Recent Articles
12 String Guitar Kit Options from eBay or DIY
Judging by the questions we’ve received lately, there’s a growing interest in building a 12 string guitar kit. So let’s highlight two approaches we’ve seen recently. One is to create your own 12 string guitar kit by purchasing the parts and putting it together. As an example, YouTuber Jonesiesucks used a Fender made in Mexico [...]
Saga Kit Build – TC 10 Telecaster
From YouTuber John Morton comes this Saga kit build video of his TC-10 Telecaster. The Saga TC-10 Electric Guitar Kit has easy to follow instructions and is a great first project with just a few simple tools. This is possible because the kit comes complete with all the hard parts done. For example, all the [...]
Cigar Box Guitar with Jack Daniels Mini-Bottle Bridge
Junksville is a U.K. maker of one-of-a-kind instruments inspired by the traditional cigar box guitars dating back to the 1800’s. Using parts recycled, scavenged and scrounged, his builds include traditional 3-string cigar box guitars, gas-can banjos, resonator guitars and solid bodies of 3- 4- 5- and 6-strings. He also does custom guitars with the input [...]
Guitar Wiring Kits with Premium Components from Stewart-MacDonald
New from Stewart-MacDonald are guitar wiring kits with the premium brand pots, switches, jacks, capacitors and cloth wiring used in original Gibson Les Paul and SG guitars. The kits make it easy to order top-quality components for wiring or re-wiring a 4-control / 2-pickup guitar with a 3-way switch. The kit components include Switchcraft toggle [...]
12ax7 Tube Datasheet
The 12ax7 is a miniature high-mu twin triode, each section of which has an individual cathode connection. It is especially suited for use in resistance-coupled voltage amplifiers, phase inverters, multivibrators, and numerous industrial-control circuits where high voltage gain is desired. A center-tapped heater permits operation of the tube from either a 6.3-volt or a 12.6-volt [...]
Ampeg BA115 Bass Combo Amplifier Repair
In this episode of The Repair Bench we are troubleshooting an Ampeg BA115 Bass Combo amplifier. This amp is part of Ampeg’s starter series and is specified to deliver 100W of power to a 15″ speaker and a small tweeter. It features a style selector with five basic tone options, three tone controls (Treble, Mid, [...]
Wiring the Eyelet Board For the MojoTone Tweed Deluxe Amp Kit
Bill Scheltema of Canadian Breed custom electric guitars shares his video here on wiring the eyelet board for a MojoTone Tweed Deluxe 5E3 amplifier kit. The eyelet board is a piece of fiberboard with two rows of eyelets into which the leads of the electronic components (primarily resistors and capacitors) and wires are inserted prior [...]
How to Apply a Blue Guitar Stain Finish to Your Kit
DIY guitar builder Fred Yen has put together a very nice video here on how to apply a blue guitar stain finish to a Les Paul kit. The guitar stain used is regular stamp/printer ink from an office supply store, starting first with black ink to darken the wood grain, and then using different darknesses [...]
Computer-Guitar Effect Using Digital Signal Processing
Pierre Massat, guitarist with the French band Pierre et le loup (Peter and the Wolf) has been developing a computer-augmented guitar effect system using digital signal processing and the Pure Data (Pd) audio programming language. Pd is a real-time software system for live musical and multimedia performances. To create a program in Pd, you connect [...]
Demonstration of the Renaissance Guitar by MusicMakers
Back in November 2010 GKB published our overview of the Renaissance Guitar Kit from Music Maker’s Kits. Now finally there is a demonstration video of the assembled guitar with some nice playing by Matt Edwards. The renaissance guitar kit is described as having a “17th century look with 21st century sound” and features a large, [...]
