The Truth Behind Magical Guitar Building Tips And Tricks 

You can watch videos, ask questions, take classes but eventually you have to try to do it and learn from your mistakes

As your buddy Matt at Texas Toast has said, “Everyone wants to learn the tricks without learning the trade.” The inner tube thing does work. I’ve done it, not with a fretboard but it definitely worked.

I started making guitars coming from a woodworking background. Wow, what a learning curve! There are no shortcuts. “Do the work” is the only way to learn.

I work for Ernie Ball Musicman and I fret Majesty's and we're always running into challenges having to perfect specialized tools and having experience is definitely the most important thing. Your videos help me come up with new ideas to apply in the mill at the factory even though im constantly working closely with our engineers so thank you.

I really enjoyed this and had to chuckle more than a few times. I built my first guitar before there was an Internet. Long before. I ordered cherry wood for the body and neck, a rosewood fingerboard blank, and 1/2 inch maple for the top. The only power tool I owned was a Craftsman 3/8 inch hand held electric drill. I cut out the body with a coping saw, staying about 1/4 inch outside the line. I cut the holes for the electronics and the neck by drilling out most of the wood and finishing it up with chisels. I had to use a rasp to work the body down to finished size. Maple and cherry are HARD. For the truss rod channel I drilled a row of holes close together and finished up with a chisel. In the interim I left the Navy, lost my older brother to a boating accident, and moved from Virginia back to New York State. Among the tools my brother left me were a handmade purfling cutter and round-bottom plane, and a copy of Irving Sloane’s Steel String Guitar Construction. I decided what the heck, I’ll carve the top and put binding on the body and neck. When it was time to glue on the fingerboard I was facing a serious shortage of clamps. I’d already strained my budget for the wood, pickups and hardware, and there was no Amazon to buy cheap Asian tools. I used regular twine, like the butcher used to wrap up your steaks. I stretched it as tightly as I could and left it on for several days just to make sure. I didn’t know at the time that you’re supposed to wash rosewood with acetone before gluing it up. (It’s okay, I still have the guitar and the neck is just fine.). I had to scrape and sand the string off the wood because it was glued on better than the fingerboard. Fitting the neck to the body was a matter of drilling and chiseling out the pocket and then working the neck down until it was a nice snug fit. One clamp and two cauls, a little Titebond, and it was really starting to look like a guitar. The finish was Minwax polyurethane from spray cans. About four or five coats, sanded between, and finally rubbed out by hand. I estimate the project took eight months and about three hundred hours of labor, just a wild guess. Now I have a fairly well equipped shop and can build a guitar with about thirty to forty hours. But I really have to laugh at people who are always complaining and looking for shortcuts. Anything worth doing is hard at first. One summer I raised my bowling average by thirty pins, and it was really hard work. I figured out what was the worst flaw in my delivery and spent three months eliminating it from my game. This was back in the early 1980s and I used to rent a lane for an hour or two and not even keep score. It was even before they had automatic scoring at the local center. In two hours I used to get in twelve or thirteen games, and by summer’s end my average went from 165 to almost 200. And it took a lot of practice to maintain that average. It was a question of mind over matter, blocking out distractions, concentrating on doing things exactly the same way every time. Is there some magic shortcut to becoming a better bowler, golfer, or tennis player? I don’t think so. Building guitars is the same, you try your best, ask a lot of questions, and learn from your mistakes. Thanks for the great channel and for rekindling these old memories for me!

I'm totally with you on that! One of the things I do the most is to invest in tools and learn new techniques, and it's an endless thing!

Man, you make it sound so hard! I mean sheesh, ya get a block or two of vintage tone wood, a long piece of maple, some knobs and pickups, a few rattle cans of poly. Ya take it out to your garage (w your iPad for youtube instructions). Little cut-cut here, glue-glue there, file-file over here, spray-spray, solder-solder…. string ‘ er up and then channel your inner Yngwie, or Eddie, whatever your thing is. I mean, two, maybe three weeks tops and a couple hundred bucks and you’re done. You make it sound so hard Chris! This is why you’re here for us, to show everyone how easy is. Hang on, it’s been 10 minutes-I gotta go spray another coat of clear. Back in 5.

TL, DR: I really like the instructional content on this channel, Texas Toast Guitars, and Gns&Guitars. You all have your own style and experiences and I appreciate you all. I’ve only been playing with guitar mods for about 3-4 years, actually building a guitar maybe 6 months. I’ve got my first one nearly built. It plays and sounds great, but I took the advice of starting from a kit. That alone was probably the best investment that I did. The bits and bobbins are just upgraded from the hardware the kit came with. I really do appreciate your no nonsense approach. I used a lot of your techniques and advice around staining and clear coat selection. Best advice was try it on scrape first, it really did change the direction I wanted to go based on the results. I will say, I did as much as I could with normal tools so I didn’t over invest before seeing if this would stick. I did get the nice nut files and it really made a difference. So when people ask can you make it simpler, or not use the tool intended for the job, sure you can. But you’ll reap the rewards too. If you have a job and anyone else in your life, it may take a minute to build your first guitar. Honesty, the kit guitar took me 6 months. I say that and I’m still working on it, but I also am learning in the process and I don’t want the end product to stink. If you are the type of person that is saying I’ll save some cost and just build my own guitar, this probably isn’t the road you want to go down. If you want to get into this and don’t really have the money, take your time. Do what can be done with what you have, then upgrade along the way. Can also try getting a part time job at a music shop, talk to the luthier there and see if you can apprentice. You may or may not like the work. Other comments have said the same thing, you really do learn by doing. Getting good at anything is going to take personal investment, to think otherwise is a disservice to someone trying to teach you something.

If guitar-building could be done easily and well in just "3 easy steps" with "no special tools required", people like me would have gotten bored of it a long time ago. Best thing you can do for yourself is watch videos to learn how to easily acquire the SKILLS you need, and with those skills you can do just about anything -- even if your tools aren't the best ones suited for the task. Having better/more specialized tools does shrink the learning curve and margin for error, though. Either way, watch the videos and be inspired to gain experience, not take shortcuts. Shortcuts and guitar building seldom work out well. 🙂 PS: Thanks to your incredible videos, I was able to successfully build my first guitar (from a kit) -- it turned out great, and one of the many things that helped was your advise on testing on scrap wood before committing anything to the actual body/neck. I appreciate all that you do, and I know I'm not the only one. Stay well, Chris!

"Look at me! I have magic knowledge!" The snake-oil salesman has been around since the Garden of Eden. My favorite words of advice have been from the guys at Driftwood Guitars. They say, "Embrace the Suck!" Meaning; make as many crappy guitars as it takes to build your skills so you can eventually do good work. Words to live by, "Embrace the Suck!" Good observation about the RU-vids Chris.

There is no substitute for experiences. My son is a story board artist and he has said the same thing. The skill comes from experience; you can’t have the one without the other. I have been building since 2016, my first being a kit that now I wouldn’t show anyone. It took me weeks. Now as a part of my personal therapy I built a kit (because I’m away from my shop) in about three weeks. I could not have done that without previous experience. There are indeed no shortcuts.

The best tip and trick I have found is to get in there and build the best (or worst) guitar you can, learn what you could have done better and continue to iterate on that process.

It’s a wave of instant gratification, for zero input. Personally, I think, the time taken is part of the satisfaction. I’m old though.

WORDS OF WISDOM ! THANKS FOR SHARING.

This is all correct, but still there are some techniques suitable for beginners with little to no access to specialized tools and materials. For example, I painted my electric guitar for the first time, and I don't have access to all the special brands of paints, varnishes, etc. What worked for me was the superglue, fine grained water sanding, ordinary acrylic spray paint cans and shoe polish. You can find these materials in any small hardware store in any country and they work.

Awesome tip. I've considered using surgical tubing, but the tires seem more secure

Thanks Chris for another great video I think the best advice is plan your builds or mods. For me getting those 2 Chinese strat bodies is a good learning experience and using my Jackson neck and using that to get the neck pockets correct. Now I just need to figure out how to corect an electronics cavity cut out on one of my bodies that I don't like. The other one I am working on was not cut out for the electronics or trem. So I need to figure that the heck out. Anyway I agree about the you tube videos they seem to cut corners. And I have been watching videos on the gotah 1996t trem and the bigger 11m posts or the studs are bigger than the floyds or the specials or ohh I ruined my guitar drilling for the bigger posts but here's the thing they are not getting you can order and change the crappy floyd special posts to stainless steel posts for a minimal price. And you can get the floyd rose branded upgraded posts too and they are 10mm posts same thing with the studs you can get the shorter floyd studs too that are stainless steel. Same thing with but the gotah block sticks out the bottom of my guitar crap when you just buy a floyd big brass block And why am I bringing it up because it's all relevant with even planning a build which is know your sizes know what mods you might have to make too anyway Chris maybe you should do a video on the gotah 1966t trem and how to properly modify them to get around the issues with the block and studs and adress this concerning planning your builds but also when upgrading guitars from floyd specials to those gotah trems.

I think everyone is just so afraid of their work being judged that they’re afraid to mess up and make the mistakes they need to make in order to learn the best ways to do things. Here’s a good example from my experience in working on my custom jazzmaster. I bought a Dremel router attachment from StewMac to cut the seat for the binding and at first, it was working great until I started cutting along the grain of the wood. The router bit took a small chunk of wood out of the top of the body. I tried filling it with a sawdust/wood glue filler paste, but I got impatient and ended up sanding half-dried filler paste before it had completely hardened. I thought about it afterward and realized, since I’m gonna paint it later, I could have just put the binding on and filled in the gaps then, which would be covered by the paint anyway.

That's why I like your channel!

This is one of my top 10 channels to watch on all of RU-vid!

So wise, thanks. to make an omelette, we need to break eggs. tools and time and experience are essential. thanks again

Just to cheer you up - some folks get inspired by the hard way. Having watched a bunch of luthiers on here I have decided I need to build my own guitar. The 50" x 20" x 4" 170 year old slab of oak is currently drying in my garage having been chainsawed out of the fallen tree by my own hands. I now have 4 years to practice and aqcuire tools. Next stop, a cheap broken guitar to wreck even further. Keep the videos coming please! 👍

First, I have to say that I completely agree with everything that you said here. I am a hobbiest, and learn new skills on every project. However, I did take your advice using the I can't believe it's not lacquer product, it worked beautifully, and it felt like it was a huge hack compared to more traditional finishing techniques.

Much respect for you and the way you present topics. How about a list of tools that you think a first timer on fret replacement that has mechanical skills would need. The vast experience you have in using these tools would be very helpful. Thank you in advance.

Still failing to get string ferrules evenly spaced. 6th guitar in the works. 😅

It's funny the comment about the rubber inner tubes, the big production builders still wrap guitars with long fabric ropes to glue the binding to the body. Nothing high tech, but definitely requires lots of skill. Luckily we have people like yourself willing to share your knowledge. But in the end, the only way you're going to learn is to try and do it yourself and learn from your mistakes.

100% Chris! I'm finding this incredibly difficult and i was in construction for 40 years. Off topic: will you have a booth at the luthier show in Parker on 6/29?

Sounds like those people need a partscaster? Bolt the neck on and you’re good to go? I’ve never seen or used a shortcut that was useful to me as a beginner.

"...doesn't require skill, experience, or specialized tools..." LOL Great video! Always someone looking for a shortcut, but the truth is, if there were a quick, "magical" way to do something, many people would be doing it. Most of these "tips and tricks" aren't that effective.

I have a bit of an issue with this video. I was a carne and faire person for almost 25 years. There is always something to fix that has not had parts for 50 years and never the correct tools. You do what you have to. I also went from a large 3 car garage workshop in Los Angelis to having to live in a two bedroom apartment in Oklahoma for three years. No access to my tools or shop and still had to fix and build things. It got done without getting kicked out. We were at our Church retreat in Robbers Cave Oklahoma when the fretboard came off of the neck of a members Gibson Acoustic with a show for the church in 3 hours. Got it done by knife to scrape, pliers to pull pins, Tape to align, Superglue 3 different kinds but hey CA is CA and finally I asked the Women's Group if I could ruin about 4 pair of Nylon Stockings. He played that night and I helped him get the fretboard back off after the retreat was over so that he could go get it repaired properly. I had the skills and the training in fast problem solving to help me. Some are just kids or young adults trying to get by and do what they can with what they have access to. In this day and age that is the internet for guidance and the creators therein for help. But there is the underside of how can I make this look better then it is so I can profit. Hard to weed them out sometimes. I like your videos and your ideas and views, but, this one I have a bit of a different world view on.

Hey, do you have a tablesaw? I have found a really neat way to cut fretboard tapers that I haven't seen on RU-vid... Im happy to send you a video and you can make your own video on it .. i dont do RU-vid videos myself , but im happy to share and see your channel grow

Hey Chris, great video. Sorry for the off topic question, but I was curious if you level binding to the wood of the body after installation, or if you prefer to leave it sitting a bit proud until you’ve sprayed your sanding sealer, and level it all then. Thanks!

I totally have some custom shapes that I want to send your way eventually… Need to get it as a 3-D schematic in cad or some thing. Curious to see how you would tweak it but I don’t have the funds at the moment. I can still work on getting a digital mock up. I have one flat overhead image of an edited classic Ernie ball style body reshaped… …Flying V style headstock, With a slightly smaller shape to be more in line with the Ernie ball style just to tie the idea together.😅 If I could get some money and plans together would you be interested?✌🏽

Viewers, if you are seeing something in a video and it looks really easy and there isn't a lot of talking, and there are a lot of cuts and the video is short, you are being manipulated. I see this stuff in youtube shorts all the time. It's nonsense 90% of the time. Doing things right takes time and focus and knowledge and practice, no way around it.

But the best part of starting a new hobby is buying all the cool equipment, tools and accessories. Golf, home brewing, stargazing, smoking meat, woodworking, etc... "I really want to be a golfer, but all I have is a baseball bat. Will that work? A bat is essentially a club, right?"

I think youTube is a great place to learn, but do check out several channels/videos until you develop a comfort level with the source because there are people out there only demonstrating that they have no idea what they're doing. I don't even claim to be an expert, but there are videos that just make you shake your head. "Dude, what are you doing?" When you're translating knowledge to actual practice, yes, absolutely start with a cheap/throwaway guitar... and go slow. A lot of things are fixable if you aren't taking off too much material. And try to minimize the impact of your mistakes ahead of time - go nuts with the painter's tape to mask off what you aren't working on.

Once again, you're right. It's existential or some zeitgeist type of thing. I'm totally in the newbie zone, but I've been through a serious de-mystification process already just with basic CNC work. I've been at it as a hobbyist for almost a couple of years now and have not even built a single instrument. Have I build prototypes? Yes! Several. I'm close to actually carving -- using a blank of actual "finished product" wood (swamp ash) -- a B.C. Rich Mockingbird replica. Oh, and not the whole instrument. Just the freaking body! It has taken me painfully long just to get to that point! I've borrowed/stolen a lot of 3D CAD and CAM techniques from you, but in the end it has always come down to how much time I spend practicing and attempting those techniques.

Do you think if I have a strat neck and strat body, everything predone, I can set the neck in the routed pocket, line up the 4 predrilled holes and put the lags in (careful and straight) if I never have done that or I should see a luthier? Doesn't the body pocket align the neck straight with the bridge? or supposed to... I'm experienced with tools and materials as a home builder.

I want to build a quadruple neck guitar with 8 pickups and 4 scale lengths but I don’t want to buy any tools or learn anything. Also the don’t want to solder anything and I don’t want to spend more than a couple hours since I have some TikTok watching to catch up on. Although I’ve paid you nothing I demand you provide me with a satisfactory answer. :)

If nothing you have to test those tips/trick first. More often then not, they include having other knowledge that is not implied in videos. For me, most useful "tricks" are actual tools/methods for hand woodworking like marking gauges for exact transferring dimensions, winding sticks for checking non twist surfaces. ecc...

I have been making and refurbishing old electric guitars for a few years now. How in the hell do you get string action below 2mm without fret buzz.

Have you tried the music nomad s file?

Chris you do Iron Man events??

I want to be a part of the game ad go home with the trophy... But I also don't want to play the game.... Next time someone asks or complains something is too hard, send them the link to guitar centre and they can have a new guitar the easy way...

Hi, I've got a question. I have some cake, you see. And I really wanna eat it, but I don't want it to go away. Do you know of a way for me to have my cake and eat it too?

Some life hack videos are faked, so if too good to be true it probably is. For the average person, it's probably cheaper to buy a guitar. Saying that, if one wants to build a quality guitar it takes time, good tools and quality woods. The cheapest tools I use are a few clamps from Harbor Freight. For fret shaping, give me high quality 3-Corner Fret Dressing Files. Those 3 corner files allow the user to see and control the shaping, and after you use them they work rather quickly.

I found out the hard way it ain't as easy as it looks. After watching perhaps a hundred videos on finishing, I failed. Time after time. Even things I thought I could easily do turned out to be a real challenge. The folks on the You Tube videos make it look easy. It isn't. There are no real short cuts for the inexperienced, and unskilled.

How to glue a fretboard to the neck without tools or experience. Step 1. Take it to a luthier and say "can you glue this on please?" Step 2. Pay money. Done. Easy-peasy.

Tell me how to sound exactly like Eddie Van Halen with a $59 guitar from Temu, no amp, and no practice. Ever.

Hold on, let me get this straight, you have to have some idea of what you are doing to get decent results? I mean, you spent all that time working on this stuff and getting experience so we don't have to, right?

The one exception to this I found is Joe Glaser’s Music City Nut slot gauge. Super simple concept but it really helps me dial in a perfect nut slot every time. I literally watched hundreds of nut slot videos, and practiced nut slots on dozens of guitars over the years, and this ridiculously simple tool is the one that’s invaluable to me now. I always struggled with feeler gauges, “eyeballing” things like a lot of people suggest, and this is the only tool with repeatable results. Of course I still had to practice cutting the nut slots properly with good tools, but to dial in the height, I now get great results. Curious about your thoughts on this tool? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eD3dS4h7F-s.htmlsi=UJjMVXFSjKwFZBpW