Building Electric Guitars: How to Make Solid-Body, Hollow-Body and Semi-Acoustic Electric Guitars and Bass Guitars
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Arrives
Wednesday, Apr 1
Description
Everything from the first steps of design to the final set-up of of solid- body, hollow-body and semi-acoustic electric guitars is covered step by step in this book. It also contains a section about winding your own pickups. Read more
Publisher : Koch Martin
Publication date : September 1, 2001
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
Print length : 236 pages
ISBN-10 : 3901314075
ISBN-13 : 70
Item Weight : 15.2 ounces
Dimensions : 7.5 x 1 x 9.75 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #560,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #635 in Woodworking Projects (Books) #1,093 in Guitars (Books) #22,311 in Crafts & Hobbies (Books)
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Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Paperback
I have all three of what are probably the most recommended books on building electric guitars and if I had to keep only one, this would be the one. That's the main good news! Other positives include fact that almost exactly half of the 200 plus pages are dedicated to discussing the various factors that go into deciding the how/what/why of building your own custom creation. Martin goes into the various decisions regarding wood selection (body & neck), elctronics, scale length, neck construction, peghead style, finish type, etc., etc. He also goes into details, with a separate section on each, for specifically building the bodies for a solid body, semi-hollow body and hollow body type electric guitar. While he does show various stages of construction on numerous guitars, he does not show construction of a particular guitar start to finish. He does however offer two guitars plans on his website (one is shown in greatly reduced format on page 234 with a photograph of the finished version on page 213). Based on having his book and the information detailed on either of the two plans (Yes, I bought them, inexpensive at 10 Euros each) anybody who can work a saw without cutting their finger off could build their own guitar. Negatives are, as mentioned in some of the other reviews, all photos are in black & white, relatively poor quality and small (because they've tried to include too many photos - do we really need seven photos showing how to get your solid body blank cut out of a log plank). Other than that, this is an excellent book and one you could use by itself to make yourself a very nice guitar that wouldn't look like any other guitar! That's the reason to get this book! If you're just going to make another Telecaster/Stratocaster/Les Paul clone, you might as well just look for a good used model of one of those and buy it. However, if you've seriously wanted to "make your own" and do all the exotic electronic wiring options you've heard people talk about, while making it out of some exotic wood you couldn't afford any other way, with a wild transparent "burst" finish - this is the book for you! Enjoy the ride!
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Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2011 by Xavier De La Pluma
Format: Paperback
Martin Koch has written a very good book on electric guitars. If you have no wood working skill or knowledge, he walks you through the basics, but that is not the point of this book. If you want to build an electric guitar, you ought to have at least the amount of skill and equipment that he outlines. But at the same time he offers an approach that those with few tools and a less than pro shop can handle. So a woodworking manual it is not, but for those of us who are skilled woodworkers, ( I am a professional cabinetmaker ) he offers a well thought out and methodical list of steps and processes to build a guitar. It is not a book for "idiots" , which is good, Koch respects his readers, but he also expects a degree of skill and thoughtfulness. A good book on the subject, my copy is already dog eared.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2009 by R. Bittner
Format: Paperback
Martin Koch has compiled a lot of good information in this book. I haven't seen this much information about electric guitars in any one book. If you are only going to buy one book on electric guitars (why would you, really) this is a good one. He goes into winding pickups, various wiring ideas, and several building techniques. The problem (really the only one) is that the illustrations, while numerous, are quite small and poorly reproduced. You can see what each one is but there were obvious registration and focus problems. It looks like they used digital images of low resolution. The publisher should have taken more care. That said it's not enough to make me regret the purchase. This is a valuable addition to my library.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2003 by Alan Richrod
Format: Paperback
This is not a large book, but the amount of information contained in it is startling. It covers every aspect of guitar making down to winding your own pickups. A lot of people have complained that the photos are not high quality. While they are not the quality that one might expect for a modern publication, they clearly communicate what is going on.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2017 by Dr. E
Format: Paperback
Be prepared to read extremely small print. Keep in mind this book is translated, so it is occasionally difficult to understand the meanings of a sentence until you visualize a comma here and there. This is one of the few authors that says wood type does matter on electric guitar building. Most authors say it doesn't matter because it's all about the electronics anyway. This is the only author who's put a reality check on having to wait moths for wood to equalize in moisture content before you can use it at a 10% moisture level. His opinion differs from other books, saying the work area humidity needs to stay between 50-70%, while others say 40-50%. Like every other guitar book on the market, it's occasionally very difficult to see what the author is trying to convey in a black and white picture. Some of the pages just jump right through major portions. "Cut the top and glue it on". Some parts are detailed. This IS the only book I've seen explain the information needed to determine the depth and angle of a neck pocket. That one piece of information is worth buying the book, in my opinion. Besides neck angle, the chapter on design is what makes this book worth buying. Look elsewhere for inlay information. Like all other Lutherie authors, he skips around instead of describing things in order. For instance, he describes filling grain after staining. He skipped details like telling you to brace the tremolo block while tuning. Do not make this your first or only book. Granted there are some excellent details contained in his information, but details can make or brake a guitar build. (Page 227 is a copy of pg 226) Be sure to purchase this book, but only after or within the following combination: Dan Erlewine: Guitar Player Repair Guide Leonardo Lospennato: Electric Guitar and Bass Design Brian Forbes: Acoustic Guitar Making (This book is 70% about using or building your own tools, 30% about guitar.Well worth it.)
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Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2014 by Russell A. Barber