Build Your Own Electric Guitar: Complete Instructions and Full-Size Plans [Paperback]

Martin Oakham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2006

A complete step-by-step guide to building an electric guitar—from the initial design to assembly and writing—with clear instructions, full-size plans, and more than 400 color photos.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Every guitarist dreams of owning a high-quality custom-made instrument, but the cost is often prohibitive. Building your own guitar is an extremely rewarding and satisfying means of realizing your ambition without making a huge financial outlay. In Build Your Own Electric Guitar, expert information on design, wood selection, hardware, tools, and techniques allows you to create your own personalized instrument, and full-size plans are included for ease of use. All phases are explained in clear detail, with step-by-step color photos, diagrams, and instructions included for each of the procedures. Written by a master luthier, this outstanding guide takes the mystery out of making a guitar.

About the Author

Since building his first guitar on his living room table with a few specialist tools, Martin Oakham, has never looked back and has spent the last 20 years hand-making guitars for the professionals from his workshop in England. His customers are truly global, spanning Japan, Korea, the USA and Europe. With a background as a Grade A toolmaker, and a professional engineer, he combines traditional elements with new design techniques to create beautiful guitars from the best materials available. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square Books (January 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570762953
• ISBN-13: 978-1570762956
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #612,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, so many clear photos and complete instructions, June 7, 2006

By 

Zazzy Bazzy (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Build Your Own Electric Guitar: Complete Instructions and Full-Size Plans (Paperback)

I was looking for a book on guitar building, so when I saw this book at the store I was happy (and sort of shocked to find one without ordering online) but expected it to be maybe a bit cursory or shallow - I was wrong! It's a great book, very complete, the pictures are bright, clear and in color. I read (and lost) Hiscock's popular guitar-making book years ago and it's good, but I don't recall the pictures being anywhere as clear and helpful as in this. This is just a great book that covers every facet of building a solidbody that you could think of. It doesn't cover acoustics or semi-hollw guitars to which I say GOOD, there's no point in covering too many subjects and not doing justice to them.

Very well written book, and there have been no parts so far where I've been like "huh? What does that mean?" or where he's left out any important info or anything.

Oh, and as the title says, it comes with full-sized plans for a Stratocaster-type guitar, I mean, what a bonus! For the price this is selling for on Amazon, you can't even buy plans online (I know, I've looked and tried haha). I have only opened and looked at the plans briefly but they look very thorough and clear. They're not the reason I got the book though, but they're a nice bonus.

I really predict this book to become a very popular (I feel silly using the word CLASSIC, plus I'd have to re-read the one mentioned above to be sure that this was as much better as I think) title for guitar builders as people discover it.

I feel like a cheerleader, but if you're getting any books on guitar construction, grab this. Even if you never get around to making one (like I never did after reading books like this years ago), it's worth it for the insight into how a solidbody electric guitar works, you get a lot of good ideas that come in handy when you need to do setups and whatnot. Man, I severely love this book, probably my best purchase of the year so far (by the way I have no knowledge of the authour or anything, I'm not a shill, just super enthused over this book).

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very thourough book!, August 8, 2006

By 

Jeannine L. Bartley (medford, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Build Your Own Electric Guitar: Complete Instructions and Full-Size Plans (Paperback)

First of all, I'm not Jeannine; I'm her husband-she bought the book for me (what a good wife!)

I've been gathering info on guitar and bass construction for a while now, and this book filled in quite a bit of the little details I hadn't been able to get elsewhere. It also comes with a full size plan of a Strat style guitar which will be good for making templates from. Definately money well spent.

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book To Buy If You Want To Make A Custom Guitar, July 5, 2006

By 

Orion E. Hubbard (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Build Your Own Electric Guitar: Complete Instructions and Full-Size Plans (Paperback)

Guitars are cheap and plentiful these days. If you are a beginner or just somebody who wants a good electric guitar, they can easily be found for less than $100. What I wanted was something more exotic and sophisticated, a Vulcan harp (from Star Trek) but those are incredibly expensive-- around $500-- the price of a very good guitar if one wanted to spend that much.

I didn't, so I gave serious thought about making my own, but I didn't know a thing about making a guitar let alone something more sophisticated so I bought Build Your Own Guitar, a very comprehensive book that tells you everything you need to know to make an electric guitar from scratch; from how to make a template and forming the body to how to make a guitar neck and installing the frets, what kind of knobs to buy, the kind of strings to use and much more.

Making an electric guitar is a very complicated process but this book explains every step in a clear and concise way. If a person has the basic woodworking skills and a few needed tools, this book will be invaluable in making a custom guitar. It even comes with an actual size set of plans to make a complete strat-type of electric guitar.

Guitar making is not for the faint of heart. And just buying some of the woods needed for a guitar is as expensive as any ready-built guitar, so somebody won't save any money building their own guitar. But if you are a musician who wants to build their own custom guitar, this book is for you. I don't think there can be a more complete reference work than this one. As for that Vulcan harp, I think I'll save up my money to buy one.