Printed Instructions

[wazkelly]

Good comments and feedback already posted above.

I remember my first build and at the time had been stalking the site for months but never signed up on the forum until my kit arrived. Big mistake and would suggest that on the home page or kit landing pages that anyone contemplating a PBG kit should immediately join the forum as there were so many D'oh moments that could have been dealt with prior to ordering and receiving the kit.

[euroa guitars]

Although I think instructions in written form pdf or printed are a great idea , its a huge undertaking to do it, you also have to be really careful that its fool proof. The last thing you want is for someone to say I followed the instructions and blah blah happened. I tried writing an instruction manual for making cbgs a few years ago and its difficult because you cant take any prior knowledge for granted. Some things you just do and its all too easy to leave something out. Maybe just a simple step 123 instruction would be okay as a guide.
1 Check box for parts (you would need a check list) 2 Assemble guitar to check everything fits. etc
The other option is to supply (at a price) a book that's already in print, there's a book called "How to build an electric guitar" by Will Kelly... Publisher is Voyageur Press Inc
I haven't read or seen this book but it sounds good starting with a Strat kit then progressing from there, just a thought...

[Fretworn]

The other option is to supply (at a price) a book that's already in print, there's a book called "How to build an electric guitar" by Will Kelly... Publisher is Voyageur Press Inc
I haven't read or seen this book but it sounds good starting with a Strat kit then progressing from there, just a thought...

I have read this book, and have suggested it as a good resource here before, as it really does start from a place of assuming you don't have a lot of experience or tools. And for those wanting to artificially roadwear their guitar, he goes into a lot of detail on how to do this in the instructions for the second guitar.

Having said that I think having a downloadable instruction pack is probably a better place to start. (But if Adam was able to wangle the rights to sell the book, I would buy a copy, as you can't reliably find it at the library when you want it.)

[adam]

Thanks for the feedback, appreciated. Yes, I forgot to include Installing a Set (Glued) Neck, which I think Gavin did cover in his instructions.

So, I will make a start and create a sub-forum for the manual with a Thread for each Chapter. It will be a working draft which we can all comment on and I can edit based on Community consensus.

Hopefully we will end up with the Mother Of All Build Your Own Guitar Manuals (MOABYOGM... nope, that won't catch on)

[dave.king1]

Having seen some of the questions asked by newbie builders on FB Kit Guitar Builders and the inane answers unfortunately I really think any build manual needs to be written with a complete novice in mind.

eg. Someone posted up saying their Tele kit went out of tune as they went up the neck, one responder suggested that the E6 should be closer to the nut than the E1, now if you don't know 1 from 6 this could be a helpful answer, this was followed by " you have the wrong gauge strings " " the nut is too high " and " you have too much bow in the neck " also not necessarily incorrect answers but no one had suggested that simply screwing the bridge down where it fitted without checking scale length was a fundamental but not fatal error.

As Euroa suggested a printed manual could easily be fraught with danger because of the width of the target audience

JMTBW

[Rabbitz]

Hi Adam,

Without wishing to denigrate the knowledge of the folk here - there are a large number of knowledgeable and helpful people on the forum, despite this, the approach you describe is fraught with danger.

The common term is 'design by committee'.

For the outcome to be not only accurate, but to be polished and professional, will require very strict editorial control. Having multiple contributing authors can result in wide variations in tone, voice and flow. This is true of professional writers, let alone well meaning amateurs.

May I suggest a system? The editor or editorial team should probably flesh out the guts of the draft. When each chapter is more or less complete, the assembled brains trust should be mobilised to assess the chapter from a technical perspective. This may run over a couple of iterations.

Once all of the technical content is bedded down, the document should be edited for logical flow, technical and editorial structure, brevity and clarity. Sentence and clause structure, paragraph flow and presentation format are all scrutinised in this process.

Decide on the final layout and, well, lay it out. Check once more to make sure the compositing hasn't altered the technical content or flow. Check that errors and unvetted changes haven't been introduced.

Once the layout is done, just prior to 'print master ready', then it should be proofread. Properly. Don't rely on spellcheckers and grammar checkers. Don't rely on a bunch of folk giving it a 'once over'. Print it out, grab a red pen and study it paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, line by line, clause by clause. If in doubt, look it up. Keep in mind that Proofreading is actually a trade, and had a three year apprenticeship - back when publishing houses and newspapers had standards.

I hope this helps. I know it sounds like a lot of faffing around but if you are going to commit it to paper (or PDF) people will use it as a yardstick to measure professionalism and quality.

[Rabbitz]

Hopefully we will end up with the Mother Of All Build Your Own Guitar Manuals (MOABYOGM... nope, that won't catch on)

How about "The Bible" as a title? I don't think it's been used before

Or,

"How to build a GOTM" which has an advanced techniques stablemate "How to build a GOTY".

[Robbied]

Once the layout is done, just prior to 'print master ready', then it should be proofread. Properly. Don't rely on spellcheckers and grammar checkers. Don't rely on a bunch of folk giving it a 'once over'. Print it out, grab a red pen and study it paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, line by line, clause by clause. If in doubt, look it up. Keep in mind that Proofreading is actually a trade, and had a three year apprenticeship - back when publishing houses and newspapers had standards.

And it cannot be proofread straight away by the person that authored it. Best option is to have someone not involved with the writing do the proofreading, or put it away for a few weeks and come back to it. This helps to cover all the bases and pick up those little errors that you can easily skim over if you wrote the content.

[DrNomis_44]

A downloadable PDF manual is a great idea, the thing is, Australia's NBN network isn't exactly foolproof since it has had quite a few outages lately, in the event of an NBN outage it is virtually impossible to get online and log onto the forum, believe me I know exactly what it's like, so having a PDF manual that you can download and print out before the internet goes down is very handy.

[OliSam]

Hi Guys

Every comment here has merits.

Personally, I am still a huge fan of the forum since there are many ways to skin a cat and a book can only tell you one way.

How about you take that table of contents and hot link each heading to the best blog posts on the topics? you could go back and re-tag them so that they linked to the table of contents.

That way it is a "forum-bible" or "team-bible" so to say. And it offers many solutions by the members to each stage in the table of contents and also since we all post pictures they can see how each available option can turn out!

anyway. just thinking.