Buy a Custom Made Guitar: Custom Built Electric Guitar

Custom hand built electric guitars are something that regular guys dream about. You normally have to be famous or rich to get a custom hand built electric guitar made for you. When you think about the signature series guitars built for guys like Eric Clapton, you realize how lucky these guys are to get to say exactly what they want and get it.

The money it would cost to have a guitar technician build you a custom hand made guitar would be too much for most of us regular guys. It is possible, however to get one made from a friend, if you're lucky enough to have one, who likes to build guitars from scratch.  From choosing the wood for your custom guitar to choosing the pickups and finish, it's an exciting adventure.

Choosing the wood for a custom guitar is a good starting point. You might need to research a little to find out what tone you get from each of the different guitar tone woods. Guitar players and luthiers call these guitar tone woods.

Research a few different websites to find out what the consensus is on the tone that you get from certain woods. Keep in mind that the wood is the starting point, and is by no means the only part of the guitar that will effect your tone.

If you are having a friend build your guitar, or if your luthier is willing. It would be a good idea to meet him at a lumber store that carries different types of exotic woods. For example, you might want to be able to choose between ash, mahogany, curly maple, quilted maple, ebony, rosewood, etc. for the different parts of your guitar. Think about the guitars you have owned in the past and decide what woods you have liked the most. Keep these three things in mind:

1. Beauty: Some woods are more beautiful or fancy looking
2. Tone: The denser the wood, the brighter sound usually
3. Weight: Denser wood is heavier. For example maple is heavier than mahogany.

Some wood stores may already have guitar body blanks cut for you to choose from. If so, you will likely get these much cheaper than if you need to buy a larger piece to have cut down. Ordering blanks from companies like StewMac.com is another easy option, but may not be quite as cheap as a local store or even Amazon.com.

Choosing the pickups for your custom electric guitar can be broken down into a couple steps.  First you will have to explore what you want, and the find the lowest price you can on the particular pickups you choose.

You may want to get a similar sound to what you have already owned in the past. For example, maybe you have used the Fender Noiseless pick ups in the past, but you want to try out the Hot Noiseless. Going with a pickup manufacturer that you are familiar with is a good idea. If you buy pickups from a company that you have no experience, then you could end up totally dissatisfied with the end result of tonal qualities you don't like.

Another great thing about having a custom electric guitar built for you is that you can configure the pickups however you would like. If you want coil tap humbuckers in a strat style body, you can. If you want single coil pick ups in a Les Paul style body, that's an option. The main thing, again, is to think of what you enjoy from the guitars you have had in the past. It is a creative endeavor to create the perfect guitar for you.

Make sure you reasearch your pickup choice online before going with any so you can make sure that they aren't horrible. There are enough people out there willing to give a review of a pickup or a guitar with the pick ups you are wanting. Prevent yourself the trouble of having to try several. YouTube videos will even give you an idea of the tonal qualities of various pickups.

There are three basic colors of hardware to choose from, gold, chrome, or black. Beyond this easy decision, you will find a plethora of options and innovations to choose from. For example, you can buy some Planet Wave tuners that are locking and automatically trim the string for you. That sounds awesome. These tuners are not super expensive, and could give you more time to play your instrument.

Think about how high your bridge will be. Some bridges such as the tune-o-matic bridge, like in Les Pauls, is pretty high. The sustain given from these high bridges is pretty good though. You may want a lower profile bridge to give you the wrist comfort that most strats give you. Then you have to decide on whether you want string through body, hard tail, or a tremolo bridge.

Some other options you might consider include binding, carved top or flat top, neck radius, headstock design, including six on one side or three on each side.  You can ask for your jack plate to be located in different places.  These are the personal taste things that will make your custom electric guitar more of a signature series guitar.

These are things that are not easily modified, so choose carefully about how you want your extras placed and set up.  Finally, you can ask for your action to be set very low, medium, or a little high.  Most luthiers will do a set up job when they cut and place the nut and do the fret work.

choosing the color of your custom built guitar is fun, but it may be difficult to visualize what colors might look the best. There's a little trick you can try that allows you to see multiple guitar colors at the same time using Google image search. 

Type in guitar color in google image search.  Then when you want to see a certain color, use the advanced search options on the left toolbar.  You can choose if you want to look at blue guitars, brown guitars, red guitars, pink guitars, etc.