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Max Online: 390 @ 10/02/12 01:42 PM
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#292093 - 22/01/12 01:18 PM
Re: Guitar kit maker
[Re: Ape09090]
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luthier
Be Nice (I'm New!)
Registered: 20/01/12
Posts: 7
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Don't have skype. - Send me your email and I'll scan the review from guitar Mag (once I find it!!) Be warned, this is pretty old, and right now I have no stock except for a triple humbucker/coiltap pack which is still sealed but looks a bit tatty. Recommended retail (in shop) was originally suggested at £49 inclusive, but many dealers sold it at £39. I haven't done any pricing for years, but it's quite possible I could still beat that price when selling direct. - Having said that, I've yet to find my original instruction sheet for the 3 x single coil (which was of course the most popular) so I can't make any promises yet!
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#292094 - 22/01/12 01:39 PM
Re: Guitar kit maker
[Re: Tinyghost]
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luthier
Be Nice (I'm New!)
Registered: 20/01/12
Posts: 7
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I understand your comments about 'doing the whole thing'. In the early 80's I got an old sapele (mahogany) Strat copy body, totally reworked it to take fully active components incl. bass, mid and treble boost + overdrive, including a 12 pin synth drive in the tail plus the 3 mini-toggle switching I mentioned before, then added a good maple neck. I didn't actually do anything with marketing the mini-toggle setup until a friend suggested it in '95, but my original prototype guitar had blue tintalite stained grain overlaid with magenta dye, rubbed back to reveal 'twin tone colours' and then finished with 13 coats of German lacquer, each one rubbed down between coats, so more like french polish at the end. It had a marbled frontplate protected by a similar quarter inch thick perspex plate, all highly polished. Oh yes, I also did a made-to-measure purple velvet lined hard case for it (a 3 month project in all - never again). The switching was fairly simple. If any switch was forward (away from player) the p.u. was in phase, back, out of phase, or centre - off. Easy!
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#292097 - 22/01/12 04:31 PM
Re: Guitar kit maker
[Re: luthier]
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Ape09090
Old Timer
Registered: 01/12/11
Posts: 1197
Loc: South Wales
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What do you think about the capacitor argument luthier?
Are you for orange drops,or paper-in-oil,anything more exotic?
I hear if you can get a minature hula-girl dancing away in there you're in for a really good time but there's not too much info about that on the web....
CTS make pots,I think Gibson use them as stock.
Edited by Ape09090 (22/01/12 04:32 PM)
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#292103 - 22/01/12 05:22 PM
Re: Guitar kit maker
[Re: Ape09090]
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luthier
Be Nice (I'm New!)
Registered: 20/01/12
Posts: 7
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To be honest, I always used resin dipped polyester caps (which at that time were mainly dark green, quite often Maplin or similar standard stock, but pretty much the same as the orange). The main reason for this was that for a few extra pennies these had closer tolerances and were more robust than the old Dubilier/tubular or disc types (these could often affect hum levels anyway), plus they were available in slightly lower voltage ranges, say 50 or 100v rather than 250 which seemed to make them slightly more responsive. PS. Despite being 64, I've got my own hula girl.
Edited by luthier (22/01/12 05:24 PM)
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#292920 - 14/02/12 11:33 AM
Re: Guitar kit maker
[Re: luthier]
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duckofdeath
Professional Forumite!
Registered: 13/02/12
Posts: 171
Loc: right here
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If you could do it at a competitive price I'm sure you could generate enough interest in your kits to sustain a business. Get your product reviewed in the guitar mags, get a website up and running, show your face on some of the internet forums and contribute to them (being a part of the community in a forum always seems to generate enormous goodwill towards a small company's products) and I don't see why it won't work- as well as this forum, try Musicradar, Harmonycentral, The Gear Page, Ultimate guitar- just be prepared to grow a thick skin and lay low for a while to get a sense of how those forums operate. It'll be an education!
Trouble is, you'll be up against people selling cheap chinese parts at pocket-money prices, so if you can't beat them on bargain-basement price you might need to be able to provide some "mojo"-based incentive to buy from you:
The internet has turned a great many guitarists in to brand-name corksniffers in regard to just about everything to do with Guitars, so there are even "must have" brands of potentiometers (CTS, Alpha) and capacitors (Sprague, Mallory) that will hook people in. No doubt the same situation exists in relation to wire and toggle switches.
Of course, good old fashioned doing-the-job-right will be invaluable to you- if you can provide good quality kits with clear instructions that do what your blurb says they will, plus provide a friendly support service for the have-a-go numptys whose enthusiasm to install your kits exceeds their ability to follow your instructions and word of mouth will bring in business. This is probably more valuable than anything- the internet has also made it possible for enterprising guitarists to find wiring diagrams to add all manner of cool stuff to their Guitars very easily (see Seymour Duncan's website for instance), so a big part of choosing a kit over buying components individually will be to do with having a safe pair of hands to guide you through the installation process.
For an example of a company in the DIY guitar gear business that gets this very right (in my opinion), have a look at http://www.buildyourownclone.com.
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