how to make guitars and guitar gear

This step by step guide shows one way of making a guitar neck using a CNC router. The project uses this homemade router.

This is an excellent step by step guide to building an acoustic steel-string by Jonathan Sevy. It's intended to be a pictorial journey through the required steps in the construction of a acoustic guitar.  Sevy uses the general approach  described by Irving Sloane in the book "Steel-String Guitar Construction" (E.P.

Paul Marossy from DIYguitarist.com built his own Wah pedal from scratch. As Paul notes, the most difficult part was building the mechanics. The linkage between the potentiometer and the foot pedal is a particular challenge in Wah and Volume pedals.

This easy to follow PDF guide shows you how to make your own electric cigar box guitar. Its author Ed Vogel says

Form follows function with this DIY fuzzy fuzz pedal. You can make one too by following this step by step guide . Everything is explained in detail, down to the circuit layout.

You could get a similar effect by putting your RAT distortion pedal in an old sock.

Kristen Fowler and her friend Shalisa Francis made this amazing guitar shaped birthday cake for Shalisa's sister Denise. You can make one too by following the steps on Denise's website. The tattoo style design on the front reminds me of Luna Guitars. According to Denise it took forever to make and there was A LOT of leftover cake!

This pdf file from Make magazine shows you how to make a three string cigar box guitar and matching amplifier. At an estimated cost of $15 to $30 this project uses no standard guitar parts: for example the machine heads are eye bolts and the frets are filed down nails held on with rubber bands.

You have sketched your ideal guitar shape, it looks good on paper but will it work full size? Berlin guitar blogger GuitarRen has designed some great guitar shapes. GuitarRen tested his designs with cardboard mock ups, painting them and adding aluminium foil. He even added pickups and control knobs. This is a great way to test a design before starting to build.

Ant Setchell shows how to convert a welding clamp into a fret press. To make the press you have to modify the jaws. The top jaw holds interchangeable fret cauls from Stew Mac (to match the fingerboard radius), the bottom jaw is a padded caul to press on the back of the neck. You would pay over $200 for a handheld fret press, but a welding clamp will cost you less than $15.

Every guitarist has a wish list of dream guitars they are never going to own. Some guitars are just too expensive, like the Gretsch White Falcon. Some are just not for sale, like Jimi Hendrix's psychedlic Flying V.

This is a project for the guitar electronics geek. Traditionally guitar effects pedals used analogue circuits made up of clever combinations resistors, capacitors etc. Digital signal processing chips now allow analogue effects circuit to be simulated in software.

Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Slash and Zakk Wylde have all used a talk box at one time or anothe to give a vocal quality to their solo guitar. A talk box is essentially a speaker attached with an air tight connection to a plastic tube. When you place this tube in your mouth it acts like an artifical larynx and you can make yor guitar speak.

Guitar fretboards are generally curved, so when fretting a fingerboard it helps if the frets themselves are also pre-curved (to a slightly smaller radius than the fretboard itself) before you try to put them into the fingerboard.

This is a comprehensive picture diary from Crimson Guitars , showing the stages involved in building Robert Fripp's custom tone chambered electric guitar. The pictures show that these guitars really are completely hand made, luthier Ben Crowe puts a lot of effort into this guitar.

This is a photo gallery of a project to build a practice amp out of a solid block of quilted maple. Every part of it is hand crafted, he even makes the control knobs on a lathe.