Thread: What do you do with your guitars

If Id make one I'd play it.
But Im not making one... yet!

Most of my amateur efforts go out on permanent loan to muso friends. They know theyre getting a freebie so they take good care of the instruments. I get a buzz from knowing theyre getting used and theres also the odd compliment from people which always gives one a bit of a buzz.

Well...I'm on my first project..trying to do three in parallel in the hope of producing 1 keeper.

My kids have their hands up for the other two.

Whether or not I do another will depend on at least 1 good result. If I do it will be one that I want to play & keep.

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Originally Posted by fanlee

Well...I'm on my first project..trying to do three in parallel in the hope of producing 1 keeper.

My kids have their hands up for the other two.

Whether or not I do another will depend on at least 1 good result. If I do it will be one that I want to play & keep.

.

I wouldn't suggest doing three at the same time. You learn a lot in your first few builds and each new instrument is a lot better built than the last. By doing three at the same time you end up making the same mistakes on all three instruments at the same time.

.....er....what mistakes?







Just kidding. So far I've walked away from all of them. The three guitars are completely different...well 2 1/2 really since one I bought the body & neck as a sighter, reference, & 'zero' project if you see what I mean. Anyway therefore all my mistakes are different

But you're right...there's so much to learn..in fact I have learned so much that I now have some idea of just how much I still DON'T KNOW!!

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Originally Posted by Phil Mailloux

I wouldn't suggest doing three at the same time. You learn a lot in your first few builds and each new instrument is a lot better built than the last. By doing three at the same time you end up making the same mistakes on all three instruments at the same time.

I would have to disagree as I started with 5 in parallel. Granted, same mistakes on some projects, but all in all I have found that the only thing so far that has coincided is spraying 2 bodies. bandsawing 2 bodies. No mistakes have been made that have caused me to slice up any of the 5 projects. Everything else has proceeded pretty much at different stages at different times. I have discovered that covering mistakes or turing mistakes into features is a big part of building guitars. Well, for me anyhow.

An example is with one project almost ready for finishing:
Did a dry run string up and found the bridge [stringthrough body] was misplaced.

MMM pretty catastrohpic huh ??

I thought about the options and decided to inlay a piece of contrasting wood over the section that contained the botched looking plug job. [another story] The plugs on the guitar top would be well hidden by the bridge besides they looked pretty ok. Did the job and got that inly pretty perfect and now it looks as though it was meant to be like that.

I class myself as a beginner and have 3 instruments currently on the go: 1. a classical about to get a french polish, 2, a 6 string steel with body built and neck about to go on and 3. a 12 string steel string to match the 6 string.

I find if I make a boo boo I rarely make it on a subsequent instrument. having more than one guitar on the go means theres always something to do in the shop..nothing worse than having to wait 3-4 hours on a glue joint.

Cheers Martin

I would have to disagree as I started with 5 in parallel. Granted, same mistakes on some projects...

You ARE agreeing with me Old Picker. You did make some of the same mistakes on some instruments and you do mention that you've had to cover some mistakes on other instruments too.

The way I see it is that there is so much you learn on your first instrument that once it's all done and ready you can actually stand back and look at the whole picture and analyse what went wrong and how you can fix it on your next build.
In my case I did a hell of a lot of mistakes on my first bass, most of which I could cover up without being too obvious, some other mistakes I couldn't cover and some other mistakes I tried fixing over and over again until I got it right (the finishing part.)
However I made NONE of those mistakes on my second build. The quality of the second doubled compared to the quality of the first. There's still tiny mistakes that are hardly noticable that would make me not sell that one but I know that the third one will be more than good enough to try selling. I just learned that much more by taking the time to finish it all and look back at what I did wrong each time.

I now think that I've learned enough to try doing multiple instruments at a time but I wouldn't have tried it before in fear or ruining nice expensive timbers because of my lack of experience.

I class myself as a beginner and have 3 instruments currently on the go

But you did finish one instrument first before you decided to start multiple builds right? I think that's fine if you've done one before and know enough what not to do for the subsequent ones. I just don't think it's wise to start more than one if you've never done any before because of the above mentioned reasons.

I have kept my guitar with the maker as an example of australian timbers and the small body example size. It is being played daily with lots of love and I get visiting rights weekly. Hee Hee