If you want a custom-made guitar that is unlike any other on the market, you should consider the possibilities presented by the Internet. No longer do you have to hand make your parts or scour various guitar and junk shops looking for the right parts. Rather, you can execute your custom-designed guitar, from conception to execution, almost entirely on the Internet. While the Internet can't put a guitar together for you, it can do just about everything else, including locating someone who can assemble your guitar.
Customizing Guitars Online
Customizing a guitar with the aid of the Internet starts with getting an idea in your head and ends with you enjoying the finished product of your imagination. In between there are some crucial steps to creating you own unique guitar.
Design
Designing your customized guitar can be the hardest part. Players with a talent for illustration can draw their guitars and then look for people online who build custom guitars to put it together. People without the knack for freehand drawing should look into design programs to do it for them. Google SketchUp is free, three-dimensional parametric design software that is easy to learn and easy to use. While frequently used to craft buildings, it can be used to design anything. Further, the program makes it easy for you to share your design with others online.
Selecting Parts
One of the biggest advantages of making your guitar online is that you don't have to hunt too hard for the parts you need. There are scores of stores online that specialize in parts for custom and home-brewed guitars.
- Warmouth Custom Guitar Parts: This guitar parts shop has everything that you need from bodies and necks to pickups and pickguards for your custom guitar. You can also design a custom guitar using parts on the company's website.
- USA Custom Guitars: This company can provide you with just about anything that you need to build your custom-designed guitar, although they specialize in bodies and necks. Hardware and finishing materials are also available, as are raw materials for making the guitar yourself.
- Greasy Grove: The online guitar shop with the crazy-sounding name, Greasy Grove offers everything that you want and need to customize your guitar. The parts that your purchase here can go on your custom-designed guitar or just make your stock guitar take on a character and a life of its own.
Construction
There are two main ways that you can construct your guitar once you have it designed and have all the proper materials in hand. If you have ordered custom parts that are ready to be made into a complete guitar, you can simply assemble the pieces yourself. The other way you can construct your custom-designed guitar is to actually cut the wood to shape and size, plane it, sand it, paint it and finish it. While this option provides you with the opportunity to be far more creative, particularly as the body design is concerned, it's no small feat. People study for many hours to learn the craft of luthier and you can't simply "wing it," even if you do have extensive experience with wood working.
Getting Started
To get started, all you need is a vague notion and a piece of paper. Doodling different guitar designs can help you to get your ideas down, even if you don't have a great deal of skill as an artist. Once you have a clearer idea of what it is that you want, you can always contact a friend or professional with a little more experience in the field of guitar design than you. Further, enthusiasts who lack mechanical aptitude can always bring the constituent parts of their guitar to a guitar tech who will assemble the parts for you for a fee. Once your guitar is designed, delivered and assembled, you'll be the envy of every guitar player you meet because you have a one-of-a-kind guitar.
