I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands, and I’ve had an itch for a while to build my own guitar. A friend of mine built a fretless bass using exotic wood. It was beautiful! He built it from scratch and did an excellent job for his first try.

I don’t have the tools I would need to build a guitar from scratch, so I’d probably need to build one from a kit or from parts if I ever decided to build my own guitar. Several places offer kits and/or parts that you can build from. For example, Stewart-McDonald and Warmoth both offer guitar parts for the do-it-yourselfer. Even Martin offers guitar kits. It seems like building an electric guitar would be easier than building an acoustic guitar, although maybe it wouldn’t matter if you were using a kit.

Have you ever built a guitar, either from scratch or from a kit? If you have, please share your experience in the comments!

In my continuing quest to learn how all musical instruments are made, I recently watched another episode of the Science Channel’s How It’s Made series, this time featuring a segment on how pedal steel guitars are made. I’ve heard that they are difficult to play, but I didn’t realize how involved steel guitars really are. Check it out:

Earlier this week, I posted a video about how amps are made. I thought I’d follow that video up with a two part series about how electric guitars are made. These videos are from the Science Channel’s show How It’s Made, and they highlight Godin Guitars. Part 1 discusses the crafting of the wood, and part 2 discusses the electronics.

Part 1:

Part 2:

As a bonus, here’s a video from the Travel Channel series Made In America highlighting how Gibson guitars are made:

Gibson has recently released the Jeff Beck 1954 Les Paul Oxblood tribute guitar. Gibson recently sat down with Beck in London to talk about the guitar, why he chose Gibsons early in his career, and what drives him musically:

Have you ever wondered what the difference was between a standard guitar and a baritone guitar? Premier Guitar has a pretty good write up about baritone guitars, written by Sweetwater Sales Engineer Art Hill.

In essence, it comes down to scale length. The scale length of a baritone guitar rests between a bass guitar and a standard guitar. As a result, baritone guitars often use heavier gauge strings and are tuned down lower than standard tuned guitars.

I was surprised to found out the diversity of artists that have used baritone guitars. Duane Eddy, George Harrison, John Lennon, Joe Perry, Johnny Cash, Dave Matthews, and Stevie Ray Vaughan all used baritone guitars at some point in their career, among many others.

Yesterday, November 28, 2008, marked the official debut of Fender’s Yngwie Malmsteen Tribute Series Stratocaster. Like the other Tribute Series guitars that Fender has done, this is a limited edition guitar that is based on the guitar that the artist is most known for. In Yngwie’s case, this is a scalloped-neck olympic white 1971 Fender Stratocaster. Fender always seems to do a meticulous job with their Tribute Series guitars, so I’m sure the Malmsteen guitar is just as authentic.

Below is Fender’s promotional video for the guitar.

I’m a sucker for a good factory tour. I worked in a manufacturing plant throughout college and have always been fascinated by how products are made. As a guitarist, I’m especially interested in how guitars are made, so I was pleased to see that Premier Guitar magazine posted this past summer some videos of their factory tour of Nazareth, Pennsylvania’s Martin Guitars. Part I of the factory tour is posted below.

After checking out part I, also check out part II, part III, and part IV.

The internal combustion guitar:

Your touch sends signal to a small amp (6 watts or less) or processor combo

The small amp sends the conditioned signal back to the Internal Combustion Guitar

The Internal Combustion Guitar power driver reenergizes the now harmonically enriched and colored string tone

The ICG looks like a pretty interesting innovation. According to the luthier, Woody Bruce, it allows you to get great tone at very low volumes. Hear Woody B discussing the guitar:

(Thanks David!)

Fender has launched a mini-site for the release of the NOS and Relic David Gilmour Signature Series Stratocasters. The mini-site has a lot of great features, including a timeline of the guitar, details about the guitars, the story behind the guitars, and media from Gilmour’s recent Live at Gdansk DVD.

I first heard about the Fender Kenny Wayne Shepherd Artist Series Stratocaster several months ago, but didn’t hear much about it from Fender. However, I noticed today that Fender has information about the guitar on their Web site.

The guitar is based on Kenny’s own ‘61 Fender Strat and features custom-voiced Kenny Wayne Shepherd pickups, an alder body, maple neck w/ rosewood fretboard, and 21 jumbo frets.

This guitar looks pretty nice and has a street price in the $700-$750 range. Guitar Center is reporting that models will be available in October.

As an interesting (to me) aside, Kenny Wayne Shepherd played a small role in my wife and I getting together. At the time, my wife and I had mutual friends and one night I mentioned that I was going to the KWS concert that was coming up. At the time, KWS was not all that well known, but my wife surprised me by knowing who he was and being interested in going to the show. Not only that, she was a fan of SRV, as well. She’s had my heart ever since!