Was looking for a hobby about the time of the pandemic. Started watching youtubes about diy guitars. Bought a strat knock off on Amazon for 60 bucks that I put together. Pickguard was pre-wired, so all I had to do was soldier the input jack to the harness. Putting it together really is only about an hour or so. Putting a finish takes real time - but really enjoyable. I took a flame to the strat just to see how that'd look.
Been playing for 25 years (really, really horribly). Learned more about electric this year than ever before. Realized the pickups were 90% the tone of the guitar. The rest is feel, keeping in tune, but mostly looks. At this point, I don't believe in 'tone wood', except if you have an amazing ear and I don't have an amazing ear. I swapped the crappy pickups for fairly good Wilkinson pickups (China) for $25. Big difference. But I think I could go for $250 pickups and would be pretty similar to my ears.
The neck setup is another thing that differentiates bad from good guitars outside of pure tone. Learn to do that and you can take crappy guitars and make them really playable.
Putting together bass kit now. Takes a good month for finishing since you have to wait for the paint to dry and the clear coat to cure. Wasn't pre-wired but feel way more comfortable after the first one.
In the future, will scratch build bodies and buy necks. Will end up costing $150 bucks for nice guitars, made just the way I want - including finish. Can see having a collection like this. Next will be semi-hollow body, then a fretless guitar, then a Les Paul knock off with killswitch to get some of those Tom Morello sounds. Why not.
Just thought I'd share - been the most fun hobby I've had in a long time. Saw a Eddie Van Halen video on youtube with the history of his guitars and thought it was cool I could relate. He wanted a humbuckler sound, in a strat body, with a whammy bar and fairly thin neck. Just cobbled stuff together - not afrad to actually take a chisel to make a bigger pickup routing. Of course then he go cheap spray paint.
As someone who has never soldiered, never done wood work, never done finishes like that and is a crappy player - really enjoyed $60 (and of course all the follow on purchases).
Been playing for 25 years (really, really horribly). Learned more about electric this year than ever before. Realized the pickups were 90% the tone of the guitar. The rest is feel, keeping in tune, but mostly looks. At this point, I don't believe in 'tone wood', except if you have an amazing ear and I don't have an amazing ear. I swapped the crappy pickups for fairly good Wilkinson pickups (China) for $25. Big difference. But I think I could go for $250 pickups and would be pretty similar to my ears.
The neck setup is another thing that differentiates bad from good guitars outside of pure tone. Learn to do that and you can take crappy guitars and make them really playable.
Putting together bass kit now. Takes a good month for finishing since you have to wait for the paint to dry and the clear coat to cure. Wasn't pre-wired but feel way more comfortable after the first one.
In the future, will scratch build bodies and buy necks. Will end up costing $150 bucks for nice guitars, made just the way I want - including finish. Can see having a collection like this. Next will be semi-hollow body, then a fretless guitar, then a Les Paul knock off with killswitch to get some of those Tom Morello sounds. Why not.
Just thought I'd share - been the most fun hobby I've had in a long time. Saw a Eddie Van Halen video on youtube with the history of his guitars and thought it was cool I could relate. He wanted a humbuckler sound, in a strat body, with a whammy bar and fairly thin neck. Just cobbled stuff together - not afrad to actually take a chisel to make a bigger pickup routing. Of course then he go cheap spray paint.
As someone who has never soldiered, never done wood work, never done finishes like that and is a crappy player - really enjoyed $60 (and of course all the follow on purchases).
