I’m not really sure why, but aged 16 or so I got it into my head that I’d make an electric guitar. Somehow I ended up with the book Make Your Own Electric Guitar, by Melvyn Hiscock. I genuinely can’t remember if the book ownership or the idea came first, but regardless even at that age I could be single-mindedly stubborn when it came to making things, and the seed had well and truly been planted.
I read it from cover to cover and thoroughly absorbed all that I could from it. I have an oddly specific memory of sitting in a high school Maths class leafing through a guitar magazine (this may explain my higher Maths grade), trying to decide on what I was going to build. I eventually settled on a PRS copy, whose shape I literally enlarged and traced from said magazine. I put in an order to Touchstone Tonewoods for various sundries and tools (from their physical catalogue, paid with a cheque) and we were off!
My dad had squirrelled away (as is his way) a large chunk of mahogany that had once been a door in Radio Forth, for whom he had done work for in the past. That made up the back and neck. For the front my plan was to procure a bit of book-matched flamed maple as was quite fashionable at the time. Of course I had no idea how to get my hands on such a thing, but again my Dad came to the rescue through his friend late Donald, who had access to supplies of wood. Unexpectedly one morning he turned up at our house with two bits of sycamore, one suitable for a fingerboard and the other already split and book-matched. It wasn’t the flamed top I had in mind, if I’m completely honest, but it was and is a lovely bit of wood and moreover it was free, so I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I had all the bits and the build commenced. It was a long time ago now and memories have faded, but I do remember a handful of things like my nervousness with cutting the fret slots in the right places, the panic when I realised I’d cut the neck joint a little too narrow (and would need shimming) and carving the top with chisels(!) and copious quantities of 40 grit sand paper. I’m sure I even knew gouges existed at the time. And of course I remember the first time I strung it up, and it actually worked! If I were to hand it to a seasoned luthier I doubt they’d be particularly impressed; it’s covered in mistakes, the finish is pretty terrible and it shows all the signs of being assembled by an impatient child, which in fact it was, so I don’t feel too bad about it in retrospect, and in any case it’s a much better guitar than I would have had the financial ability to own at the time.
In many ways I don’t regret growing up before the advent of ubiquitous digital photography not least as my younger days also preceded the invention of social media, but it is a shame that I don’t have a pictorial record of making my guitar. One of these days I’ll get around to doing another and I’ll redress that, taking my time a bit more and spending money on higher quality hardware, now that I can afford it.
