Build Your Own Electric Guitar

Martin Oakham
2006

Contrary to the identically titled Haynes manual, this book really does cover building your guitar from raw blocks of wood (although it does assume someone else has cut the tree down for you). From that point it has detailed steps of just about everything you need to do, including clear, colour photos nearly all of them. In this respect it would be, I expect, an extremely valuable guide to have around.

I have only a couple of minor gripes: firstly, it goes from start to finish with one guitar, a bolt-on (neck) with two humbuckers, and although there a couple of pages on different construction methods, it isn't much. Secondly, it makes a tiny, passing reference to finishing the body and neck. Granted this is a fairly specialised subject but you can't leave the wood untreated. Still, a superb companion piece to the other books I already have.