Grand Angus Project, Part 1: Confessions of a 20-something luddite

People who know me know I have an unhealthy love of guitars. Those who know me well also know that I'm completely useless at any sort of manual task. Despite this minor issue, I'm embarking on an adventure to build a guitar from scratch. Well.... almost from scratch; the lads at http://www.guitarkitsdirect.com have done me the service of completing all of the major wood work.

The guitar is shaped in the style of a Gibson SG. The body is basswood, the neck is maple, and the fingerboard is rosewood. So in general, cheap quality, but as is to be expected for the (very good) price.

First thing's first: inspecting the contents of the package. The first glaring omission is any sort of instructional documentation. Luckily I'm a man and therefore wouldn't have used it anyway... psych! I would have found a wiring diagram particularly useful, and an absence of one left me feeling immediately apprehensive. Still, using my Google fu I managed to track down quite a good diagram online. This should be a sufficient resource.

The next thing I noticed was that the headstock is unfinished. The squared off top isn't a particularly aesthetically pleasing option. Ideally, the headstock will be shaped something like this. Not sure yet how I'll do it, but I'll shelve that issue for now!

Otherwise, the headstock and neck are quite pleasant. The neck itself has a fairly low profile and seems like it would be a comfortable neck to play. The inlays look decent enough, although the dots on the neck binding aren't particularly impressive, and the choice of black for the nut was... interesting.

The major issue with the neck, though, is at the other end; the neck joint. In the first picture above, you can see the tang is the full width of the fretboard. This itself isn't a major problem, although not exactly typical.

From the image on the left, you can see the edge of the fretboard sitting quite high above the body - probably 3mm-4mm - and the taper of the heal doesn't start until 10mm-15mm past the point where the neck meets the body.

Here's how the fretboard should look against the face of the body.

And here is how a well made heal looks against the body.

This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma; do I try and fix these issues, or leave them be? Truth be told, there are genuine SG's out there with neck joints like this, but they aren't particularly desirable. Should that bother me though, considering I'm not exactly planning to sell it? The tang isn't especially thick, so trying to shave some off to lower the fretboard closer to the body could weaken the joint. I will have to have a think about that..

So, where to begin!? The first step in the project is to glue the neck to the body. This has to be done prior to painting, or else chances are high the neck finish won't perfectly match the body, resulting in an ugly clash. This doesn't leave a lot of time for contemplating fixes to the neck joint. At this stage, I expect I will leave it as is.

Before finishing can commence, I'll have to do something about the headstock. I have got my hands on a headstock template, which may help to figure out the approach. It will take some planning, though...

Once the neck is glued and the headstock shaped, I will use masking tape to cover the fretboard and all the body cavities in preparation for finishing, but we'll cover that next time.

As it stands, I really don't know what I'm doing. As my first guitar, this will largely be a learning exercise, but that's what makes it exciting. If this project goes off without a hitch I will be very (VERY) surprised, as for a significant portion of the work (all of it, really) I'll be winging it. At the least, it should make for a fun blog series! Stay tuned.