How To Build An Electric Guitar

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It’s a great experience to learn how to build an electric guitar. It helps you to understand the way the various components function to give you that unique music.

Building Your Electric Guitar with a Guitar Kit

Did you know that the maker of acoustic guitars and other string instruments is called a Luthier? These days you get kits with quality components that help you build your electric guitar easily. This gives you the chance to express yourself and create your own masterpiece. These kits include all the parts and instructions you need to build an electric guitar, which is complete and playable.

The contents of the kit include the body, neck with fretted fingerboard and a peg head that is ready for final shaping. It also includes an adjustable truss rod. The hardware that comes with it is ready for installation. It does not require any soldering. The body has pre-drilled holes. Strings and electric cord are also part of the kit. You can customize and finish the neck and body the way you like.

Parts of the Electric Guitar

Since we are equipped with the kit and instructions to show us how to build an electric guitar, let us get a brief look at the basic parts of an electric guitar.

The Head Stock holds six tuning pegs. Each string can be tuned by turning the peg.
At the top of the guitar’s neck is the nut with six rooves that allow each string to pass through to the tuning pegs.
The fingerboard and frets: The fret wires are positioned to the neck of the guitar using a chisel. Frets can be 21, 22, and 24. Some custom made guitars have more frets.
The neck is bolted on to the body of the guitar (bolt-on) or machined as part of the guitar’s body (neck-thru’).
The electric guitar’s pick ups are like microphones, and are of different types: Humbucker (double coil) and single coil. These deliver the sound of the strings and the guitar to a speaker output. The strings sit on a saddle.
The bridge
The Body
Pick guard to protect the wood's finish
Volume & Tone Controls adjust the pickups sound.
A toggle switch to select a different pickup.
An output jack to 'plug' the guitar in to an amplifier.

When you learn how to build an electric guitar, the most important thing is your specific preference, as this will determine the factors, such as, action, neck angle and straightness, bridge and string height, etc. Setup can take several hours. All the best for you, Mariachi!

How to build an electric guitar guides:

Constructing a Solid Body Guitar: A Complete Technical Guide (Plastic Comb)

Whether you're a musician or a woodworking enthusiast, you'll thoroughly enjoy Roger Siminoff's book, Constructing A Solid Body Guitar. This 64-page manual uses over 150 photos, several illustrations and four life-size blueprints to assist the reader in choosing the proper materials and tools, as well as using the correct skills and techniques to produce a beautiful handmade instrument that doesn't look handmade at all! Plastic-comb bound. 9 inch. x 12 inch..

Make Your Own Electric Guitar (Paperback)

Book Description
The electric guitar is the musical instrument of the last 30 years. In that time, names like Fender and Gibson have acquired an aura--and a price--that are truly remarkable. For some, however, it is not enough to buy a guitar--the challenge of designing and hand-making a unique, customized instrument is the dream. Since 1986, these people have turned to one book: Make Your Own Electric Guitar.

Written in a clear, relaxed style, it covers every facet of guitar design and construction, as well as electronic theory and practice, and full woodworking and wiring techniques--all supported with plenty of photos and diagrams. Now in a revised and expanded edition, Make Your Own Electric Guitar will enable any musician or enthusiast with basic woodworking skills to create a uniquely valuable instrument.

Building Electric Guitars: How to Make Solid-Body, Hollow-Body and Semi-Acoustic Electric Guitars and Bass Guitars (Paperback)

Book review in issue number 63 of American Lutherie, the quartely journal of The Guild of American Luthiers"Kochuses the bare basics as a jumping off point, going on to describe electricguitarconstruction in a thorough and orderly manner"

Book Description
Everything from the first steps of design to the final set-up of of solid-body, hollow-body and semi-acoustic electric guitars is covered step by step in this book. It contains a section about winding your own pickups and another on active guitar electronics. The last chapter is about visits to Steve Jarman Guitars (UK), Sadowsky Guitars (US) and PRS-Guitars (US)

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