Great mistakes of guitar building!

FlyHog85’s post about accidentally tuning his guitar too high and wondering why he was breaking strings made me think about one of my great bonehead plays when building.

On my first bass build many years ago everything had gone perfectly… until putting everything together. I excitedly went about installing the bridge, measured twice, then happily started drilling holes. Got the bridge on then strung it up, and wondered why the strings seemed short? Couldn’t work it out for the life of me. After working through every possible reason, I finally decided to remeasure the scale. It was 36 inches! For some reason I’d got 36 in my head as the standard long scale length. God knows why! Afer a few choice words to myself I redrilled and all was good – but there were four holes sitting behind the bridge. I eventually covered them with a “logo” (you can see it below), and now it serves as a constant reminder to keep a clear head and take your time when building!!

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I think it’s good for people new to building to know that everyone makes mistakes – sometimes really stupid ones! – but all you do is move on and come up with a way to fix it.

Anyone else want to share some of their clangers?!

Nice one Chuck... at least you had a workaround :)

Mine was after giving someone heaps (in a light hearted way) for drilling right through the headstock when installing the tuner locking screws.
Very next day I did exactly the same thing... I had never done it in more than 20 odd years of building.
Kama can be a real biartch.

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Check this out....whilst building my ES I decided I wanted to put a trapeze on instead of a stop tail.....for some reason, I dowelled up the saddle holes instead of the stop tail holes.....

I had to take a photo of it

Nice ones DB and Andy!

My biggest mistake (so far) was to start making guitars.

*shakes head and says in best Darth Vader voice* "The GAS is strong in this one".

Classic Rabbitz spot on! I've also developed a bit of AAS (amp aquisition syndrome)

DB was that my fairly recent episode with the drilled through headstock hahaha. Still not fully fixed I've left as a daily reminder to be more careful!

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The greatest mistake I made was when I decided to try installing a Schaller Lockmeister Floyd Trem system on my Gold Strat, everything went well till I went to drill the two 10mm pivot-post holes for the Bridge pivot-posts, I marked out where the centres for the holes were supposed to go, made sure I drilled them 90 degrees with respect to the front surface of the body, then I tapped-in the pivot-posts, it was only when I tried to set the intonation for each string that I realized something was wrong, you can probably see where this is going, anyway, I was trying to set the intonation for the high e-string when the tuner kept indicating that the 12th fretted not was flat compared to the 12th fret harmonic, even though the saddle for the high e-string was as far forward towards the neck as it could go,....and then it dawned on me, I checked the scale length and found that I had drilled the holes about 6mm further away from the neck than where they should have been, making the strings too long by 6mm, you could imagine the colourful language that was going through my mind at the time when I realized my mistake and that I needed to plug the holes with doweling, what's worse was that the only piece of doweling I had was some 12mm Oak Doweling which was too big for the nice 10mm holes I had drilled in the body, to cap it all off, I had to wait till I had some money in the bank so I could get some Dowelling that would fit, the closest I could get from my local Big Green Shed was some 9.2mm Oak Dowelling, fortunately it seemed to do the job, I've got a pic I took after plugging the two 10mm holes I drilled in the wrong place on the front of the Gold Strat body, but I think it's either on my laptop or in my camera's SD Card, will post it here when I find it.


Here we go, here's the pic I took:


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The blue line that's closer to the neck marks the scale length and is where I should have drilled the two 10mm holes after marking the centres....how embarrassing, considering that I worked in my dad's workshop as an apprentice Fitter and Machinist, I should have known better.


So, what's the moral of the story here?, measure twice and cut once, but really it should be measure four times, make absolutely sure you have got it right, then, and only then, drill/cut when you are absolutely sure after checking it a dozen more times just to be 200% sure.

Second build in - tried to enlarge the hole for the bridge grounding wire - long drill bit in drill - all going well until I came out the other side - entirely missing the cavity I was aiming for. Lesson - wrap the bit in a rag and twist by hand. Much harder to miss...

Drilled through headstock? Check.
Drilled bridge mounting holes in incorrect places because of rushing? Check.
Filled/dowelled wrong holes? Check.
Spilled stain in unwanted places? Check.
Had adverse chemical reactions due to not reading instructions carefully? Check.
Filed nut slots too deep with the ".. just one more stroke of the file!" thought process? Check.
Sawed repair pieces too short/narrow due to not measuring twice? Check.
Wired a guitar up and neglected to run an earth anywhere then wondered why the thing was humming like a good 'un?? Check.

Yes, folks... all this and more at Crazy John's crazy house of wayward guitars...

Biggest mistake I made was buying a kit from somebody other than PitBull...

And PitBull had to come to my rescue, which they did without hesitating.

Have to agree with you Muzza as the DIY closing down sale Tele I bought has been a right proper pain to get the setup sorted.

Still yet to finish it off as you lose enthusiasm when one of your builds is being problematic and others are finished and seeking more of your time to be played.

I think I stopped working on my 3 in March or April when the black dog started biting harder. The bastard's been muzzled somewhat now and I'm back at work 2 days a week.

I've been working on adapting the neck I bought from Adam to replace the ridiculously warped and twisted one I got from the 'other' supplier (Not the same one you used) and I can feel the enthusiasm creeping back - hence my return to the forums.

i need to finish my first non-PBG PRS to enter it into the non PBG guitar of the year. I'm gonna be cutting it fine.

Great to hear that you're back on deck Muzz - just know that there are quite a few here that are also working on keeping the black dog at bay. Those that aren't working on it ourselves have probably got someone close who is - ultimately know that you're not alone mate - don't be afraid to reach out for help.

Hey Muzza, you are a great contributor and we love having you here mate, good to see you back into the building of guitars

Decide on my first kit build that i didn't like the step from the neck heel to the back of the body. consequently stripped the Fretboard off, added maple blocks to the neck heel reshaped the tenon to a more traditional neon style, blocked in the neck pocket to re rout the tenon pocket, cut and fitted all of the said thing together and glued it in place. All before checking the neck to bridge string alignment.

I got extremely lucky with it, now if I can just get my DT techniques down It might get finished!