Custom Electronic & Guitar Making
The typical journey to build/modify your guitar might look like this
Maybe this sound familiar:
- You decided to upgrade your pickup wiring based on a scheme you found on the internet, but you don’t know how it sounds like.
- You bought some components online without knowing the difference between the type of toggle switches and if the type of pickups you plan to use are going to work with this wiring.
- No matter what, you start your project without further hesitation because you can’t wait no more.
- You try to cram in your first project with all the possible hacks you can find.
The result of all this enthusiastic attempt leads to:
Nothing work and you don’t know why!
Crafting an advanced pickguard is a difficult task that requires knowledge. You must also have a good reason to modify or create your model. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to come up with an upper-level wiring, but nevertheless, you need to know what you are doing.
A lot of people don’t know how to read a wiring scheme, and they refuse to invest in the minimum tool set required to do a good job because they are going to build only one pickguard anyway. It’s even worse if you want to assemble a guitar kit.
You have to be an advanced guitar player to have the need for such mods, not available on most regular guitar. If you take that path simply because you want to have your own unique model, the project can end extremely pricey and not satisfactory in the end.
Within guitargeargeek.com – let’s call it GGG – you are going to see me discussing a lot about producing original wiring and assembling guitar parts. I’m also going to explain what I have undergone over the years regarding what to do and what to avoid.
Most luthier wannabes fail at finishing a guitar project because they are doing things the wrong way. One of the common mistakes is to jump right in, thinking that because you have a detailed scheme or a guitar kit you can’t go wrong. Well, this is sad to say but it doesn’t work that way. There are knowledge and tools needed in order to achieve your project successfully. Otherwise, you’ll end up with burned potentiometers, dead pickups or a guitar neck glued the wrong way.
I have tried many crazy guitar projects, and some of them didn’t turn out too good. I would love to hear from you about custom guitars that went wrong in your attempt to built the next big thing. The crazy guitar that was supposed to overclass the dearest PRS or Gibson and who failed miserably. I will use that info to include it in the”not to do” category and attempt to explain why it didn’t work and how we can make something playable out of this failure.
Updated on 03/02/2021
Custom guitar collection
This post is also available in: French
