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Meet the Brands Powering the DIY Guitar Revolution

A pair of techs at work at StewMac’s Athens, OH, homestead.

Photo by Scott Marx
DIY

Meet the Brands Powering the DIY Guitar Revolution

If you like to make, mod, or mess with your instrument, chances are you’re familiar with StewMac and Allparts. Here, their people tell us how they became the go-to suppliers for DIYers around the world.

It’s easy to forget, but it takes all manner of materials, tools, and know-how to make and maintain a well-loved guitar that’s built to last and plays exactly the way you like it. Pickups, tone knobs, toggle switches, and input jacks. Neck plates, bridges, tailpieces, and saddles. Strap buttons, truss rods, pickguards, string retainers, tuning keys, fret wire, ferrules. Capacitors and circuitry, nuts, and washers, screws and springs. Not to mention the tonewoods and specialized luthier tools used to fashion the body, neck, headstock, and fretboard.

Up Next

Mod Garage DIY Guitar Makeover: First Steps and Needle Files
DIY

Mod Garage DIY Guitar Makeover: First Steps and Needle Files

The tonewood teardown miniseries continues as our columnist sets to work on his T-style Harley Benton electric.

Wood shavings on newspaper next to a green wooden block and a knife cutting into it.
SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
Mod Garage

Mod Garage Guitar Makeover: Neck-Pocket Cleanup and DIY Routing

Next on this tonewood teardown miniseries, our columnist cleans out his Harley Benton electric’s neck pocket and preps the control cavities.

Close-up of a Lexicon 224 audio effects unit, featuring various knobs and buttons for adjustments.

A trio of verbs: (l-r) EMT 250, Lexicon 224, and EMT 140

Recording Dojo

​Reverb Therapy, Part 1

There are so many types of reverbs, so what distinguishes them?

A close-up of a person's hands adjusting knobs on a sound mixing console.

Our columnist at home base—the recording console.

Tonewood Teardown: How Good Can a Cheap Guitar Sound?

The Harley Benton TE-62CC model in quadruplicate.

Photo courtesy Thomann Music/Harley Benton
Mod Garage

Tonewood Teardown: How Good Can a Cheap Guitar Sound?

Get out your tool box and follow along over the next few months as our columnist overhauls a bargain-bin 6 string.

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