Once you start playing guitar, it doesn’t take long to figure out what you like and don’t like in an instrument and to develop your own ideal specs. However, we all know that commissioning a custom build isn’t always in the budget.
Building a partscaster guitar can be a great way to compromise—get the guitar you’ve always wanted for a price you can afford and learn some great skills in the process.
In our video above, Andy Martin explains what you should know before building your very first partscaster. And below, we’re going to run through some of the key processes, from matching the body to the neck to tips and tricks for achieving the perfect finish.
In a perfect world, your neck and body would be an immediate fit. But chances are, the neck is going to be either too wide or too narrow for the neck pocket. In either case, the first step in the fix is establishing the guitar’s centerline, which will require the following tools:
The depth of the neck heel should be a major consideration when selecting a neck. While minor adjustments can be accomplished when setting up the guitar’s action, for major depth and tilt issues, seek professional help. The heel base is a hyper-critical element of a solid-playing guitar. We can, however, address the heel width.
Reducing the heel width of a guitar neck requires specialist tools and a full-length trim on both sides of the neck, so that’s a luthier’s job. But for basement and garage builders, modifying the neck pocket is your best and easiest option.
Let’s walk through measuring, marking, and cutting to increase the width of the neck pocket on both sides, which first requires establishing and then maintaining the guitar’s centerline—which is necessary to ensure that the nut, neck, and bridge are in alignment.
After you have confirmed and reconfirmed your centerline, it’s time to plot the taper of the neck pocket.
Once the centerline is established, we can deal with a too-narrow neck using shims, aka spacers, for precision fitting. Trust no shim implicitly, and always refer to centerline for every measurement. You can use any non-compressible material (credit cards, playing cards, etc.) of consistent thickness for a shim; for this demonstration, we’re using 0.5mm string-lock shims, trimming one to fit the lower side slot.
This installment addresses the wiring and fitting of all manner of elec-trickery. We’ll solder in a trio of new pickups. The bridge humbucker is a ’90s-era ESP, origin unknown, while the middle is a 1986 MIJ Fender item. For the neck, we have a 1979 US Fender single coil. For an introduction to pickup selection and swapping, check out Dave Hunter’s excellent article.
We’re starting with a pillaged wiring loom from a Strat copy. Having a roadmap is helpful for the inexperienced, and a working loom may exist in another of your project guitars. No wiring to work with? Kits and diagrams are available, but the combinations are many, so start with a basic setup.
The Fender and ESP wiring matches the pickups, which we’ll incorporate into the loom. The pots are U.S. CTS units, 250K for the single coils and 500k for the ‘bucker tone dial. Fender and Gibson both use CTS—there’s no point in connecting great pickups to junk pots. The five-way switch was reliable in the donor guitar, so it’s a keeper. Always renew output jack sockets after upgrading.
Tag the donor pots, pickups and wires that lead to them before dismemberment and keep them for reference if you get confused. Use language you’ll remember and write legibly; a smear with two readable characters is not helpful on reassembly. Here’s the five step program:
There are other wiring routes for different applications; this setup will provide standard operation. The pickguard needs trimming for a humbucker slot and Floyd Tremolo. Utility knives work if you’re on a budget and have Shawshank Redemption-style time on your hands, but a rotary tool with a grinder bit or cutting-disc is best. Starting at the tremolo:
To mark out the humbucker slot, flip the pickguard so guide lines will not stain the face-side. A pickup ring is an excellent template, even if you’re not fitting one.
Here, we’re installing a Floyd Rose-style floating tremolo system on a cheap, Strat-style Peavey guitar. We’re using a mid‐priced licensed Floyd Rose copy, and to complete the brief, we’ll also fit a locking nut that was supplied with this tremolo. Now it’s time to operate.
It’s recommended that you mount the Floyd with forward-only action, as fine‐tuning a floating trem requires luthier’s expertise. Surface mounting is possible, but because the Floyd design uses the tuning extensions behind the saddles, you’d need to make room by routing the body below the bridge.
To sink the bridge into the body you’ll need:
Ensure all measurements start and finish with reference to your centerline. Double check the scale length of your neck as it fits to the body, then:
When mounting a locking nut, a pre-fitted neck would be best, but the Peavey neck will need to be modified to accept the hardware, using the original nut as a zero fret to preserve string alignment. There’s not enough “meat” above the nut to securely mount the locking nut, so here’s the least destructive fix:
Not only will the locking nut sit securely in place instead of floating ahead of the fretboard, but truss-rod adjustment is unimpeded, and we’re done for now from block to lock.
Here, we’ll look at what it takes to paint or refinish your guitar, along with three custom finish templates.
Completely stripping a guitar body is more difficult than many realize. Even cheap guitars usually have durable finishes that require effort to remove. The inside curves of a Stratocaster’s horns are particularly frustrating without the right power tools. Here are some hard and fast tips:
To get those creative juices flowing, I’ve shared three templates below that you can take and run with. They may not be your cup of tea, but let these examples open your mind to all the other possibilities out there.
This cool effect simply requires plastic food wrap and two colors. This is a fast, simple method to produce a stunning finish.
You can produce this effect with a dark or metallic base coat, a fishnet stocking and some biological topcoat colors. Choose colors to match your favorite lizard/snake/dragon.
Finally, the classic tape and layer method. I’ve always wanted to give this a go. You can create your own pattern as an homage to Edward’s original, but for perfect replication, find an image on the web and use it as a guide for stripe placement.
It’s worth mentioning that this pattern is actually protected intellectual property of the EVH brand. That means creating this guitar is just for you and you alone. If you try to sell it on Reverb (or anywhere), it creates a very unfun series of messages from EVH lawyers to Reverb staff and then to you. Don’t do it.
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