Very nicely done!sjm wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:16 pm Something a little different, and probably the cheapest guitars in here (beating even DT's). These are 2 guitars from a DIY kits that cost around EUR 60 a pop. I bought the kits as lockdown projects to do with my wife, whose is a trained carpenter and a quite talented artist. The carpentry skills came in handy for the first one, which was still pretty rough around the edges and needed quite a bit of sanding before we could think about a paint job.
DIY tele finished_sm.png
I think she used acrylic paint on this one, at any rate it was hand painted using brushes, and took quite a while to finish. I very much like the way it looks. It's not a particularly great guitar to play though. The stock pick-ups and strings are the very definition of meh, but it does play. This one also requires me to solder all the parts together, which actually went surprisingly well - I hadn't soldered anything for at least a decade, probably two. I'm not that bothered by it not being great to play though, it was always conceived of as being an artwork more than an instrument. I was more interested in seeing how things went, given that this was the first DIY kit I built. Lessons were learned, and it has sentimental value.
I built a bass after that, but I just oiled the wood (my wife wasn't involved), so it's nothing spectacular. So I'm not sharing that. But it plays pretty well and the pick-ups are decent enough. Definitely usable and a nice alternative to my Fender J-bass.
The third DIY kit was another joint project, and this time things worked out really well. We ditched the idea of painting the body by hand, and the kit was much higher quality than the first one. Pretty much no sanding required this time. The electrics also required no soldering, which was slightly disappointing but also a lot easier. Intonation was perfect with no adjustment (a miracle!) and the pickups sound very decent for a EUR 60 guitar.
The idea behing this one was to celebrate me becoming an Irish citizen and thus securing my right to stay and work in the EU following the Brexit disaster. This time we decided to airbrush the body, which required us to buy an airbrush. We'd both taken part in a course where we used airbrushes to create designs for T-shirts, and had very much enjoyed it. So we bought an airbrush (which cost many times what the kit cost) and a bunch of stencils, going for a celtic theme. This time I was also involved in the painting process - it's a lot easier to use stencils if you are graphically incompetent, though I let my wife take care of most of the more complicated scale design.
Green Dragon Guitar - front_sm.jpg
Green Dragon Guitar - back_sm.jpg
Green Dragon Guitar - dragon_sm.jpg
And yes, we didn't bother doing anything fancy in terms of shaping the headstock. We've only got hand saws at home, and that seemed like far too much effort and far too much sawdust to be worth it.
At least I was involved in the design and painting of the green one.
