Completed Electric Guitar (pic heavy)

[scott spencer]

...I don't play guitar at all, though I wish I knew how. My wife doesn't quite get why I'm interested in building one, frankly I'm not sure I really know why either. Its just one of those things in my head that keeps coming back around (I know, get it to the bench ).

Dollars wise, about what did it run you to put this together? And, would you consider that average, low, or did you go high end on electronics?

Hi Brad - Sounds like there's definitely a guitar build in your future! I'm in pretty much the same boat...I don't play, I've loved the challenge and the puzzle-like problems that a guitar build poses, and my wife thinks I'm nuts b/c I want to build another one already! You'll learn a ton....go for it!

Anywho...this one cost ~ $200 for the pickups, hardware, neck, pots, dye, and lacquer. We went about middle of the pack on the "pups"...one is a used GFS Fat Body, and one is a Wilkinson...both have "good" sound...clearly a step above the cheap stock pups, but not exactly esoteric either. The humbucker was given to us, and is a decent stock pup from an OLP Petrucci Signature guitar. We could have shaved cost in lots of places if necessary...probably could have gotten it down in the $100-$125 range, but could have also easily doubled what we spent. Sorry, I know nothing about the Griz kits.

[Robert LaPlaca]

Cool looking guitar body, finish is kind of cool too. Shape kind of does remind one of Batman...

[Thomas Delpizzo]

beautiful! you should enter it in the Guitar of the Month at Project Guitar . What pickups did you use and how is the selector wired (pickup combo's)?

The Grizzly kits have nice wood, however, the tops are veneered on as opposed to the method which you used by gluing the maple to the base wood and then carving. They're fun if you want to try building or making it for a novice player. I wouldn't think the hardware or electronics are anything special in those kits.

I'm still working on some inherited projects: 2 strats, an LP with a curly top, a rebuild of an LP Recording copy, and 2 Tele bodies (one of African Padauk) that I picked up. My new band saw will help with the necks.

How did you manage the fingerboard? did you use a router jig or just sand away with a radius block?

[scott spencer]

Thanks Thomas...I might just post over at Project Guitar...I found their site to be really useful.

The pups are a GFS Alnico Fat Body in the neck, a Wilkinson single pole in the mid, and a humbucker from an OLP Petrucci Signature. It's a fairly straight forward HSS configuration with a 5-way selector, 1 tone, 1 volume, but the volume knob has a push/pull switch to put the humbucker in single coil mode.

I bought the neck as an unfinished paddle, and just shaped the head and painted the back.

I suspect you're right about the Griz pups...I'm sure they're fine, but with just a little research, and not even necessarily any more money, you get some very nice pups with unique tones.

Here's the schematic we followed: