The MOD SQUAD
As we’ve documented before in The Mod Squad, building a guitar today is pretty simple. Buy a kit from StewMac and, with a few basic tools and some of that modding knowledge you’ve accrued, you can build your own T, S or J-style on your living-room table. Ha!
But turn the clock back five decades and things were rather different. Aside from the obvious ‘what did we do before the internet?’ issue, guitar kits didn’t exist and getting any information on guitar making, especially of the electric variety, wasn’t easy. Why bother? Well, my adventures started after I’d asked my dad if he’d loan me the money to buy an electric guitar from the Bell Musical Instrument catalogue. He replied, ‘No, but why don’t we make one?’ He even found some plans in a woodworking magazine and, although far from refined, said guitar (which weighed a ton) sort of worked.
