Anyone Out There Build Guitars?

Would love to take a guitar building class if there’s anyone out the with the skills to teach it!

I’d take that class

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I have built an acoustic guitar and 2 ukuleles. Finishing up a 3rd ukulele, but I am not quite there to be teaching others yet. I also am also days away from my wife giving birth to our son.

I built the guitar with Randy Spencer out in Garland. I believe he also will do an electric with you if that’s your interest, but can’t remember. https://www.spenceracoustics.com

Robert O’Brien has really good paid online video courses on how to build several types of instruments. You would have to make a few jigs, but I found the videos good enough I bought some.
https://obrienguitars.com/

If you’re going the electric guitar route it is alot less time and most of the bulk work could be done on the CNC machine if desired. Even going no CNC this would probably not be to difficult to do at the space.

Acoustic is much more difficult and requires alot more jigs and such making it. I had toyed around with the idea of teaching classes out of makerspace in the far future, but there is a large amount of specialized tools and equipment needed that I don’t know how feasibly it can be done. Most of my building is done at home because of this. Most of what I do at makerspace is processing lumber down and planing/drumsanding pieces to thickness.

It also should be noted an electric guitar build will probably take over 20+ hours and an acoustic could be 40-80+ hours. The number of hours would require a vast amount of classes.

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There have been several attempts to start a guitar building SIG in the woodshop. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough people show up to the committee meetings to make it official. The only way we can justify spending money on specialized tooling is if we have an official group of interested people asking for it and preferably someone willing to teach classes on how to use them. A guitar building special interest group would be a great reason to update or add to our clamp selection, so I’m all for it. We could also use some help cleaning up and making room for the SIG at the next maintenance day. I will help with the classes. I have a stack of exotic veneers that are the perfect size for ukuleles. I think a uke building class would be a good place to start. Committee meetings and maintenance days are usually on the first Saturday of the month starting at noon.

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I would be up for discussing it, but if my wife hasn’t gone into labor soon she will probably be induced next weekend. Saturday is the 1st so I am assuming the committee meeting is then?

Mike (@shoottx) is the one who puts them on the schedule.

Bob Ramsey (maybe new-ish member?) has been using the Multicam to make electric guitar bodies lately.

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Electric bodies are made by several members at the space and are another great starting point for classes. I know I would be interested in taking and teaching them eventually. I’d also really like to learn how to build a neck. It’s a little trickier than the body, but I bet we could build jigs to make it just as doable.

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Ke Fedak was the master luthier. He used to cut Stratovarius and other Cremonese instruments from his stockpile of decades old Maple wood using 3D scans of the originals on the Multicam Router. He then assembled them, with painstaking care.

Perhaps the Space still has his contact information. Perhaps he would teach a MasterClass.

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Would definitely be down to try to get a SIG going

To make a neck well takes dozens of hours and making an acoustic or hollow body electric can take over 100 hours. Trying to do classes would be quite labor intensive. If a sig is started something like coffi e hours with a luthier may be more efficient.

There is a monthly guitar builder meetup at the Rockler on Coit, on I believe the first Thursday of every month.

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I spoke with a gentleman Sunday who had just joined the previous day, he has been building guitars for a long time and wants to use the cnc router to speed up making bodies for his classes and is wondering about offering a class at DMS. I am bad with names but I remember his last name was Paul, Forgot to ask if his fathers name was Les ??

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I have built a lap guitar with a 2x4, a gold foil style pickup, an allthread rod and machine heads that sounds like vintage trashy gold but i imagine you mean a proper bodied guitar.

As has been said, you can CNC cut the base in a pretty simple process, i have seen tutorials in depth on Instructables. The electronics are pretty easy and is largely a few pots, a jack and wiring your pickups correctly. If you want it to LOOK pretty, you will going down the rabbit hole of tonewoods and will need to find a luthier. Most people tend to build with maple due to its higher availability and good rounded tone but that’s the tip of the tonewood iceberg. I would start with a more rustic functional build before investing in hardwood.

You may check cigarboxnation.com for some good builds that are entry-level. Building a guitar uses roughly the same concepts (resonator, tuners, pickup) and that’s a good way to get your feet wet.

I’d definitely drive up from Austin for that class.

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Tagging @Andy_Bojo. He’s made a few at the space.

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Sorry, getting to this thread late. I’m part of a local group of builders (Luthiers Interactive North Texas) that meets 6 times a year to share projects and guitar building knowledge. The primary focus of the group is acoustic instruments but we have folks who do electrics as well.

The next meeting is Aug 8th in Red Oak and anyone is welcome to come and test the waters before signing up as a member.

See www.lint.org for more details about the group and events/meetings that are coming up.

There is another group (I am not a member) called Guys Building Guitars, and my understanding is that they focus more on electric instruments. You might try to look them up online to see what they have going on as well.

Hope that helps!

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A post was split to a new topic: Seeking Luthier for Custom Bass Build

Just came across this quick video https://fb.watch/amKUeNdekl/