Thanks so much. Made my day! Comments like this motivate me to keep going. I have a *lot* of new content on the way, slowly but surely. Really excited to get more videos posted and cover way more ground than I already have -- thanks again for the support and inspiration!
Made my day. Thanks so much for the comment! I have a ton of content in the works and scheduled to upload as well, I can't even keep up with all the videos I have in progress. Stay tuned for more, and thanks again so much!
@@guitar_md No problem, I'm currently planning on putting together my dream strat since the perfect one for me doesn't exist yet so these videos are awesome!
This neck is a Mighty Mite, which are all licensed by Fender. However, the same process will work for any cheap neck. I wish I had more time so I could have done a video on my Telecaster. I did an ebony grain fill on the body, shellac finish, made the pickguard, the pickups, and then for the neck, well. The neck was a cheap Chinese neck I got for 46 bucks on eBay. Maple neck, rosewood board. I had to use a band saw to cut the end of the fingerboard extension to a nicer shape, as it came completely square. I made it nice and round. Then some of the inlays were off center, so I popped all of them out, and replaced the inlays with Abalone inlays. Then I pulled the frets, compound radiused the board, refretted it with EVO gold fretwire, cut a bone nut for it, finished the neck by hand with fresh shellac after contouring it, and installed Gotoh Vintage Staggered Tuners. 46 dollar neck and now it looks like it's worth at least a few hundred dollars. To be fair, if someone asked me to do that for them, the bill would be in the hundreds of dollars. I usually charge too little, but the going rates for refrets now are at least 300 bucks, a nut is around 80 bucks, finishing a neck at least 50 to 60, installing tuners at least 50 to 60. And the tuners themselves cost 50 to 60 dollars, so that would be around a minimum of 500 dollars of work and parts for any tech charging actually sane rates. So figure that in when you're looking into buying tools. Fixing up cheap guitars is one of my favorite hobbies, and I'd rather do that than build my own from scratch (for now). I just got a Cozart 12 String Strat in the mail, actually, for 150 bucks. It arrived broken, so I'm working on a RUclips video where I'll fix it, then I have major, major plans. All the same stuff you saw in this video, plus making a new pickguard, making pickups, and more. By the time I'm done it'll look like a $2,000 guitar, and it started out as a $150 guitar with free shipping. Of course, again, any sane shop would charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for all the work I'm doing, so effectively it *will* be a much more expensive guitar when it's done! This work is very rewarding, and if you follow my videos, you'll definitely have most of the instructions you'll need for doing it yourself. There's no substitute for experience. But I try to be as thorough as possible and cover all the details that I wish I had covered when I was starting out. Even though I've learned from one of the best techs in the business, there's a lot I had to figure out on my own, and my goal with my channel is to pass that information along. It's a lot of money up front for the tools you'll need, but if you figure how much you'd have to pay someone else to do all this stuff, it's more than worth it. Especially if you want to be able to do it to multiple guitars like I do, then the tools pay for themselves very quickly. And of course, if you get good enough, you can offer that as a service to other people. I'd start with a cheap neck and cheap body from eBay, or from Thomann Music, like the Harley Benton line of guitars. Those are very good. eBay has stuff for even cheaper though, and if you know how to do your own work, you can transform cheap guitars into absolute killers. It also opens your eyes to the smoke and mirrors in guitar marketing. Most of it is branding. If you know how to do your own work, you can put together a cheap guitar that will blow any high end guitar out of the water. Granted, I've been doing this for over 18 years now, so there's a lot to be said for having the experience to do that. But I think if someone watches my videos and listens to what I say, they'll get there a *lot* faster than I did. I've streamlined things a lot over the years and have information that had I known it years ago, I would have been much more skilled much faster. I spent a lot of time cutting through fluff and seeing what works and what doesn't. And I continue to -- you can ALWAYS improve. Anyway. Thanks for the comment!
Hands down one of the best guitar tech YT channel out there. Thank you for all the great content!
Thanks so much. Made my day! Comments like this motivate me to keep going. I have a *lot* of new content on the way, slowly but surely.
Really excited to get more videos posted and cover way more ground than I already have -- thanks again for the support and inspiration!
Great video, thanks. Like the shape you made on the back of the headstock.
You’re almost at 1000 subs! 🤙🏼
thanks for these great vids 👍
Absolutely! Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more 💯
I dig it. ✌️
Thank you!
Wow I just noticed this only has ~400 views. Makes no sense! Sounds and looks like you've been doing this(making videos) for like 10 years! Well done👍
Made my day. Thanks so much for the comment! I have a ton of content in the works and scheduled to upload as well, I can't even keep up with all the videos I have in progress.
Stay tuned for more, and thanks again so much!
@@guitar_md No problem, I'm currently planning on putting together my dream strat since the perfect one for me doesn't exist yet so these videos are awesome!
was that neck from a Starcaster?
This neck is a Mighty Mite, which are all licensed by Fender. However, the same process will work for any cheap neck. I wish I had more time so I could have done a video on my Telecaster. I did an ebony grain fill on the body, shellac finish, made the pickguard, the pickups, and then for the neck, well.
The neck was a cheap Chinese neck I got for 46 bucks on eBay. Maple neck, rosewood board. I had to use a band saw to cut the end of the fingerboard extension to a nicer shape, as it came completely square. I made it nice and round. Then some of the inlays were off center, so I popped all of them out, and replaced the inlays with Abalone inlays. Then I pulled the frets, compound radiused the board, refretted it with EVO gold fretwire, cut a bone nut for it, finished the neck by hand with fresh shellac after contouring it, and installed Gotoh Vintage Staggered Tuners.
46 dollar neck and now it looks like it's worth at least a few hundred dollars. To be fair, if someone asked me to do that for them, the bill would be in the hundreds of dollars. I usually charge too little, but the going rates for refrets now are at least 300 bucks, a nut is around 80 bucks, finishing a neck at least 50 to 60, installing tuners at least 50 to 60. And the tuners themselves cost 50 to 60 dollars, so that would be around a minimum of 500 dollars of work and parts for any tech charging actually sane rates.
So figure that in when you're looking into buying tools. Fixing up cheap guitars is one of my favorite hobbies, and I'd rather do that than build my own from scratch (for now). I just got a Cozart 12 String Strat in the mail, actually, for 150 bucks. It arrived broken, so I'm working on a RUclips video where I'll fix it, then I have major, major plans. All the same stuff you saw in this video, plus making a new pickguard, making pickups, and more. By the time I'm done it'll look like a $2,000 guitar, and it started out as a $150 guitar with free shipping.
Of course, again, any sane shop would charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for all the work I'm doing, so effectively it *will* be a much more expensive guitar when it's done!
This work is very rewarding, and if you follow my videos, you'll definitely have most of the instructions you'll need for doing it yourself. There's no substitute for experience. But I try to be as thorough as possible and cover all the details that I wish I had covered when I was starting out. Even though I've learned from one of the best techs in the business, there's a lot I had to figure out on my own, and my goal with my channel is to pass that information along.
It's a lot of money up front for the tools you'll need, but if you figure how much you'd have to pay someone else to do all this stuff, it's more than worth it. Especially if you want to be able to do it to multiple guitars like I do, then the tools pay for themselves very quickly. And of course, if you get good enough, you can offer that as a service to other people.
I'd start with a cheap neck and cheap body from eBay, or from Thomann Music, like the Harley Benton line of guitars. Those are very good. eBay has stuff for even cheaper though, and if you know how to do your own work, you can transform cheap guitars into absolute killers. It also opens your eyes to the smoke and mirrors in guitar marketing. Most of it is branding. If you know how to do your own work, you can put together a cheap guitar that will blow any high end guitar out of the water.
Granted, I've been doing this for over 18 years now, so there's a lot to be said for having the experience to do that. But I think if someone watches my videos and listens to what I say, they'll get there a *lot* faster than I did. I've streamlined things a lot over the years and have information that had I known it years ago, I would have been much more skilled much faster. I spent a lot of time cutting through fluff and seeing what works and what doesn't. And I continue to -- you can ALWAYS improve.
Anyway. Thanks for the comment!
Where is part 2?