Introduction

This is going to be a very interesting but very difficult task for me. While I have been playing guitar for more than 30 years now, I've never delved into building or repair. Guitars are like religious symbols to me and I have a hard time looking at them as a "project" or something taken lightly. Music is my religion and I've always left the repair and complex maintenance to luthiers who are better qualified than I to do that kind of work. My personal luthier is Jerry and he is a wizard. He never ceases to amaze me with his love for guitars and his ability to understand what I'm trying to say when I describe a sound in my head that I would like a particular guitar to make. I gave him a Mexican Tele years ago and just said, "Make it growl". He added some new pickups, rewired for a 5-way selector switch, put in jumbo frets and provided more noise cancellation by rubberizing all the wiring to eliminate hum. I paid $300 for it new and sold it for more than $700 and that is testament enough to his skills.

I've wanted a double-neck for many years but never really wanted to pay the exorbitant price that comes with buying one. I saw the current kit I just received as a Christmas gift on Ebay and thought, "There's the answer to my conundrum." The kit was low cost and looked of decent quality and I decided that's what I wanted to do. Build my own guitar to the specs I wanted (apart from the actual body of course) and then find new and creative ways to use it. I thought at first I would get the traditional SG body that's been made famous by Page, Lifeson and The Eagles but in the end I wanted something unique that I could call my own when it was done.

The first steps will be tentative and include something I've never been really good at: staining/painting. I've not worked with painting wood before and it's a time and labor intensive process. The body is completely unfinished and so are the necks. I've scoured the web for tutorials and videos of what will be needed to finish the wood and I'll probably start next week after I've gathered all the necessary tools and stains that will be needed. I've settled on a honey-blonde finish and some upgraded electronics and I'd like to spend a little more time boning up on the process before I begin. I'm not as shy about the electronics as that's what I do for a living. The hardware is straight forward and doesn't look too difficult so that's not a problem either. To the right are the pics of the raw wood right out of the box.