Building a Guitar from Scratch (with no experience)

hey everyone i want to first start off this video by saying thank you to all the people at chapman guitars that i've worked with throughout the years this next matte black line is my last collaboration with them but it's not a sad thing we've had a really really great run so so proud of all these guitars we made and i'm just leaving to start my own company cut out the middleman and do it myself so i'm here with my friend simon hey who's not a guitar luthier nope um he doesn't play any instruments but he is my good friend from high school who's really into woodworking how hard could it be i guess i didn't tell you the plan so we're going to make a prototype and then once we have a product we got to make sure that we can make like hundreds of them so i can call guitar center hey we have one for all your stores perfect and sam ash and sweetwater everywhere oh yeah yeah yeah supply in the market exactly so we need so we're gonna make the prototype today and then mass produce it i wanted to do a six string because that's the one that sells the most okay we just got to make this whole thing yep easy enough [Laughter] have you actually ever made an instrument before no no yeah i didn't think so you've made plenty of cabinets though that are great yeah since we're starting a new company together that's just me and you guitar companies gibson fender it's just a dude's last name okay we're two dudes so i decided to make it ska taylor guitars so i got you a name tag because we gotta have mercs too well of course we get taylor custom guitars for you you have some guitar luthier friend who's like hey making quality instruments is really hard you tell them no it's not we should talk about what woods we want to get sure this is two pieces of wood right yeah yeah so usually like the top of the fretboard i would love to go ebony that's a little pricey then i would love to go with that's dark looking i was thinking just getting a block of wood and like drawing it and then just making it into the shape we can try that would be easier because we do only have a day right then we also have to consider the electronics right and i don't know how to solder anything perfect because i have this much experience so this is going to go great do we have a soldering kit on my guitars i had mahogany but that's more expensive right yes chop it thin one piece down laminated yeah nice so that'll be our fourth fingerboard i do have fret wire okay do you know what frets are nope oh it's the pickup right no no never mind it's the things in the in the thing that you put your fingers on there you go in the middle of the lines yeah the last line those are the friends we got our tone woods we got maple maple neck waveful and white oh so we're at simon's garage apple was started in a garage amazon probably taylor guitars here comes i'll show you all the hardware that we have these are the stuff that even you know guitar luthiers and electric guitar would buy like you don't make well i guess some people make their own pickups or bridges but we're not doing that i've got the bridge do you know what that is nope is that where the cables anchor yes that is where they came from i mean that is right i've just never used strings as cables this bridge just goes on top and then to get the strings on you just put it through the bridge and around okay so that way we don't need to drill through the guitar we have a guitar pickup and the pickup is just what amplifies the guitar so this is our solder project yes yeah a pickup is just a magnet and you put it next to the strings and when the strings vibrate in front of the magnet that's how you get the vibrations it brings it out to the amp electric guitar yeah they work usually guitars have more than one pickup but we're going for the um ultra shred version so we're only going to have a bridge pickup there's a bridge and a neck exactly i think the hardest part honestly is probably getting the strings to sit flush and just be right over the fretboard that's called action how far the strings are from the fretboard we can get it pretty yeah no we're going to get it perfect this will be wired into the volume pot we'll figure out where to solder these this is just your volume up and down yeah that's it that needs to go to the input jack this is where you plug in the guitar it's actually really weird seeing fret wire not in a guitar until getting this i had only seen frets in a guitar before so you put it in here and as you can see they're in very particular spot and if they're just a little bit off then it's going to be attitude especially higher on the fretboard it's like in tune wildly out of tune okay and then we have the nut i was wondering if that was important yes it's really important so the cables anchor before the headstock and that goes over that yeah this doesn't move no like this you can adjust so you can adjust your action here and then you also adjust your action with a truss rod which is a rod you put into the net it moves the neck and then it moves the neck which you will not be having which we will not have i played guitar for like eight years before i even knew what a truss rod was i didn't know it was there so i don't think it really matters okay perfect so we're gonna have to file that down this is a really tough piece of material so the guy at the guitar shop said it's it's really hard to work with because it has to be so tough oh and then we have the tuners of course these then go on the headstock and then that's how you tighten the strings that's pretty much a guitar in a nutshell easy enough yeah what time are we hoping to be done tonight because we also need to take into account that we need to make hundreds of these yeah so we'll probably it'll probably take a little bit longer to make the prototype and then we need to get up to speed if we can get the prototype six o'clock eight hours that would be eight hours yeah you want eight or do you want ten maybe ten maybe we go ten eight eight o'clock you guys cool for eight yeah we can do it eight pm ten hours to make a prototype from now you got your watch is so cool your watch is pretty cool too guys it's you got to make a guitar okay it's all right we're ready all right we got 10 hours we have all of today to get the prototype done and then i'll have tomorrow to test it out and make a song with it so regardless at the end of the day we gotta have a guitar and by the end of tomorrow i need to have a full song with it that i wrote first thing we gotta do i guess is probably do the guitar body yes okay it's a little bit less yeah we can put ends on that cool so we're looking at 19 inches measure the neck and get the measurement for on that maple okay well do we want the headstock to be part of that a lot of times this is a different piece of wood yeah we'll have to shape it does it have to be down because it has to have tension on this yeah yeah it does we could maybe glue another part and just have it down a bit i think we might want to do that probably faster also the scale length is pretty important but the distance between the bridge and the nut is really important okay so where's our bolt on gonna end the bolt-on is like right here okay yeah so like so that's what we need yeah this that measurement okay i'm just gonna eyeball it somewhere somewhere around here yeah just as long as it's longer than what we that need so dangerous that thing is so intimidating yep this is thicker than it already is all right also being a little bit thicker will make it heavier which makes it feel expensive sweet let me get every inch why is our guitar will come apart we have sides too yes do we want it to be the same wood oh for the size is nice yeah we end up with uh duke it's gonna be like the same design i've had for the other guitars with the racing stripe but like the racing stripe got bigger and better yeah [Music] okay we'll give this like 20 more minutes and then we'll joint the sides so nice and flat and we'll glue these things on awesome we gotta wait for that let's do the neck we need to make this thinner right on a guitar neck the back is usually rounded off to make it more comfortable to play we can round the edges there's a different wood at the top remember so do we want to put another piece of wood on top of it that's what we're going to do but it's really thin though too we can make a thin piece would you like to do that yeah i want to do that okay let's do it we just need an eighth of an inch all right we use this piece once we sand it a bit sweet awesome all right that looks like a guitar neck right let's go to glue town right all right now we kind of want to figure out the headstock i'd imagine we're going to like cut the headstock from this do you want to joint that okay now you can get a good measurement three and a quarter three and a quarter no right about nine about nine yeah we should stencil out the shape pretty much the only thing you can trademark on a guitar like the only part of the design that you can actually own is the headstock so this is actually really important the design of this here's a nut and then this all is just going to be where we attach it we going pointy or are we going uh non-pointy how how metal i think we want it pointy we want it pointy does it matter how far apart they are the the strings where the ink these things are the adjusters whatever they are tuners tuners it does slow e string here's our high e string d and g d yeah these are not here anymore uh this do we want to go really pointy do we want to go really pointy simon that looks like a weapon really metal this should be serrated [Laughter] that looks great no one does that this is going to be totally unique this is going to be our brand's thing [Music] all right there we go do we need to make this thinner you got to put the tuning pegs in there yeah we got to cut this thing in half [Music] that's pretty good you are alive when they start to eat you i watched that movie yesterday it's jurassic park it's a rafter claw yeah that's right so what's up next uh the holes we can do the holes here it's 360. maybe this one wow need it way bigger i was way off so now i'm up to 7 30 tooth no it's still not even close [Music] why yeah that looks more like headstocks i've seen uh that is that's something that i just did that works that that fits the other side it's really um there's not a whole lot of space for them and i didn't get tuners that are for one side and the other so they're supposed to all be in one so they're all the same so things are really uh crowded we are at noon glued together caught flat done throw some strings on it yeah let's chop our neck bam just waiting for the glue up on the sides to be done and flatten it all out and shape it put the electronics in that's fantastic okay why does that work out so well should we just add more spike yeah yeah we probably should let's make it real pointy and have it going towards the fretboard so that if you go if you start playing up high on the guitar it's dangerous i'll just give it like a little raptor hook little raptor hook the bottom of this four and a half anywhere you put the bridge there's some style of guitar where it's appropriate to put it there the closer you get it to the bridge the more chunk you get blues chug chug chug mega grit face coming along yeah awesome there's our neck we really got to make sure it's straight because the strings are only going to do that these are our swoops right yeah [Music] [Laughter] oh man that's amazing well done simon i love how close it's gonna get to the front it's like you gotta go how are you going to do the insides rotate in front oh oh whoa well okay i wasn't expecting that i know i know it's actually probably pretty sharp check it out not so bad for about four hours yeah stop at it off the hardest part is gonna be getting the strings to sit right for the front to work that's gonna be really really hard even when people like woodworkers build guitars usually the neck they buy on its own it makes sense yeah and then they don't even deal with the frets exactly any small deviation how do you calculate that spot that's a good question you better look though [Laughter] i know that the 12th fret is exactly in the middle of a string i know that the seventh is exactly one-third the fifth is exactly one-fourth after that i you know we'll just put them everywhere yeah we'll just put him anywhere [Music] i love how everything is rounded off except for the spikes we just gotta get this in first you carpenters and your [Music] tricks but yeah that's awesome that moved a little bit okay that's all right it's just a little well it's not way off it's a little off we have to adjust the lines just to even a tad to the left but thankfully it has some wiggle room okay just too snug yeah just use like well if you maybe mall at it this way are you sure oh no you're totally right yeah this way i'm glad you didn't listen to me okay bam yeah we're good okay so you can go ahead and mallet that all the way in that was a little nerve-racking for a second it's also a little bit crooked it's super crooked well actually you can change it you can change it yeah yeah yeah you can adjust these so let's just get the pickup in there because i should have thought of the guitars for the volume knob i didn't get a knob so it's just this yeah we could just drill into one of these that would be so funny that's pretty awesome let's see if this guy fits in there oh yeah nice i just got to keep rounding it up boom so i drilled a hole for the volume pot and given my track record it's not even close that looks like a guitar to me it's higher than mine but with this bridge i think we actually want it to be a little bit higher i was honestly under the impression that we would get this far and realize there's no way we can do this and then we just start taping electronics to it and like end up with like a piece of wood with a string and a tuner on it and pick up it but this is actually this is actually working out that's pretty good sweet [Music] that's downright tolerable [Laughter] how high the nut is too it's really important if it's too low then we're going to get nothing but fret buzz and if it's too high then all of these frets are unplayable yep because they won't pinch back yeah is that our next move is getting the headstock on yes some guitar brands too especially like more affordable guitar brands we're high-end but obviously some affordable guitar fans will just have like a neck like that i don't really think it needs to be angled if it's this far down my map there you go also once the nut is up here that's be plenty of an angle i can't remove six hours in right there yeah not bad not bad so now we got to do the back right you kind of want to drill the hole for the wire and just see where it ends up then we also have to learn how to solder okay i just wanted to yeah just check to see how it works sweet yeah that's pretty normal actually i wonder how much we need for the input jack because this if we're going to do this this does need to be like that close as long as we get this cavity out then we can adjust that no problem so close give that a try oh nice thank you how's that oh it's almost there that's awesome that uh-huh volume all the way up maybe that's red down so that's kind of inlay one here i i was thinking here actually okay because ideally it would be here but just to avoid the wing we'll put it there your input jack this is the inside of a guitar just like that what about that piece does that sit in this piece yep yeah cool awesome there yes two screws right here it's really simple isn't that in we need to figure out a model name simon you should just call it the mark one the mark one it is a prototype so mark one is fitting mark is to like average a name for something with this many spikes and teeth so it should be the shark one the shark one we do the nut and the tuners first before we attach the neck right and then the frets too in the front the holes need to be a little bit bigger on on pretty much all these i think we just need a bigger drill but look how much bigger that is that's huge bro like at this point it's just got like since we're running out of time it's just got to get done well we're about to find out if this works oh it is really big but once you tighten it it'll be fine so oh the washer is just enough the washer is just enough you are amazing it barely works it works just barely just barely maybe we we don't do that for everyone man that was so stressful oh my god welcome to the channel i feel like we should just try and enlarge the holes for your stress levels let's do that that's so much okay yeah this is also a lot easier yeah about what we were doing yeah okay yeah that's all that's all we needed works that looks great so that the tuners don't spin they they have the knobs on them yeah i'm going to put them knobs in two little holes when it's not moving yeah then that's really all we need what are you doing we're making a guitar well yeah i guess i can change this wow we did that today yeah we have one day to make a guitar from scratch without any prior knowledge yeah wow this is our neck yeah so i was mostly doing it for that clip oh no oh nothing broke it just came off how couldn't we worked on like a ukulele or a base some with less strings yeah it's in there oh perfect yeah we're making progress simon we're crushing it we are crushing it making guitars that's what the screws are for easy there we go check that out okay so now the nut i'm making the e string okay okay this is here's the b [Laughter] the e and the b string are so close together now i probably could have got one that was pretty cut but we don't do that they're so bad they're so bad wow i just need a place for all the strings to go you got the low e yep a the big jump over the g and then the b and the e are like right next to each other we could just put some more glue in this you think so all right man let's use the wood glue oh my gosh okay we are at that stage where rob's like whatever we just it's just got to be on there a lot of guitars have floating bridges that once the strings are off everything falls apart because the strings hold it down so a little bit of wood glue just to keep it in place when you're re-stringing is totally fine i'll move this out of the way let's open our first soldering iron black wire is the ground and i really should just look this up i don't remember this is the part of the guitar building where you google how to solder yeah every professional does it i mean it's just part of the industry yeah black is the ground i don't know which one of these is the in and the out i see the white and the red one are the in and out but then if we really don't want to we could not put the ground in let's put the ground i don't know what to do with the blue i have no idea either i have no idea what the blue does should we solder the other two and hope it works yes okay [Laughter] all right hey all right did it just stick okay i think it did i think we just soldered something all right now the ground it's here yeah i think you got it i think you got it the next thing is another black wire and go from what we just did to the third prong according to this but it worked it seems so yeah so now we're bringing it to their input right there sweet i think everything according to that whatever is done right now we just got to be really careful putting this in okay oh it's still on there yeah come on no what's going on okay well it's going in that much and that's it okay nothing nothing yeah it's not working yep amazon company meeting on scale taylor guitars yep do we outsource the electronics i think we should i think we're going to outsource the way that china's out there because i don't know what to do on this one you know we gave it a good shot we did we soldered for the first time i'm gonna keep moving this blue one around could he keep doing that i didn't check every single possible connection i know the guy to bring it to you as well he's the same guy i brought the double neck guitar to and it's really joyous to go in and see how how weird of a response i can get from him every time i think outsourcing is fine okay yeah a lot of a lot of companies outsource their electronics i'm assuming let's get everything else on okay get it strung up and we'll deal with all this later yes yep yep and we have an hour and a half all right let's do it i wonder what we did wrong it could be possible that the like our soldering connections just weren't good enough it could be i mean you could could you say that this pickup maybe wait whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa just try one more time the volume was all the way down that we didn't get any electrical noise is promising oh my god i just got the volume yeah yeah that's beautiful that's the most beautiful sound i've ever heard in my life i just had the volume of course what yeah no we don't need it we don't need it at scale taylor guitars that's amazing okay get that in there okay yes thank you okay thank you perfect electronics work okay we just gotta be really careful with them should we just start going fret crazy don't you need to have it on the guitar to know where to put the fret yes and no mostly yes [Laughter] we can get the first fret in there and then just start going crazy all right guys you talked about this issue the sides not cutting you well i was thinking it does if it cuts you it's fine because i mean we got the point we have the point in the side we we have the horn at the bottom that's going to stab you if you go into a solo this is true so i feel like it going off the side is on brand i feel like the time to be accurate with the frets has passed the time for chaos is now well maybe we get the 24th fret the first one right here this is a simple one all right okay okay all right yeah oh that's gonna really hurt a little bit more this way there you go that's a g sharp no doubt yep i thought making fresh is gonna be hard no what other guitar has a knob as good as that none of them well if we do like this one of those strings is going to be on you know what i mean yeah it's clear that you're making like end of long day decisions right what are you saying jake i'm just saying i'm saying what's the source of innovation is something that's what's going on right now there we go every guitar has a different scale length so like every brand or type of guitar or different models the frets are in different places yeah none have done this before because none haven't really had the courage exactly that's where the first fret is this is the most important fret [Music] no other guitar brand has ever done that okay all right let's get this neck on because that's really all we have left right here we go we're gonna glue it yeah i'm really confident that the first fret is good enough yeah second fret probably and then here we got some options one of these is probably right oh yeah and he said this takes an hour to set it we should if you're gonna string it we should at least wait 45 minutes okay so basically eight o'clock that's right on time because that'll be the finale that hits our deadline okay just the moment of truth here really what as we were saying worst case scenario is we put the strings on and under the tension of the strings the glue isn't enough and it breaks yes sounds like a guitar to me the action is pretty good it seems we actually yeah it's okay it's really not that bad that's amazing okay there's definitely a problem with the low e string yeah over here it's not on the fretboard here's what it looks like all strung up dude strings on it it totally works yeah check this thing out it works oh wow that's awesome oh this one is actually pretty close to the octave and i'm hurting myself this oh the octave is dangerous because you have this thing and that is look [Music] so much better than i thought we would do yeah we need to have people sign a disclaimer because it's really pointing everywhere i just have so much muscle memory with playing guitars without all these small little knives in them thank you simon yeah dude this was fantastic killed it let's see what song you come up with yeah so wow you okay ow careful cut myself gotta be more careful do [Music] fret fell off again so let's go over the specs tuning i wanted to try tuning it up to pitch but it's just too risky mostly doing it for that clip oh no the chances of this just snapping off at any moment i feel is pretty high if i were to tune it up to pitch so after a lot of experimentation i figured this is how i would tune it first drop g and close enough drop g for a guitar of this scale length is really really really pushing it the strings are really loose even just in drop g i can see the headstock really starting to move just for the sake of safety we gotta go drop g and then these other strings i just tuned by ear first off the frets are garbage [Music] they're in just in totally random places right here though we kind of have half steps i wanted to make something that moved around these frets because they're really the only ones here that are at all usable what i first have to do for this song is then go to the third fret and then tune that to drop c [Music] oh and you can tell it's already getting out what's to blame for that is it the tuning pegs everything no one big part is the strings are so loose on top of that this body this neck and the headstock and the tuners not really being on there any small movement there is going to throw the tuning off and then on top of that the nut is this thing and then the frets are just in random places sure i was just hoping that the nut would be at the right height right which was very optimistic yeah and it's definitely not sure so that half step [Music] is not there at all the d string or whatever this is now is a lot closer to where it should be than the other frets but even with that it's now a whole step or it's close so you can kind of get a power chord with that constantly throughout recording this track i would have to bend the strings more and just play by ear because the tuning is always moving around yeah so here we got a nice c power chord pretty much distortion helps a lot here all right kind of there for this song for this c i'm then pressing into the strings a little bit then i'm figuring out about where a c is and then if i just press this fret normally i can kind of get a half step [Music] and then this is just that's just nonsense and then this is kind of a half step actually it kind of works so i can get you know three frets with a half step if i bend on this one and then if i don't bend on these two then i kind of have frets and then oh that's the other thing about this guitar all these fret ends are really really sharp so that's pretty much how i'll go back to the not distorted though the distortion hides a lot of the attitudeness these frets are pretty silly they also can just fall off too that it's this one fell out of a few times while recording [Music] bending on these weird slidey frets isn't really that weird from a lot of experimentation there is a few spots that are kind of usable like there is a nice third right here [Music] between these two frets [Music] so you kind of have some thirds here this is kind of a half step [Music] oh yeah that kind of works in this position all these at the top are useless [Music] and it locks your hand yeah and it locks your hand in this area and yeah because of this horn here so you have to go around [Laughter] the biggest thing about this guitar is that it's extremely uncomfortable it's not even that it's uncomfortable it's actually painful yeah all of these fret ends are really sharp and if you just get on the fretboard and then just do what you normally do you're gonna cut yourself and then there's also these sharp edges here and sharp edges around the wood and worst of all this thing is honestly really dangerous and when i got it back and started playing with it it's just so anxiety inducing everything about this guitar is extremely anxiety-inducing and it is the least comfortable least enjoyable instrument i've ever played by a long shot if i drop my pick and i just like went down without thinking about it to go get it this would go right into my face or if i was like playing and kind of rocking out this could go into my face or if i just stood up and held this this could go right into my face so it's you have to be extremely conscious about it it's really sharp the electronics are extremely flimsy so i also need to be careful of that the pickup is really far from the strings so the output is pretty low not that that's like the biggest of the problems here even with all that said i'm actually extremely proud of it like i really am like what simon and i made in 10 hours without any experience like all jokes aside i did not think it would we would get this far at all i i was entirely certain that we would go in with this gag and then every step of the way we would realize this is way too hard we can't do it and then we would end up with just a piece of wood with one string with the electronics taped on or we would just tape a microphone to it it actually has a headstock and tuners and a nut and you can tune it kind of and there's frets i'm very proud of this actually i don't know if it's going to be the the new signature model i've contacted all the major retailers to see if they want to stock it none of them called me back i don't really know what the future for ska taylor guitars is my guitar endorsement status i guess is a little bit in flux all charades aside i really did decide to leave chapman guitars that wasn't that's not a joke so if you had any interest in getting any of the signature models whatever is out now is going to be the last of them i think the matte black should still be around if you would want to get them now would be the time and again thanks so much to chapman for putting those out throughout the years and yeah thanks for watching simon told me he wants to continue working on this and see it through so maybe we'll see this on the channel again with less dangerous frets so subscribe if you want to see that and uh yeah i'll see you next week or sometime soon [Music] oh how

Channel: Rob Scallon

Views: 912,909

Rating: 4.9322515 out of 5

Keywords: Rob Scallon, music, musician, guitar, guitarist, build, guitar build, building a guitar, guitar from scratch, chapman guitars, signature model guitar, making a guitar, electric guitar, woodworking, maker, making an instrument, builder, Scallon, sca-taylor guitars

Id: 6AeSY81MtG0

Length: 39min 47sec (2387 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Count2Zero]

Hey, how did he get into my workshop and steal my guitar?`

[u/Weickgschmissn]

wait, what?!

[u/Siloh_Johnson]

Re

[u/FullMetalJ]

OMG I saw this. They were so clueless. Like I don't know anything about nothing but when they made the headstock separated from the rest of the neck... wtf. Has Rob ever even seen a guitar?

[u/Yrnotfar]

That fretwork is maybe 1 step below mine if I’m being honest.