The DIY 7 String Guitar Kit That Everyone Wants.

You’ve seen them out there on the webz or in your Facebook feed…the DIY 7 String Guitar kit.  You’ve thought to yourself wow that’s actually pretty cheap and it would actually be really fun to have a little project to work on in your spare time.  Besides you always thought it would be cool to build your own guitar.  You know, put the finish on it just the way you want it and have the satisfaction of playing an instrument that you put together yourself.

YES, do it already and pull the trigger!

May I take this opportunity to suggest a DIY 7 String Guitar Kit that everyone wants?  I’ll take that as a yes.

One of the most popular 7 string guitar kits that we have seen with our customers is the 7 string explorer guitar kit.  We refer to it as our Intergalactic 7 string guitar kit.  You see the connection there?…explorer…intergalactic, get it?  The explorer always looked kind of like a space ship hence exploring the intergalactic.  No? Not really following?  Okay moving along.

Anyways, the explorer/intergalactic 7 string guitar kit is one of our most popular kits.  To be truthful, we were actually very surprised but hey they customer is always right…right?

The explorer DIY 7 string guitar kit has basswood body and maple neck.  We are personal fans of a clean looking fretboard with no markers so we don’t have position markers on the fretboard.  Instead the markers are located on the side of the neck so you can keep track what position you are in.  This kit has a set in neck and comes with truss rod installed.  The fretboard is black wood which has a really nice playability.

Chrome hardware is standard with the kit as well as humbucker pickups, wiring and electronics.  You can use the components that come with the kit or you can decide to use your own humbuckers or tuners etc.  It’s all your personal choice.

All the kits come pre-fitted so the neck and the body should fit well.  We should also mention that this kit isn’t just a bunch of parts from the bins thrown together.  This 7 string guitar kit is legit! The neck you get in the kit is specifically made for the guitar body you get in the kit.  You may have to do some sanding to do the final fine tuning.  It is always better to pre-assemble and pre-drill pilot holes for everything before you apply finish to the guitar and do final assembly.  This will save you a lot of grief later on.

When you get your kit the best piece of advice we could give you is to take your time but don’t take your time purchasing an intergalactic 7 string guitar kit as they will sell out soon and unfortunately it will be a bit before we get more in stock.

You can buy this DIY guitar kit HERE.

All the best & have fun building your guitar kit.

Oh man, figuring out how to stain a guitar kit can be paralysis by analysis. 

At least I think that is the way you say it!…

This is especially true if you have never done it before.  It’s kind of like being given a really hard problem to solve but you are not really sure where to start.

Should you start at the back or the front, should you spray it, should you use a brush or rag or foam brush to apply it, how many coats, would it be better just to spray paint it, what if you screw it up?…

It’ll make you give up before you even start!

We’ll here are some tips that will help you get it right or “right enough” the first time so you can be happy with the results of staining your guitar kit.

If you have no experience with how to stain a guitar than a good idea is to practice on a test piece of wood.  This is probably a good idea even if you have some experience applying stain to wood.

Get a test piece of wood, preferably the same kind of wood that your guitar body is made out of, so that you can get a sense of how the stain you want to apply is going to react with the wood and how it will look.

This will give you an idea of how many coats of stain you will want to use and how many coats of urethane you will want to use on top of the stain to get the desired effect.  This will also allow you to experiment with different brushes and how each one effects the finish.

You can also play around with using wood filler on your practice piece of wood to see how it helps or hinders bringing out the grain of the wood.

Once you have figured out a process that gives you a finish that you are happy with then you can feel more confident about applying the stain to your guitar for real.

Now no two pieces of wood are the same and finish applied on once piece of wood may look different on another piece of wood.  The point of practicing is you want to build your confidence with how to apply the stain to your guitar and have some idea of how the finish will look and if you can be happy with that.

When you are ready to start applying the stain start on the back of the guitar body and start on a small area. 

If you really want to be picky you could just as easily start at the front but if you start at the back and don’t like what you are seeing or just change your mind it would be easier to hide or sand down to bare wood on the back of the guitar than on the front of the guitar.

At any rate if you start to apply stain and then decide you don’t like it you will be needing to do a fair bit of sanding to get back to a blank slate.

Some of us are lazy and instead of sanding the whole one side of the guitar might just sand the part where the stain was applied.  This is not advisable but you could get away with it more on the back of the guitar body but you shouldn’t do this on the front of the guitar body.  If you did the front face of the guitar body would look uneven and nobody wants that.

There are lots of guitar staining kits that can be found on the web that are specifically made for staining your guitar.  If this is the route you want to go a good place to look where you will find tons of selection is Amazon.

The other option is to head down to your local hardware store and check out what they have in the paint section.

A good idea would be to talk to someone there and explain to them about your project, what type of wood it is and they will be able to direct you to what kind of stain would be best whether it be a water-based stain or oil based stain.  Since you won’t be keeping your guitar outdoors than you will probably be using a water-based stain and water-based varathane.

Another advantage of talking to someone knowledgeable at the hardware store is they might have some tips and tricks of their own for applying the stain that may help to give you a better finished on your guitar.

If you are breathing and have a pulse you already know this.  Pretty much the first place many of us go to these days when we need to fix something that broke or we need to learn how to do something is Youtube.

These days chances are that somebody has had the same problem that you have, has found the solution and has made a video about it.

This is very true when it comes to how to apply finish to guitars.  A simple search on Youtube will bring up hundreds of videos by people showing you how they applied finish to their guitars with tips and tricks.

This is a great way to see all the different things people have tried when building there guitars and how it worked out for them.  You should pick a handful of videos to watch.  Watching someone else do what you want to attempt to do will give you a ton of confidence in doing it yourself and also let you learn from some of their mistakes so you don’t have to make the same mistakes also.

Watch Youtube, learn and then do it yourself!

You don’t have to do this but you might want to consider it.

Why do it?

Depending on how thick or how long you leave the stain on before wiping off the excess it could effect how the grain of the wood comes out.

If you don’t care about showing the grain of the wood or you are going for a solid stain than perhaps this step isn’t as important.

If you do want the grain of the wood to be more prominent than sanding between coats will expose more of the grain and make the finish more interesting.

 Even if you are going for a solid finish light sanding between coats with a fine sand paper will make for a smoother finish with less imperfections in the end product.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully you found something in this article that will help you have an easier time applying stain to your 7 string guitar kit.

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Guitar Kit Tips

If you’ve seen one of those impressive looking guitar kits on the net and thought about taking a crack at building one yourself than there are some things you should know first.

First off, if you are even minimally mechanically inclined than you can definitely build one of these guitar kits.  (Trust us…we had our buddy Mark build one.  He had never built one before and even he could do it.)

Really a lot of the hard stuff is already done for you and you get to do the fun stuff like applying the finish and putting the guitar together.

Now that’s not to say that there are not some tips and tricks that, if you know ahead of time, will make your build go a whole lot smoother.  In light of that, we’ve put together 7 tips we think would be helpful for anyone attempting to build one of these guitar kits.

1. Pre-Assemble The Darn Thing

Most guys, the first inclination when they get their kit is to just jump right into applying that killer finish that they’ve been dreaming about where if you look at it one way you see a skull and if you look at it another way you see a naked lady. 

Yeah don’t act like you haven’t thought of that one!

Anyhoo before you start dusting off your airbrush kit and pinstripe brushes take time to pre-assemble everything in the kit.  YES we mean everything!

Okay you don’t have to do all the wiring and string the guitar but pretty much everything up to that. 

Why?

For one it is good to see how everything fits.  For instance check how the tuners fit.  This will let you know ahead of time if you need to do any sanding to make sure they fit properly.  This will also let you know, if for instance, you screw up the finish on your headstock and you want to sand down the finish to start again, how much material you can take off.

If you sand off too much material you won’t be able to get your tuning pegs tight in the headstock!

Don’t ask us how we know this!

2. Take Your Time Fitting That Neck Just How You Like It

Along with pre-assembling the guitar we cannot stress enough take the time to do the fine tuning ofgetting that neck and body of the guitar to fit together just how you like it.

If you have never assembled a guitar kit before you will find that right out of the box the body and

neck fit really well.  That doesn’t mean that they are perfect!

You may need to use shims to get the neck where you want it or do some sanding to get it in the right position.  This is a heckuva lot easier to do before you have applied finish to the guitar.

Make sure the neck sits straight, level or howit needs to be in the body depending on your guitar and then clamp it to the body using c-clamps.  If you have a bolt on neck now is the time to drill pilot holes in the back of the neck for the bolts that will hold the body and neck together.

3. Drill Pilot Holes

Along with drilling pilot holes for the neck before you apply finish to the guitar you should also drill pilot holes for all the other things that will be screwed into the guitar.

This would include pickups or pickup rings if your kit has those, the covers on the back of the guitar to cover the electronics, the pegs used for attaching the guitar strap, truss rod cover and so-on.

It’s not a huge deal if you forget to do this but it just feels wrong to be drilling into that nice new finish you applied to your guitar.  Besides there is that old saying about measuring twice and drilling once… or is it cutting once?  We forget which one it is but they both apply!

If by accident you screw up drilling a hole in the wrong spot it is easier to fill it and hide it when there is no finish on the guitar so there’s another reason.

4. At Least Practice A Little Applying Finish

How hard can it be right?  You head down to the hardware store pick up some stain and varnish or whatever it is you are using and go to town right?

You may want to consider practicing a little on another piece of wood just to see how the stain goes on and how it acts once it gets on wood before you take the plunge with your guitar.

This will give you a ball park idea of how many coats you will need to get the desired effect you are looking for or how to apply the stain to get a sunburst effect if that is what you want or how to get that skull and naked lady thing happening!

If you figure out how to do that let us know.  Asking for a friend!

5. Yes Wiring Can Be Tedious

Find a good wiring diagram online for whatever pickup and volume and tone configuration you have.  If you have never wired a guitar before it may even be a good idea to lay all the wiring and electronics out how they are supposed go before installing them in the guitar just to get a good visual of how everything needs to be soldered together.

This makes it so much easier if you already have a visual in your head of how it is supposed to go. 

You will feel like you need three hands when you are wiring your guitar.  Just stick with it and take your time.  It is handy to have good lighting where you are doing your wiring and it does make it easier if you do have someone that can lend a hand to hold a wire for you while you perform the surgery!

6. Don’t Forget To Attach The Ground Wire To The Bridge Post

This will throw you into fits of rage and cursing if you forget to do this.  Again, don’t ask us how we know!

If you have a fixed bridge the posts are press fit in and freaking hard to get out once they are in there.  So make sure you attach the ground wire to the post before you press fit the bridge post into its hole.

If you forget, there is a way to get the bridge post out but unless you have a tool you will have to make a run to the local hardware store to make your own tool to pull that post out so you can attach the ground.

Nobody wants to do that when they are sooo close to actually playing their guitar.  Or maybe you like your guitar to have a high pitch buzz all the time.

7. Take Your Time

We’ve said it before but we will say it again measure twice and drill once or however it goes.  Take your time getting things to fit right, getting your finish right and basically pre-planning and thinking about what you want to do and how you are going to do it and you will be way happier with the end product.

Besides building your own guitar from a kit is meant to be an enjoyable project and learning experience.  Consider it something to get you away from your computer so no need to rush through the build.

You’ll make less mistakes if you take your time.

Well those are the tips!  Be sure to check out our DIY 7 string guitar kits and sign up for our newsletter to get your very own discount code as our thank you!