Customer Reviews

Make Your Own Electric Guitar & Bass

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Good outline on building a fairly simple Fender styled guitars. No real discussion of calculating fret distances, neck angles, choosing pick-up position and the like.

This book is intended as a starting point for the first-time guitar builder and it does its job well. Step by step processes to construct both a six string electric guitar and a four string bass guitar. Topics covered include wood selection, tools, electronic components and construction. There is even a small part on playing. While there is certainly many more avenues to take in the guitar building arena, this book will get you started by taking you through the entire process for two solid quality pieces. From there...you can certainly choose further research alternatives.

I just purchased this book based on reviews read on Amazon. I would not at all reccomend this book. The book does have a nice layout and a lot of great pictures..... but thats it - a pretty book it is but the drawings and technical illistrations you need to build it are not included.... IMPORTANT things like neck thickness, neck thickness at the neck joint, any many other important things are not covered at all. A dimentioned neck end, and neck pocket detail are not even included. A body layout is shown and again not dimentioned. The only dimentions that are given are for a template to route the pickup and bridge holes... The most important topics are barely covered like setting the neck and bolting it on, alignment etc.....
Nice - but I would not tell anyone to buy this book,

I recommend this book to experienced repair persons looking to get into building. The book covers all the basics of tools, preparation, design & layout: blue print making, template making, body making, neck making (including neck profiling and fretting), hand rubbed finish, electronic installation and setting up. If you want to do a lacquer or poly finish I suggest getting a book dedicated to just finishing.
The main point of the book is to give you the tools and knowledge to build your OWN designs rather than just to hobby shop a near copy of some other guitar together. If you're a beginner or hobbyist I recommend Oakhams or Hiscocks books. The Oakham book leaves nothing to the imagination as it includes full sized plans on making a strat type guitar. Hiscocks book goes into the history of electric guitar, has wit and reads more like Mark Twain than a guitar building book.
But for the skilled craftsman this book will have you building your own designs in no time at all - the same day you get it in fact.

This book is the best of its type. I have seen two guitars built from the instructions in this book and they were beautiful, sounded great, and felt wonderful to play. This book has easy to follow directions, great photos and directions, and has an interesting history of guitars at the beginning. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to build their own guitar.

If you'd like to build your own guitar, but nervous about the steps, this is a great place to start. The book is an easy read, it provides clear photographs and instructions, and it gives sufficient detail to understand each of the steps to designing and building your guitar. As noted by some reviews, the book does not dictate your design by giving you the dimensions of every cut (after all if you're building a custom guitar, why copy someone else's), but it does do a good job giving you the critical dimensions that relate to any guitar design.

You may also want Martin Koch's Building Electric Guitars, it's not as easy to read, but it does provide more information.