In this “golden age of lutherie” custom guitar building wears many faces. Having a guitar made “your way” can be accomplished by any of several avenues depending on your budget and your desired degree of involvement in the build process. One popular way of going about it is by assembling your own custom instrument from a high quality kit. Kit building provides an avenue for hobbyists to test their knowledge and skill of guitar building. It also serves as a confidence builder, often becoming the means of helping a budding luthier determine if he or she really possesses enough interest and determination to pursue the trade on a professional level. Typically this can lead them to seek further formal training, or apply for an apprenticeship opportunity with a more experienced luthier in order to advance their trade skills. Whatever one’s intentions or level of expertise, kit guitar building is an endeavor where “some assembly required” applies. It can be a very rewarding experience often yielding a good quality performance level instrument as a result.

CNC technology, along with high availability of OEM parts, including licensed bodies and necks, makes crafting one’s own guitar or bass not only quite popular but readily affordable as well. Suppliers of high quality, industry standard bodies and necks are plentiful. Options for purchasing product cover a wide range of wood selections, finished or unfinished, in all of the popular traditional designs, and in varying stages of completion. Industry standard suppliers of hardware, electronics, and options for upgrading pickups are plentiful; and a burgeoning market of new pickup makers is ever-winding them just for you!  This all gives the craftsperson as much control over the entire build process as desired, and lets them work at their own pace within their own means as they learn how to build their own custom “bespoke” instrument.

At the bottom of this blog post is a slideshow presentation of a Stratocaster® type guitar I built for a client in April 2016. The instrument was assembled from a Warmoth body and neck. The neck was a special order vintage spec birdseye maple neck and fingerboard finished in nitrocellulose lacquer, 21 impeccably dressed stainless steel frets,  with a 9.5 to 16 inch compound radius. The alder body was finished in Olympic White and loaded with Fender® Custom Shop Vintage 69™ pickups, Bladerunner® tremolo, and D’Addario® EXL115 .011 – .049 nickel wound strings. Tuners are Gotoh® SD91-MG locking vintage machine heads, 1:15 gear ratio. The overall fit and finish are flawless, and the end result is a professional quality, performance ready instrument that rivals any American made OEM “custom shop” S-type electric guitar — only for a lot less cost, with bragging rights included!

Whether you’d like to try your hand at building your own personalized instrument from a kit, or have it assembled by a professional luthier for a fee, the end result can be very rewarding.

Always remember to use high quality products made by reputable suppliers. It is highly recommended that prefabricated bodies and necks be sourced from the same supplier to better insure fitness and finish in the end product.

If you like the idea of building kit guitars to resell the finished instruments (another “burgeoning market”), it’s good advice NOT to logo that spot-on replica you’ve built with a period correct OEM decal in an attempt to palm it off as the real McCoy on sites like Reverb.com, eBay, or your social media page. No one’s saying you would. I’m just sayin’… it’s not a very good business plan (no kidding?) — not to mention, it’s a good way to get yourself disenfranchised from the rest of us in the guitar building community who want to keep standards of craftsmanship and integrity high. Then there are the threatening Cease & Desist letters from legal eagles who represent angry OEMs that want to put an end to your Milli Vanilli enterprise of counterfeiting their intellectual property. Yeah. That’s a thing. But other than that… hey, it’s your dream guitar. Go with it, and follow your bliss!

  • The “bones”. Starting with top tier products is key to getting great results.
  • Even with precision milled prefabbed parts some modifications may be needed. Here the peg head holes are being reamed and bored out by hand to properly fit the selected machine head bushings.
  • Alignment is everything when installing machine heads.
  • Tuners are installed one at a time and in a loose fit. The straightedge maintains a precise lineup as pilot holes are drilled for the next tuner’s anchor screws.
  • Bees wax or paraffin make for good lubricants for screws to engage pilot holes with less stress.
  • All tuners are mounted in perfect alignment, then the anchor screws are gently tightened by hand.
  • It is important there are no gaps between the tuners themselves and the back of the headstock.
  • A couple of coats of conductive shielding paint helps to keep things quiet under the hood with noisy single coil pickups. It makes a big difference.
  • A look under the hood.
  • After a few hours of assembly and setup, this beautiful girl is ready to dance! Only a few slight modifications were needed to bring this project to a successful completion.
  • Select Alder body in Olympic White finish.
  • Customer specified select birdseye maple neck and fretboard, compound radius 9.5 – 16, with 21 stainless steel frets. Neck is finished with satin nitrocellulose lacquer.
  • The customer requested no decals or logo on the oversized headstock.
  • When building a kit guitar it is recommended that bodies and necks be sourced from the same supplier to insure fitness of joinery during assembly with as little modification as necessary.
  • A custom Stratocaster® type guitar built from a Warmoth supplied body and neck that rivals any OEM “custom shop” instrument of the same design. Built by Glenn E. Arnold for a client in April 2016 at his Coastal Guitarworks workshop, Tybee Island, GA.