Custom Built Guitar Project 25.04.2022

One of our students, who joined in December 2021, has a great interest in Classic Rock and Blues. He is currently learning guitar and progressing well.

As a project, we decided to build a custom Les Paul electric guitar and a traditional Cigar Box guitar. The body of the Les Paul was customised using a Lichtenberg Fractal Burner (off site by a member of staff). He then painted and fitted all the electrics. He learned to solder the connections and the neck and body were sprayed in our Mechanics Room spray booth. He fitted the strings, tuned and made sure that everything worked through an amplifier, making any adjustments necessary.

The cigar box was made using an old wine box and a ready built neck. This was a 3 string blues guitar. He did all the woodwork himself; fitting the neck and cutting the holes for the sound cones, pickups and lead inputs. “Blues Box” had all connections soldered and once sealed, he completed with decorative brass corners. Once again, he fitted strings and tested both acoustically and electrically.

This was a very successful project which furthered the student’s knowledge in guitars and further enhanced the styles of music he can play.

In addition to this and with his competence in soldering, electrical testing and wood acoustics we will now be looking to laminate different types of wood and design a guitar from scratch.