Thru Neck Custom Guitar
Plays like a dream, the neck and action are incredible – better than my Gibson – Deeply grateful for this experience and will definitely be back for more.
Peter Harper
Peter develops new equipment for a large mobile phone company, and came over from Germany to design and make this guitar over 8 days on our build your own custom guitar course. Although the experts among you can probably see where his influences came from, it truly is unique, like all the guitars built here on our course. He drew his own shape for the body and headstock on day 1, during the design your own guitar part of the course. For BYO custom participants this is included in the price but also available separately for those who want to commission me to make it for them, or those who want to build at home but just need a little guidance. There are just so many options that it can be useful to go through the drawing process and make decisions as we go – I am here to answer q’s and help you to understand how it all fits together and make sure the design is correct before we start to cut any wood.
One of the advantages of building your own, or having one made specially for you, is that literally everything can be customised to suit your style – maybe you like really fat necks but can’t get one big enough? or Vice versa? Or maybe you just aren’t sure? Well, here at the workshop I can show you examples, test pieces and finished guitars, with all the various options to help you decide what is best for you.
Peter chose all the hardware and tonewoods for this, his first masterpiece. It is a buzz to know that no-one else on the planet has a guitar exactly like this – another bonus of building your own. One of the fears everyone has is that it might not work properly, but that is where we come in. A lot of people say to me that they were very nervous at first and really thought that they would be the one who stuffs it all up but I am here to make sure that does not happen. Literally hundreds of people; male and female, young and old, have come to our humble little workshop from all over the world and my job is to make sure they all leave with a guitar they can not only be proud of, but functions and sounds as good as any guitar out there – after all it is my reputation on the line here as I have said many times before. Take some time to look at some of the other instruments built here on our course and you will see what I mean – read the comments – we don’t make them up!
Body and neck are both mahogany with an Ebony fretboard and flame maple cap to finish it off. He opted for a through neck construction, floyd rose trem, two humbuckers and natural matt finish. He also inlaid a square block at the twelfth fret made from mother of pearl.
The end result is hopefully very close to what Peter had in his head when he arrived – we really make it our mission to do everything possible to achieve this – don’t just take our word for it.