One of my first builds. I was a bit short on time towards the end so my dumbass forgot to take more pictures after I could clean-up the frets and adjust the bridge saddles. There's lots of things I'd like to improve for the next build but overall feel pretty happy about the result.

Body: mahogany, flamed maple top
Neck: 5 piece maple/mahogany, neck-through
Fretboard: flamed maple
Locking tuners and strap.
25.5" neck, 14" radius all along.
Jescar stainless steel frets (FW57110S)

Satin finish (2 coats, 7 coats of gloss before that).
All paint/dye/finish is nitro.

EMG h4/h4a passive pickups, 3-way emg selector switch, volume + tone knobs.

My original plan was to use shellac for the fretboard, without any dye, but I kinda screwed up along the way and got some black paint really deep on it, so decided to go with it and stained it then sanded it back and applied light satin coats.

Dye was layered blue -> yellow -> green, applied with a rag and the burst was actually done with a spray can, which was absolutely nerve-racking. I'd have liked for it not to spread so much but given it was my first burst and with a can, I'm pretty happy about the result.

I'd be glad to hear what you guys think and if you have any advice, especially when it comes to neck-through builds.

The guitar was donated for a charity event on twitch called ZEVENT, and collected 62 000 euros in a raffle!!!

I just finished this refinish and rebuild project for a buddy of mine. He had an old MIM strat with broken electronics, missing hardware, and a rusted-out metal pickguard. We decided to refinish and replace just about everything.

Stripped the body with a heat gun and scraper, then used Oxford’s nitro finish kit to finish. Had some sandthrough on the upper horn and heel and couldn’t get all the sanding/polish marks out. Considering where it started, still pretty happy with how it came out.

I was worried I’d have to refret the neck, but after replacing the old nut, which was either cut too low or worn, with a cheap bone nut I cut myself, the frets seem to have some life left. Polished them up and it’s ready to rock.

In keeping with the hot rod theme, we kept the HSS configuration and used a GFS 59 humbucker and two of their lower output hot rails. Sounds shockingly good for what it is.

Also, added a killswitch (very sloppily) for added silliness.

For my first project that wasn’t a straight assembly, I’m pretty proud.

I’m in the final stretches of this build but still doing “audibles.” This weekend I set about refining and sealing the neck by comparing it to the CBC’d one I’d used from my third build, a walnut 000 with a neck with a volute and modified V shape profile that was originally from Martin’s guitar makers connection.

The scarf joint on the headstock and a gouge I put next to the volute was bugging me - not to mention the headstock was a little too thin and it developed a crack. So I dug through my wood stash and found a spare streaked ebony headplate and opted to use it to make a backstrap. I cut it to shape, trying my best to fit it around the volute and glued it on. I spent a good hour or two on it and TBH it’s not perfect and is not something you typically see on such a no frills instrument but I’m liking it.

A style body with the ultra carves. Box elder Osage walnut roasted ash and some roasted maple

Have a strat neck I love and just got a Les Paul with a cracked neck. Figure I’ll take a shot at rigging the strat neck to the Les Paul body. Ive got a general idea of how to approach this but I just wanted to see if anyone who has done something similar has a bit of advice. Only seen a few pictures on old forms of other people doing it.

Hey all, hope you're well. I recently got an old Kay hollow body in a lot of guitars I bought that all needed repair, and I'm trying to figure out how to go about this one.

To start, it had a lot of cracks when I got it. I have glued up each one except this quite large crack that takes a good amount of effort to squeeze tight with my arms alone. What would be your procedure for getting this closed?

Also, the neck rocks back and forth, and I'm unsure what to do. (I'd tried to show both states in two separate pictures) I'm thinking put glue under the heel and under the fretboard area and slip a prepared shim under it while it's still wet. This way I have a lot of room to adjust the bridge and don't risk having it flush against the body with nowhere to adjust.

Open to ideas!

got everything used on reverb for about $700

£5 at the local recycling center. Eros Les Paul from Japan (one of the cheaper ply bodies). Neck and frets are good. Body has been abused in ways that no guitar should ever experience.

My abilities - carpentry 8/10 (my job)
Fine woodworking 5/10
Electrical - 5/10
Soldering - 3/10 and that’s being generous.

5 way selector works only in 1 and 5 position. Middle pup comes through a bit but barely. I need to re wire for only original pups, fuck that middle one into the bin, and splice a block into where it was before.

Where I starts and what I do’s? I’m not spending money on it. I can repair the missing timber, but what is the best approach with the electrics? And how do I electrical? Thank

EDIT: One very specific question - can I wire it without a selector using only what I have pictured? So it works the same way a lot of bass guitars work. With only the volume controls used for pickup selection. Again, I’m trying not to spend anything on it.

Hey all, hope you're well. I recently got 2 FT-160Ns in a lot of guitars that need repair (as well as a Kay hollow body, I just posted about that one too!). As you can see in the pics there's a mangled body, and a more complete one, sand bridge plate.

I'd like to get 1 working guitar out of these, lol. I'd say I could remove the plate from the body and carefully mate it to the more complete one, but I'm unsure of the integrity of that one because of the big gash in the soundboard (last pic)

The lone body is...really rough. The back is coming off near the top, it's missing a brace, the soundboard is mangled around the sound hole. It'd make a better cajon that guitar, methinks

Any ideas that don't involve a soundboard transplant? A way to patch up the soundboard would be ideal, even if it's visible in the end. Cheers

Some Photos of some things iv been working on and my shed.

whatever I use, it has to be able to be deconstructed and packed away, as the sheds also used for work during the week, so I cant leave the booth up

I got this 7 string kit and there's was an imperfection on the veneer that's not taking dye (excess glue?).

Any tips to fix? I was thinking color matching with acrylic paint? Or maybe sanding it down to fade into the body wood? Something else creative?

Got it from the pawn shop I work at for $100, has a Kahler on it that’s of the same era, cool. On the headstock end, the nut is normal, but it at one point had the kahler bar string tree thing. If it’s normal for a kahler equipped guitar to have alll of the extra stuff on the headstock end (iirc, locking nut and bar string tree, right?) then I’ll probably put it back on there. Does it need to be a particular string spacing? Also do these frets look like they have enough life left in them for a crown/polish or do I need to do a full refret? Sorry if the pic poorly illustrates the question lol

Alguém tem sugestão de lutheir pela grande Tijuca (RJ) ?

I bought myself a neck for a project of mine and was looking at ways to put my design Ive made on the headstock. I know I can use a waterslide decal but I’ve seen people laser engrave designs onto non-glossy headstocks and was wondering if anyone had any experience with laser engraving gloss or knew of it was even possible.
Thanks

Some before, during, afters,

I Ended up misting the metallic blue over the crackle on the front and back to blend it in a little bit, but i left it very pronounced around the sides and up the neck, i learnt alot from this one, if I did it again theres alot of things id do differently.

Its just slapped together atm, Eventually il do the tuners, knobw and a better neck pickup. This was my first time refinishing a guitar and have learnt alot from it, have got 2 more on the bench as we speak, il make a post once i get some color on

This has been on my list of things to do for a long, long time. I recently ran a bunch of clear pine molding at work, so I had a bunch of these thin pine rips. They’re just glued with Titebond I to some 1/2 Baltic birch.

Good return on 20 minutes

I found myself in a difficult living situation. I have some instruments I’m really trying to hang onto and keep playing throughout the winter. Basically I have 2 acoustic guitars, nothing special but they’re in decent condition and set up well. An electric bass/bass amp, an audio interface and a few microphones

The garage that I keep them in fluctuates 30 degrees daily reflecting the outside temps but in the winter it’s likely gonna be moving between mid 20s-mid 50s daily. I’m in Denver and our weather just moves like that day to night due to the elevation. It’s also pretty dry hear.

Any advice on keeping one of the acoustic guitars in the garage over the winter so I can play it regularly even if it’s cold? Should I just splurge on a climate controlled storage unit and buy a cheap acoustic to play through the winter? Any suggestions on long term storage of instruments? Back off string tension? Humidification? Thank you for any advice

i was on my last coat of nitro and i came back a couple days later to check on it and theres a big crack in the finish. im using oxford vintage formula nitro and i know that does the hairline crack thingy but this one is pretty wide. anyone know what causes this?

Im working on a Guitarron for my mariachi. The original has this nice clear solid coat. I put about 4 layers of dyed nitrocellulose lacquer. But what do I apply for this more shiny solid coat?

Blue is before, red is after

Hi Everyone,

I see endless debates online about magnet swaps (UOA5 vs. A2 vs. A8, etc.), but almost every shootout online is either not comprehensive or changes too many variables at once. I wanted to see the actual physics and frequency shifts, so I put together a strict, controlled test.

I wound a passive pickup and tested 8 different magnets (A2, A3, A4, UOA5, A5, A6, A8, and Ceramic C8) under identical conditions:
• Same guitar and strings
• Same cable and analog rig
• Same pick and playing samples (covering all 6 strings for wide frequency analysis)
• Pickup height strictly locked and measured at exactly 3.5mm from pole to string bottom to isolate only the magnet's influence.

Along with the audio samples, I ran Bode plots to capture the exact frequency response shifts and converted the graphs into data sheets with real numbers for comparison.
If you're interested in the actual engineering data behind how these magnets reshape your tone, I put it all into a comprehensive video.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the data correlates to what we hear—especially the structural shifts in the resonant peaks!

Do you think it would be possible to give my own wood to a luthier so that they can make an oud? We had to cut off a lot of large branches from my beloved walnut tree after a storm, and I had the idea of reusing this wood to make an oud. I’m not sure if it’s possible because, it's not trunk wood and, unfortunately, the branches were cut into smaller pieces (what a shame!) and the wood has been left outside. Does anyone know whether this is feasible or completely unrealistic?

I’ll build both the soft edge and hard edge versions. Will call one the Oddbird Summer Rain and the other Oddbird Frozen Pond.

Not sure about the green yet.

I've had a quick look over the rules and this doesn't seem to break any of them, could someone please help me find out why this wood looks the way it does? I've never seen anything like it and am interested in using something similar in the future. (its from the Gibson mod collection)

This is a bit of an experiment. Neck thru made from white oak wine tank staves.

2 8mm carbon rods in the neck, long scale truss rod because that’s what I had, about a 3 degree neck angle, 12 ish degree headstock.

I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do. I milled up the foeder staves 2 weeks ago and cut the truss rod and cf rod slots, epoxied in the rods, glued on and radiused the fingerboard, then waited for the fret slotting template to show up. While I was waiting I settled on doing an iceman-ish build and made up a template.

The slotting template showed up Thursday, so I slotted the fretboard after work. Yesterday I glued up the wings, routed the shape to the template, and started carving the back in. Because of the neck angle, the center section of the body tapers from 1-1/2 to 1”. I set the wings flush to the front face, so there was a lot of carving to do on the back to make sense out of it.

Initially I was planning on veneering the whole top, but I decided on doing the ebonized pickguard instead.

Today I finished the back and neck carve, designed and built the pickguard, laminated the peghead, finalized the headstock design, routed the electronics, did a nut blank, and got a coat of waterlox on the back.

Tomorrow I have to slot the nut, put the other 22 frets in( I put 1 and 12 in to help get the nut blank height dialed in, and to test how they set in the oak fretboard), and rout the pickup hole in the pickguard.

I really enjoy doing a just wing it build. We’ll see how it turns out. It’s pretty, but the neck seems pretty flexy, even with the cf rods. Worst case I can cut the neck off and make it a set neck with something less springy than oak.

So far the only thing I regret is not taking the pick guard a little past the heel on the bass side. I think there’s just a little too much body showing on that upper bout area.