep-red color.
He enjoyed putting it into the hands of Lyle Lovett, someone he deeply respects.
Guy can’t say this one’s his favorite as he loves them all, but this one’s the flashiest. Look at that inlay!
The Cambodian rosewood is very dense and heavy and hard to thin out right, he says.
He finished it with a classic French polish.
The April 2007 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine featured Guy Clark on the cover and this guitar on the last page. See the online version.
Here’s a book Building Electric Guitars on how to build your own electric guitar by master builder Martin Koch. On his site, you can see pictures of gorgeous guitars he and other have built.
The book focuses on how to make solid-body, hollow-body and semi-acoustic electric guitars and bass guitars step-by-step.
This is the book you want if you’re ready to strap on your shop apron and cut out the wood for your guitar body. Plus there’s info on winding your own pickups and also active guitar electronics.
In the last chapter you can visit three guitar shops! Want a taste of the book? Read the great sample chapter of Building Electric Guitars here and build your own guitar!
This guitar is likely the reissue of the original one he built using a Gretsch neck and fittings on a body he made. He used that original one until it became outdated.
He didn’t build this guitar on his own, but commissioned it done with lots of new electronics. See the posting below for details.
Around 1958, BO DIDDLEY built the world’s first square guitar by taking the neck and the electrics off a Gretsch guitar and putting them onto a square body that he had constructed. Later that year he commissioned Gretsch’s Brooklyn factory to make him another square guitar, which he nicknamed “Big B”. Two decades later, and despite having it rebuilt twice and adding new electronic effects to it, “Big B” had become almost obsolete. We are very grateful to Chris Kinman of Kinman Guitar Electrix in Brisbane, Australia for supplying us with the following recollections of how he came to build his next square guitar, the one that BO DIDDLEY dubbed “The Mean Machine”.
Want a great read about building a guitar?
Clapton’s Guitar by award-winning journalist Allen St. John tells about St. John meeting master luthier Wayne Henderson—who was supposed to make a guitar for Eric Clapton for ten years. We’re talking long waiting list here.
St. John finds Henderson in his Virginia home, learns Brazilian rosewood is the very best for building a top-notch guitar and listens to the old man play music.
When Henderson finally gets around to building a guitar for Clapton, St. John chronicles every step, from choosing the specific piece of wood (was it Brazilian rosewood?) to finishing two guitars! Want to see?
Read all about it in Clapton’s Guitar at Amazon.com.
Have you ever wanted to build your own guitar? Of course you have. Are you concerned you might spend your money only to mess it up?
You’ve come to the right place. Did you know there are all kinds of ways to build one? There are even all kinds of kits to get your feet wet.
You can get a basic kit where you strap on your shop apron and cut out the wood, shape and sand it yourself as step one.
Not ready for that? No problem. You might love a kit where all the woodworking is done down to the gorgeous finish and all the parts you need are included and ready to assemble.
Be warned. Once you build your own guitar, you might want to build another. Guitar building is addictive!
