10 Things I am Learning from building my own guitar body
I have been working on guitars since I was 14 years old. I am getting deeper into the setup and building aspect these days
1. It is taking a lot longer than I thought
I am not in a hurry but I bought the material 2 years ago and did the initial shape. I have put at least 50 hours of work into this so far. I probably have another 30 hours left.
2. I will spend about the same as it would cost to buy a factory-made guitar with the same parts.
I bought good parts but not the top of the line of all things: I could have bought a Synester Gates guitar with the same parts for just a little more.
3. I needed to buy $1k worth of tools, sandpaper, stain and routing templates to build an $800 guitar
LOL. I will have to build more to get my money's worth.
4. As I work on many projects like this I sometimes think that I would like to spend more time playing guitars than working on them, though I enjoy both for different reasons
Don't let this become a job!
5. This is why custom-built guitars are so expensive.
6. I have more respect than I already had for what Leo Fender did
He designed the Stratocaster, Telecaster, Precision Bass, Jazz Bass and more. He was an engineer and entrepreneur and could not play guitar at all: legend has it that he never learned to tune a guitar.
Coming up with "perfect" shapes where nothing can be added or taken away for almost 70 years and millions of instruments is quite an achievement!
7. When you have to drill every hole, shape every corner and route every opening, there is much more going on in an electric guitar body than you might think!
8. I have been working from a BC Rich Mockingbird template. I tried creating a little more space around the lower horn and then the balance looked really off: now I need to fix it!
Whatever caused the symmetry, it was there until I took it away!
9. Over time I have gotten less precious and more confident in what I am doing with the tools
I used to hesitate to do something like use a router or file. This was usually a good idea as I nearly ruined the project a few times with enthusiastic/careless router usage. Now I go more to hand tools: I make mistakes slower.
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