Finishing Up Building The 7 String Guitar Kit!
A Guide For Beginners By A Beginner.
Yes I know what you are thinking…What has taken so freaking long since we left off in part 5!
I actually finished the guitar off a couple of weeks ago but just haven’t had a chance to write up this post.
Life got busy and I didn’t get to document the process as much as I would have liked but TO HECK WITH IT we will soldier on!
Wiring
Ahh yes, this was probably the most intimidating part of the whole build. Really most of my angst over wiring was put to rest with a simple search on the ole inter-webs. I quickly found a diagram of what I needed to do and got started wiring.
I won’t go into a ton of detail as wiring will be different for each setup but it really is not as hard as it looks if you just take your time. It can be finicky with some of the tight spaces but it’s doable.
One thing I can warn you about is grounding your wiring. In my case I needed to ground my wiring to the post in the bridge. The problem was I had already installed the post in the guitar! DOH!
A quick search on youtube followed by a trip to the local hardware store and I was able to jimmy up a tool with a piece of pvc pipe, a bolt and a washer to get the post out easily and then attach the ground wire to the post before re-installing the post.
Next I plugged in to make sure everything worked and then moved on to the next step.
Adjustments
If I had to give you any advice it would be to really take your time before you start to apply any finish to the guitar to make sure you are happy with how the guitar neck is fitting.
As I was getting my first string on the guitar I realized I was not happy with how the neck was in the guitar so I ended up un-bolting it and adding neck shims to make sure the neck was sitting how I wanted.
This was not hard at all but was just more of a pain when you are all ready to put on your strings and then have to essentially take apart the guitar again.
I am sure you all know how to install your own strings so I won’t go into that but after installing the strings I did adjust the height of the bridge a little to lower the action.
I haven’t done so yet, but will need to sand down the nut in the future to really get the action just as I want it. Other than that the guitar plays great and I am really happy with it.
Closing Thoughts
If you are on the fence about tackling one of these kits I would say don’t be. Really, and this is just my opinion, you need minimal skills to be able to build one of these kits. There are a ton of resources on the internet and youtube to help you if you need to figure out how to do something or need ideas for how to apply finishes.
I think I could have built this in 2 weeks. However, I just kind of worked on it when I felt like it or had spare time and it was actually a lot of fun and really enjoyable. Yes some parts were frustrating but a good puzzle always has a little of that.
Once you build one kit you will want to do another. I already would like to try another finish for sure and I think the next build would just go so much smoother because I’ve now got my first one under my belt and the second one would go so much smoother.
I think the quality of my finished product would get better and better. The room for creativity is really endless when you can choose to swap out whatever parts of the kit you want for other hardware you have in mind.
It is summer right now so most of us are not thinking about building guitars. Heck it’s time to be outside enjoying the weather but as fall and winter comes I can see building a guitar kit would be a great way to get through the winter blues. I know I already got my eye on my next build!
