What's your best budget build?

[Chistopher]

I've been looking at getting into building budget guitars, and am in need of inspiration. What budget (under $400) partscasters have you guys found to be the most successful. Please include what parts you bought from where, each individual item cost, and of course, pictures.

 

[Clint 55]

Re: What's your best budget build?

You can't go wrong with a Squier Strat or Tele. Just replace the saddles, tuners, and a pup or 2 and you're golden. They play great and there's nothing wrong with the wood. Wood is wood. Bullets are basswood and Affinities are Alder. The budgetness to them is that the bodies and necks are a little thinner, not that they're styrofoam. Here's one that is in the $500 range because I put 4 antiquities in it, but it's the cheapest Squier available, a bullet strat for $130. I'm just really impressed with how the wood sounds after the electronics and hardware upgrades.

 

[AlexR]

Re: What's your best budget build?

It will be hard to find a budget build where you get everything individually coming out really cheap. As mentioned above, the best ones are where you get the majority of the guitar as 1 then tweak bits to suit. Not the least is the delivery fee for each time you buy.

 

[Clint 55]

Re: What's your best budget build?

The cheapest guitar that I think would come out really good that I might have to make is a bullet tele for $300 complete. Guitar - $130, Hot tele set - $125, Fender tuners - $35, saddles - $10. Good to go.

 

[Adieu]

Re: What's your best budget build?

I've been looking at getting into building budget guitars, and am in need of inspiration. What budget (under $400) partscasters have you guys found to be the most successful. Please include what parts you bought from where, each individual item cost, and of course, pictures.

$25 Charvel Model Digit-something body, 80s Japan (swimming pool routed probably-basswood strat, standard pocket)
$25 Fernandes neck missing nut, presumed Japan, shaved sanded and BLO'd by me
$0 Brass saddles, 70s japanese, leftover from another project that got flashier faux-gold saddles for looks
$10 set of used Schaller lockers, thrown in for +$10 as a sweetener with a different neck that they DIDN'T fit
$35 old 80s Duncan JB
$15 pickguard
$ ~0 -- two generic singles that came with someone's disaster of a partscaster attempt I got for $75 total for parts (lefty body touched up and flipped for $100, cool rails flipped on for $35, atrocious squier neck used for shaving and oiling practice then flipped for $30)
$ 0 - two volume pots off that same partscaster
$ 8 balance pot, bought new
$ 10 Fender LSR roller nut, thrown in with another neck it didnt fit by some other wannabe partscaster builder

Used parts all craigslist

Crazy wiring scheme that used volumes and the blend pot to mix the JB and a variety of mixes between the two singles


Played like BUTTAH. And had some serious balls.

 

[Adieu]

Re: What's your best budget build?

Another:

Strat/tele hybrid:

$25 Fender Squier-series MIM telecaster neck with some wannabe-luthiery scars
$50ish Fender MIJ strat body (part of a bulk buyout of a bunch of parts for $200)
$ 0ish - two fender CS 69 singles, part of a set of 3 that I traded for 2 Fender CS Texas Specials, which in turn I bought as a set of 3 for $50 - 2 "spare" CS pups went into upgrading other guitars that I sold for a profit, which more than recouped the $50
$ 0ish - old Duncan Hotrail, salvaged from a partscaster disaster I bought out and parted out after cleaning and touching up various messed up things
$ 0 - Corian nut cut from recycled countertop material
$35 - Fender tuners
$~5 - neckplate
$15 - cheapo electronics kit
$10 pickguard
$10 USA saddles

Tough build though, neck had to be recut to fit strat pocket, tuner holes had to be reamed out, nut needed to be fabricated, hack job by previous owner attempting to install a different nut on the neck incorrectly needed some filling.... ridiculous cheapo switch wouldnt quite fit cavity... trem block was cracked still needs replacing - wont hold an arm... USA saddles needed some slight filing to fit straight... etc etc

 

[oilpit]

Re: What's your best budget build?

Ebay is a goldmine for stuff like this. You can get squier and warmoth bodies for 30 or 40 bucks and a neck would be about the same. As long as you make sure that the parts are from an actual legit guitar company (cheap stuff like squier definitely applies, you just don't want some Chinese plywood).

It's going to be a gambler of course and you might end up getting something that sucks, but I have found that with partscasters pretty much anything goes.