Official Luthiers Forum!

Title catch your eye? lol.

im a up and coming luthier and i mean that literally im fairly new and iv been reading A LOT of books but i feel that the best way to learn is if someone where to teach me. If anyone is in MA specifically near Lowell it would help greatly! im working on my own guitar now but all i have is the body without holes (i discovered that i should of drilled the holes before smoothing our the body ) Anyways if anyone is interested I don't know what i could do to pay but im young (a shocking 15, 16 at august 30) BUT im willing to learn and work, if i cant pay i will work it off. Now i pray on your kind hearts! :3

PS- im not some 15 almost 16 punk whatever you tell me to do and ill do it to the letter provided its not harming. I have a lot of great ideas and i also need to build a guitar and bass for a couple of my friends graduation. PLEASE HELP!!1!

You may want to work on the bodies and get the pre-made necks or replacement necks - it will help you get over the hard aspects of building.

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

I hear you both, but the main thing about this topic was to find someone who would not mind teaching someone who is VERY willing

Oh also, iv been looking for a teacher too so yea

in all honesty the best way for you to learn this stuff is by diving in headfirst, your first instrument may not be perfect but it'll be yours and it will teach you a lot. i built my first guitar when i was 15 and made it from a 2x12 board of maple i got out of a hog stall in a friends 100 year old barn, moral of the story you dont have to do it perfect, or the traditional way just do it and get it done whatever way you need, you'll learn more that way than from any amount of reading. as for classes, i think you are severely underestimating the cost, just to give you an idea a lot of luthiers schools will charge around 10,000 dollars for a 10 or 11 week course, thats about 1000 bucks a week for group classes, but your not asking for group classes though you are asking to be taught one on one which is even more expensive.(if you had done that much reading you would probably know this) i doubt at this point in your life that you can or would want to spend that kind of money to learn to build guitars(most of the people on here couldn't afford classes like that either). its not so much a matter of your willingness as it is the fact that you are asking someone for an enormous investment of their time and offering very little pay off.

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~shad peters

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For electrics there are a lot of kits out there. If you want cheap go to guitarfetish.com. The only problem I would see with a kit on an electric is that all it really teaches you to do is the finish and final assembly. If you want to actually do some wood working but not too hard, try making your own body and buy a neck from warmoth or even guitar fetish (last time I was looking there you can get a blem strat neck for $35). Buy the ebook from http://www.buildyourguitar.com/books/ebooks/index.htm and if you don't want to make your own templates for routing, you can buy some here http://www.guitarbuildingtemplates.com/. They even have a tutorial on how to make a strat. Some videos of what to do are also on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBIaJRbiC4I. Honestly, I wish there had been this many resources when I first started building. All I had was a cheap jig saw, cheap router, and the Melvin Hissock book. I learned by trial and error, ruined some nice wood and finally built something that resembled a guitar. They all got better from there. I am amazed now what people can do on thier first build because of all the resources available. Good luck

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John Thiessen
http://www.iszacguitars.com

hey there i hope i did not come off overly rude with the post i made, i wish i would have worded things a bit different after looking at it again, i dont mean to discourage you in any way, but i do think you should look at things a tad more realistically. a lot of us would have loved to have someone to teach us when we were starting out but its usually not a very available route, but you do have all the resources here and you can learn a lot and get questions answered as you proceed through your build. best of luck!

~shad

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~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

I mostly agree with this. Asking for instruction can.....can indicate a lack of resolve, a short term outlook, or possibly a instant gratification mentality but it can also indicate a lot of other things as well. If you know yourself these questions are academic. Desiring instruction might well indicate a wisdom derived from past learning experiences that were positive. The salient point is that instruction tailored to skankstro's situation is probably not available without being willing to travel and spend a lot of money. Perhaps that committment will measure skankstro's passion to build guitars.

But I hold to the idea that building guitars is a series of problems. I've found that mountains are climbed by focusing on the next step and large problems are solved by breaking them down into managable, obtainable goals.

Wisdom?: No goal is achieved without moving your hands and feet.

Looking for instruction is laudable but ALL the tinkering you do in your garage is educational. Your mistakes are your best education. Your youth will give you more time than most to make LOT'S of mistakes. Try to look forward to each mistake....and get busy making them.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Learning under a master is a very admirable way to learn, but honestly electric instruments are very simple to do, at their core anyway. In fact some of the most popular designs are made to be simple things that one can just make the components for and screwum together. I'm not a master by any stretch of the imagination but here's how I got started. I got a neck and all the hardware and electrics for a basic bolt-on necked instrument (jazz bass) and cut out the body the way I wanted it. There are plans online if you want to be real super accurate, but it's up to you. The real important bit is to get what I call the "musical core" just right. The "musical core" is the section that goes throughout the whole instrument that contains the neck, bridge, pickups, and the section of the body that runs through it, after you get all that set you can do whatever you want to the junk outside. Don't start from a kit if you want to learn, start from something you WANT to do. I'd almost recommend building a neck even if it's your first time, but it's much cheaper to buy one premade from like guitarfetish and the like. They are actually pretty nice necks for a first guit and they'll serve their purpose. I'd sell a guitar with one in a heartbeat. Spend loads of time planning these things out. If you're like me that's half the fun anyway and it costs you nothing. Look for body woods in lumberyards. I made a guitar body or two out of bald cypress of all things and they turned out great, plus the two or three piece bodies only cost me like twenty bucks lol, so there are some good deals out there. As you can see I like rambling and I'm quite good at it, but hopefully you get the idea.

If there's one thing to take from this it's this. Start in simple, familiar territory and go from there. Start complicated and you'll fall flat on your face, but if you start simple you'll learn something and have something to show for it.

Good luck, the journey's hard but it is oh so worth it, and more fun than the whole nine-to-five thingy too.

I think your ticket into some one's shop to learn would be a few guitars that you have made, show the resolve that way, that way if you do get into a shop for a minute, you can get criticisms to learn from, then you may be able to trade a sweep up session for a use of a tool. Personally I think the way to start is by fixing up some junkers, learn how to get a guitar set up, you can build something, but if you can't get it to play nice, then it will just be a decoration.
Rob

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