How to Plan to Build a Homemade Electric Guitar

While you might not consider yourself to be in the same league as guitarist luthiers like Les Paul, Brian May or Eddie Van Halen, planning to build an electric guitar can be worthwhile. Many custom options are open to all skill and interest levels, and you can incorporate wide ranges of musical styles into a customized plan to build a homemade electric guitar.

Instructions

1. Find inspiration in your music. Listen to admired guitarists and research the makes and models of instruments they play on favorite tracks. Examine your own picking style, or imagine your future sound. Many past legends in electric guitar history have well-documented trials and experimentation.

2. Investigate the tools required for each task of guitar building. There are a few electric guitar kits available with various stages of completion--some with bolt-on neck to bodies that require only finish and assembly. These kits are easy to build and provide good to excellent playability, but they do not allow as much individuality in look or sound.

3. Decide on your choice of basic design, whether it be a bolt-on, glue type or through-the-body neck type. Wood choice is important to the tone and sustain of the guitar and the consideration of weight.

4. Be daring in your choices to promote a custom tone. Innovator/guitarist Les Paul created a guitar that resembled a log. That prototype was too heavy and ugly to play on stage but led to the most desirable Gibson factory-made guitar available now, over 50 years later.

5. Sample attractive guitars found in music stores for the best information on pickups, tremolo/bridge arrangements and tuners. A variety of combinations will lead to a one-of-a-kind instrument that will make the music stand out all the more.