DIY guitars?
I seem to be caught in some DIY vortex, it’s sucking me in deeper by the day. Now I look at different things and wonder to myself how hard could it be to build that? To some extent, the DIY bug is ostensibly to save a few dollars, but that’s largely self-illusory. Take guitars, for example. I walked down to the local Sam Ash during lunch today to scope out the guitars. You can pick what looks like a nicely made Yamaha, ESP or Ibanez for under $800. They’re not hand made—they’re not even made in the States—but they appear to be well made players’ guitars. The kind of guitars normal guys with normal budgets and normal perceptions of reality would consider buying. Me? Noooo… I’m over looking the PRS McCartys and McCarty Soapbars, the Gibson ‘57 goldtop reissues and the American made Strats and Teles. The guitars that cost more than I bring home every other week. So, instead of smacking myself upside the head and asking myself why I’m even looking at guitars, I wonder if I could make one myself.
A Tele, perhaps? What could be easier, they’re about as simple to make as you can get, right? And simple usually equals inexpensive.
Enter Warmoth, fabricators of guitar parts that can be purchased in various styles, woods and finishes, and various stages of completion, to be assembled by the home builder in just about any style of guitar imaginable (as long as you want a bolt-on neck, that is). But, we’re sticking with a basic tele so no exotic woods. We could go with an unpainted body, and use a rattle-can to save some money, but were’re not quite that cheap. Instead, let’s pick one that fits nicely with the Tele’s retro vibe, like this:
One each Swamp Ash Tele body, with top routing for standard Tele pickups. Painted Blue Ice with a perloid binding. $449.
Next, we’ll need a neck. Again, no exotic woods. We’ll stick with a basic maple neck that goes with the Tele’s character, but we’ll plump to have it pre-finished, like this:
That will add $287, bringing our total up to $736 which is perilously close to the $800 it would cost to buy one of the good ‘player’ guitars at Sam Ash. We still haven’t selected pickup, tuning machines, a pickguard and the electronic bits so let’s press on.
Oh, yeah, I like the mother-of-toilet-seat pickguard in the picture, so that’s $34. Pickups? How ‘bout Seymour Duncan Antiquity’s? They’re $97 each, bridge and neck, so add in another $194. Tuning machines? Schallers are in the $50 range and Planet Waves are in the $60 range. I like the Planet Waves a bit more, so figure $62 for a set of 6-in-line chrome tuning machines.
What have I forgotten? A bridge, yes, we’ll need one of those. A Gotoh standard Tele style bridge is $39 in chrome. A pair of chrome knobs is $5.50, and the pots are $5 each, so that’s another $10.50. Add in a selector switch ($14), switch plate ($10), a nice recessed 1/4” photo jack ($10) and, finally, a neck plate ($4.50) to round out the package. So, figure $88.50 for small parts. I have high-quality hookup wire at home, so we won’t buy any for this project.
If my addition is correct, we now have $1052 into our Tele. Wow. You could buy a couple of Korean-made knock offs for that much so DIY’ing isn’t necessaryily the road to saving a fortune. But it does give you the satisfaction of saying “I made that.” And, with a little skill and a lot of patience you’ll wind up with a great instrument (or amplifier or whatever) that you can use, enjoy and be proud of for years to come. That’s what DIY’ing is all about.;
You nuts!!! Oi ne.