DIY Guitar

For the past five months, I've been building my first project guitar. Stay wtih me.

In my opinion there is no better way to learn a trade, any trade, than by hands on trial and error. In the realm of guitar gear, this means being bold. However, unless you possess the heart to crack open a pedal and dig into its circuitry or take apart your axe and cut it up with a router, I believe you'll fall short of learning everything you can.

It comes down to attitude. We look at master guitar craftsmen like Hugh Manson, Paul Reed Smith, and Bob Taylor, and often all we see is the incredible quality of the guitars they build. We often overlook and rarely think about the process that each guitar builder must have gone through to get to where they are today, practically at the top of their game. Their careers each started with a decision, probably summed up by the cheesy "I can" expression. But, truly, if you believe you can, then by all means try. Nothing can be considered failure if you look at the process as a learning experience. The harder you try, the more you learn, and the more likely you'll be pleased with the outcome.

I had an opportunity to play on an original PRS, hand crafted by Smith with the hand-stenciled (not stamped) model #997 in the first series. Serious vintage. The guitar was a piece of junk worth $12,000. Compared to his new beautiful models, this guitar was in bad shape. Am I saying that it takes over 1000 tries to get good at building guitars? Not at all. It only takes one trial to learn an abundance about creating something that embodies a range of your passions, from music to woodworking to electronics.

You may get flack. Someone who knows more than you may tell you you don't know what you're doing. They may be half right, you may have never tried to build your own guitar or pedal, or even amplifier, before. But just ask them what it was like when they started out. Did they know all immediately or did they learn with a try-try again method over a period of time? The latter, I'll bet.

For me, there was nothing more grafitying than playing my handmade six string tele-rig at it's debut in a worship service several weeks ago. It sounded more beautiful than I could ever hoped for, especially for my first homemade project. I had tossed around the idea of selling it to build another one, but after playing it, I decided on a firm heck no. Another build will be on my horizon, and another broad array for things for me to learn will come with it.

In the mean time, I encourage your curiousity concerning your gear. Don't settle for just knowing what the knobs do. Research, research, research (the gear-head mantra) and you're on your way to achieving what you didn't know you could.

Within the next posts I will start walking you through my fender project and how you can go about building your own guitar as well.