Has anyone ever built a kit guitar/partscaster?

cwsquared said:
I got a 5-string active bass kit from them for Christmas. I have yet to start on it, but I feel like you are 100% correct. I will be posting about it in the near futrue, now that I know what finish to do on it.
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I plan on picking up the bolt-n SG kit sometime in the next few weeks. From what I’m finding about the pickups, they aren’t that good. I planned on P90s anyway, so it’s not that bit a deal for me…
 
Coda said:
I plan on picking up the bolt-n SG kit sometime in the next few weeks. From what I’m finding about the pickups, they aren’t that good. I planned on P90s anyway, so it’s not that bit a deal for me…
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Love me some P-90s. I feel like most kit pickups are immediate replacements.
 
thewintersoldier said:
Might as well throw mine in the mix. Here's the 4 I've done. Fender custom shop can't touch these. I've played CS in stores and they don't come close. They're all freaky and all fuck.
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Pure hotness, and from the looks of things, blue and yellow are into strap swapping.
 
Big Monk said:
Pedals are a rabbit hole.

Amps are a fucking black hole.

Plus with some of the better transformer manufacturers going under during COVID, shits not as easy to source as it used to be. Add to that you need to sell one of your kids for tube money and it’s just not the same as it used to be.
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I would way way way way way rather build amps than pedals but here we are
 
Big Monk said:
One of the reasons I always loved modding amps was that all the iron, cab, etc. were already in place.

With that said, I’d love to build that Trinity Triwatt
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I want to do the Trinity TC15 bad.
thewintersoldier said:
I wanna build a blackface vibro champ just for recording
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I have a ‘76 Silverface I just recapped and dropped everything down to blackface voltages as well as swapped in a new speaker. Picked it up 20 years ago for $25 from a little old man in my hometown. He used to use it at church.
 
jeffwhitfield said:
When I got into cycling, it didn't take me lock to customize the shit out of my bike. Within about a year and half, every part of what was on the original bike had been switched out for something else. With my second bike, I built it from the ground up with nothing but a frames to start.

But that process didn't happen overnight. With the first bike, I screwed a lot of shit up with some of the components I was switching out. I learned by doing. So if you plan on doing stuff to your guitar, get a cheap as shit guitar and use it as a guinea pig before tackling your main axe.

So, just like my bikes, I think building a guitar from scratch allows one to accomplish a few different goals: 1) You get the exact setup that you want and 2) You know the guitar inside and out so that when something goes wrong you'll know how to fix it. Not everyone can rely on a luthier to fix every damn thing wrong with their guitars...but with a little knowledge and practice, there's not much you can't do yourself.
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Don’t get me started. I don’t bike anymore, but I still have the first one I ever bought as a college graduation present to myself with what little money I had. ‘96 Bianchi Trofeo. I upgraded all the Campy stuff to Record and Chorus over the years. I can’t bring myself to sell it.
 
I had to wait until I got home to find the pics, but this was my most expensive partscaster. Custom built body (figured walnut over mahogany), Fender replacement neck, hand-wound pickups from a dude in Texas, Hipshot hardware for everything, and a pickguard laser cut from a Johnny Cash record. It was a sexy guitar.

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Trinity B-15 is what I want to build next, and a Weber AB200 ("Catherine"?), too, but it's not offered as a kit anymore.

Can't afford either. Need to swap wires on my Tweed build's transformer from 220v to 110v...

Need to finish my Tele build...


Too much to do and not enough time, talent and legal-tender...
 
Robert said:
@MichaelW just recently posted this one.

I'd love to, but I might as well just go ahead and buy a custom shop Fender... I'd come out cheaper after all the things I'd mess up. :ROFLMAO:

Seriously though, I'm tempted, because for years I've wanted a Strat in Taos Turquoise finish... unfortunately the custom shop is the only way to get one, and a finish isn't worth $4K+ to me. I'm no wood worker though, and extremely critical, so the idea of drilling holes for the pickguard and trem just discourages me right away from it.
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Warmoth does a taos turquoise just sayin', I'd rock that.

 
Funny thing was that after reading that the OP wanted a project the first thing I thought of was amps. But building a great amp is easily as expensive as building a great guitar!

But if it's a project you are looking for then build a cab for an amp can be relatively affordable and also make a huge impact both on the sound and on the looks. Mojotone make excellent cabs - I have bought a few. But now where I live the shipping actually costs more than the cab, so I've turned to building my own. It can be expensive if you want to make them look like an old Marshall or Vox - all the tolex, piping, grill cloth etc adds up. But you can build with "found" timber. Or you can use old ammo boxes, furniture, fruit crates, lots of things.

From what I have found through building cabs with various solid woods and plywoods is that solid pine sounds great and can spread the sound around a lot more than ply, which tends to have a dryer sound and be more directional. The thickness of the baffle can have a huge affect on the sound. I like 1/4" to 5/16th" for the extra resonance. 12mm to 18mm sounds quicker but a lot dryer and a lot less fun.

Anyway, with some lateral thinking you can make your boring old Blues Junior look and sound a lot more interesting with a bigger cab made from solid pine. And if you can find some old timber and re-use it you might just find it looks better than black tolex too.
 
Apparently I'm the oddball here, I don't like building amps. Even kits, they're just so much freaking work. Prepping the chassis, installing all the hardware, SO MANY DAMN WIRES. Not to mention that I suck at woodwork so I either need to buy or repurpose a cabinet. I did an amp build a couple months ago where I designed a PCB with board-mounted tube sockets and ran DC heaters and that was the most fun build I've done, but chassis work still isn't fun.
 
Big Monk said:
I like PCBs in amps and PCB mounted sockets. Less wiring is always better.

I came up modding Valve Jrs over at the Wattkins forums and those guys never had an issue with PCBs. I know some amp builders turn their noses down at PCB amps but they are just so damn convenient and neat to work with.
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I turned my nose down at them for years, the majority of amps I've done have been turretboards, but seriously, SO MUCH WORK. RG Keen has said that a well-designed PCB amp will be every bit as good as a well-built turretboard amp, but it will be more repeatable.
 
I’ve been wanting to do an amp build for a while now, but the price of wood is still crazy. Wanted to do finger jointed ply for the cab and the head, but good quality ply is still at least triple what it should be. Tack the cost of transformers, speakers, chassis, and everything else on, and I’m looking at probably $1800 minimum in parts for what I want to build.
 
vigilante398 said:
Apparently I'm the oddball here, I don't like building amps. Even kits, they're just so much freaking work. Prepping the chassis, installing all the hardware, SO MANY DAMN WIRES. Not to mention that I suck at woodwork so I either need to buy or repurpose a cabinet. I did an amp build a couple months ago where I designed a PCB with board-mounted tube sockets and ran DC heaters and that was the most fun build I've done, but chassis work still isn't fun.
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Sounds cool. I'd love to see some pics from that build.
 
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