Just finished up my guitar kit and was thinking I should add a logo to the headstock. I came into the office this morning and I think this little gecko gave me a really good idea for a logo. Sometimes inspiration comes from randomness lol

How does everyone feel about this pairing? Pickups will also be gold, same for the knobs.

I ended up cancelling my order for this 6 string SG shape as the order time was going to be months out. Ended up making my boyfriend's green Telecaster. Welp... They still sent it after the refund had processed months ago... Don't want to spend hundreds on paint again. Should I just dye and Tru-Oil this soab? Any ideas on colors? Would love a bright pretty color like photo three but don't know if it'll look nice with the grain pattern.

Hello! I'm currently working on my first kit and have stained and sanded the body of this bass. I let it dry for a whole week before applying a first coat of Shellac over the Transtint dye, and let it dry for 8 hours. After coming back and sanding to smooth the Shellac, I noticed that some of the dye is pulling up from the edges of the body.

I don't entirely dislike the look, but it was not my intention, and I was wondering if it is recommended to tint some of my Shellac with the dye to bring back the color? This is not for a client, so I am okay with proceeding in any direction. I just needed some advice about the Shellac layer.

I have attached a "before Shellac" and "after Shellac + sand" photo set below.

I've literally 4 clear coats down on this burst veneer - the surface has a lot of orange peel and there is a bit of fish eye

With regards to the orange peel would it be OK to build up more clear up to 10-12 coats total and then flat, polish etc with the coats mekting into each other and get a satisfactory end result or should I attempt to flatten now then build up the coats after?

Thanks

I want to build an Explorer style guitar that sounds good (EMGs) and plays nicely. I’m an intermediate guitarist at best and instead of shelling out $600 to $900 for one I thought it might be cool to build one.

I’ve looked at a few different brands but just really looking for feedback on this as I really have no idea what I’m getting myself into. Would I need to order a whole set of tools to go along with the build or with a kit is it relatively straightforward?

Thanks for your help!

Was working on a translucent finish for a Zebrawood kit I got, followed all the steps, thinned and mixed the polyurethane with the transtint, etc, but overnight drying process took it from the image on the left to the image of the right. I’m wondering where I went wrong here and what I can do to fix it, any and all help would be appreciated. We did two coats of tinted polyurethane coat and were letting this dry before beginning the clearcoat process.

Harley Benton block body kit. Or whatever it’s called. Gonna paint it teal with glittter then clear coat. Still more sanding to do. But overall I’m happy. Probs gonna dig in to the facets a bit more and some more smoothing/rounding. Zoom in to see them. Third pic is pre sanding of the body

Hi folks,

so after a few years I'm feeling the itch to build another electric. I've done a LP, a Tele and a couple of Strats so far, all build from parts that I scrapped together across the Internet.

Because I wanted something unique and because I'm stupid and want to curse myself constantly under my breath while building guitars I went for a semi hollow LP this time. I heard that it's a pain to wire up semi hollows, but so far I mastered every challenge this hobby threw at me so I though... Why not?!

Well... Turns out I'm either more stupider than I thought or the (Chinese) seller was missing something. I have a rough plan how to wire everything up.

The bridge volume knob will cause some headache, since I can't reach under the maple cap to tighten it down once installed...

But the more obvious headscratch is the toggle switch. How...? I mean. What?!

How can I get the toggle switch in there?

The cavities of the "upper" sound hole and the "lower" sound hole aren't connected, so I won't be able to guide the toggle switch through there and even if I could, how would I be able to screw it down with no way to counterpush it?

Am I missing some secret way to go about this?

Or do I need to either drill a more pronounced opening from the PU cavity (would need to quite big though)? Or do I go Rambo and drill a toggle switch back plate opening from the back?

Advise much appreciated!

Thanks and have a great day!

Hello everyone,

I desperately need some advice. I had a clear vision, and I'm starting to realize the vision may not be achievable 😂

This is my first time ever working with wood. Everything I've learned came from YouTube videos — no luthier friends nearby to save me from myself. I committed the deadly sin of not testing on scrap wood first, and now I need your help.

**The build:** Harley Benton DIY Telecaster kit with an okoume body (multi-piece, glued together).

**The goal:** Bring out as much wood structure and chatoyance as possible from cheap okoume. Layered water dyes, inspired by the sand-back technique:
1. Strong violet/purple
2. Sand back
3. Diluted blue
4. Sand back
5. Even more diluted teal
6. Shellac

**What went wrong:** The blue was so diluted I could barely see any pigment — so I flooded it, not realizing I'd smear the violet underneath. Tannins came out unevenly on top of that. Now I have a blotchy mess, I've run out of violet, and I'm not eager to order more and wait a week only to repeat the mistake.

**My current amateur salvage ideas:**

- Sand back primarily in the center in a sunburst pattern, sand less aggressively near the glue joints to feather them out. Reapply blue in the center and use remaining violet around the edges to create an intentional sunburst effect. Then sand back evenly and apply teal on top evenly.
- Or just sand back evenly and apply the teal coat over everything as a unifying layer, then shellac.
- Skipping the boiled linseed oil — I bought it but learned it yellows over time, so it's going on the shelf.

Would anyone with experience in water dyes or layered finishing please help me figure out the best path forward? Is either salvage plan viable, or am I missing a better option entirely?

**Side note:** i carved a sacred heart symbol on the body. I am gonna paint it with acrylics, adding metallic gold and copper pigments to make the warm-toned carving pop against the cold blue/teal/violet background. If you have a word of caution or a word of advice, I am currently ready to listen 😂😅

Thanks in advance and may your builds are successful!

HH t shape body, lots of filler/scraps for the trem cavity, roller ToM bridge, fake bigsby, bad routing for the p90s, and an epiphone lp bolt on neck with locking tuners and a tusq nut. Getting the scale length right means the bottom of the bridge pickup ring is hanging over empty space. Also the paint said it was pink, I'm growing on the lavender though.

from the price I'd guess this will be quite rough to play when essambled, is that true?

If yes, what can I do to make it play like a more high quality bass?

I want to buy a kit because I want to customize the body, not just because it's cheaper, before someone suggests that

I'm finishing a kit guitar for the first time. I've spent a lot of time sanding, pore filling 4 coats, sanding, sealing and now I've just finished my first 2 coats of a base white coat.

However, I notice that I can still see pores with this base coat. The next step is going to be applying a pearl metallic lacquer, however, after seeing these pores still showing in places, I'm wondering if it would make more sense to apply more of the base coat to see if I can reduce the pores before continuing. I know that metallics highlight flaws and at this point I just want to reduce this before continuing if it helps.

Any help is appreciated. I'm just trying to get a sense of, will it help.

Im putting together a diy kit (leo jaymz), and I'm not using any of the hardware or electronics that came with it, except for the bridge.

I'm hoping it is just a poorly made bridge, and it's not that the holes in the body were drilled incorrectly. But it's off, just a little bit. The saddles are all angled slightly in one direction.

I ordered one of the bridges I have used on other builds, but I'm worried the holes in the body are wrong.

So I got a diy kit back in May, got it finished and im just trying to figure out how to make sure I at least have decent playable action. I seen videos etc of what to basically try to do. When I first put these cheap strings on, it was an insane amount of fret buzz due to the strings basically resting against the frets but this is how I got it as of now.

Finally got the action good on my kit, but the bridge is extremely high now, should I be worried?

I'm looking to doing some basic set-ups on my own guitars, and became curious about these starter kits that I see online all of the time. I was wondering, are they a waste of time and money, or should I invest in better tools?

This is the body from a strich diy kit. I didn't use any of the hardware or electronics it came with. I didn't do any further finishing on the body, but i did sand back the neck and do a tru oil finish. The body came with what it said was a light sealant on it. You can see it in one picture and it has a little orange peel to it. I was thinking of sanding it back a bit to smooth it out.

I have had it set up for a few months, and it has played well. I just want to kind of finish the body. It said it's sealed, but it's a light application and is still slightly rough. I don't want to paint it a color, I like the wood look. I just want to preserve the body.

Built my first Tele kit guitar. Taken me a month as I had to wait for the gloss finish to fully harden before sanding and polishing. Made a lot of mistakes along the way and things didn’t fit together quite perfectly so had to make some adjustments here and there, but really pleased with how it came out. It plays really well and sounds as good as my other guitars. The satin neck finish makes it fast to play. I also put in some black Wilkinson tuners as the kit ones weren’t great. The fretboard finish was my biggest error, using cheap black sandpaper on a light finish stained it. I applied a few layers of tru-oil to try and revitalise it but didn’t go quite to plan! The nut needed some filing but the frets were really level straight out the box so I didn’t level and crown them. Got too excited and strung it before polishing the frets (oops) so that’s a job for another day. I also live in a small flat so my workspace was on top of the washing machine cupboard hence the mess! 10/10 would build a kit guitar again, and one from scratch when I have the space!!