Like A Kid At Christmas

In may only be August, and there's a heat advisory here today in St Louis, but a little voice in my head is saying: "Santa's coming! Santa's coming!"

That's because the SG jr neck and body I ordered from Precision Guitars was shipped from Vancouver Tuesday.  Exactly two weeks from order to ship.  Let the new build commence!

While I've built my share of bolt-on neck guitars, this will be my first experience building a set neck.  Future posts will detail the build as it progresses.  Hopefully, this may prove useful to other DIY guitar builders.  At this point, I'm thinking more text and hi-res photos than video-- I want to focus on the build, not on shooting & editing video after all, but I may break down and add a few video clips.

I'll expand more in an "About Me" post, but briefly what you should know is:
I'm a retired educator with a disabling neurological condition. Playing, maintaining and building guitars is my main  therapy-- physical & mental-- for dealing with chronic pain and often limited mobility/flexibility/dexterity. Hence the blog title. Not playing for sympathy, just explaining that circumstances often dictate when & how I proceed.  I'm also hoping this encourages anyone who feels that a DIY guitar project is beyond their abilities, for whatever reason.

 I've been playing, pulling apart and putting together guitars since the early 1970s.  The earliest project I remember was wrapping an old Sears Silvertone guitar in black electrical tape just for the aesthetic effect.  Highly admired by my 13 year old peers.  Lots of strings over and under the bridge since then.  One of my latest projects was building an electric using walnut harvested from trees in my own yard.

A series of photos and captions detailing the build are available from the "Pages" links on the home page of this blog.  You'd think I would have figured out how to insert a direct link, but no, not yet.

I have extensive experience working with wood, a full woodshop at my disposal, and a fair amount of experience with wiring and soldering basic circuits.  That said, I don't necessarily believe that one must have extensive experience and a basement full of tools to pull off a successful guitar build.  What counts is the quality of one's PLANNING, PREPARATION and PATIENCE.  Sounds like a good title for my next post...

In the meantime I'll be posting some pages with pics and comments on a few other guitar builds.