GelvinGuitarsArchive

Free · 12 videos · 20 hours 18 minutes

The whole
build, free.

The entire build, from the first drawing to the final wire, including the mistakes, repairs, pickup winding, shop-made jigs, and the parts most courses mysteriously skip. Nothing gated and nothing to sign up for.

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The course

Seven parts, in order

Start at part one and work through. Each stage assumes the one before it.

Part 1

Designing Custom Guitars and Making Templates

Everything downstream inherits the decisions made here. An hour and a half on turning an idea into a drawing, and a drawing into templates you can cut against.

Part 2

Best Woods and Glues for Building Electric Guitars

What genuinely matters in timber selection, what is folklore, and how to buy stock that is dry, stable and will not twist itself into firewood a year after you finish.

Part 3

How to Build Guitar Bodies and Add Veneer

Nearly two hours on turning a blank into a body: joining, shaping, routing every cavity, and laying a veneer top without bubbles or blown through edges.

Part 4

How to Build a Guitar Neck and Do Perfect Fretwork

Nearly three hours, and the longest video in the course for good reason. This is the stage that decides whether the finished guitar plays like an instrument or like a plank.

Part 5

Custom Guitar Inlays, Step by Step

An hour on inlay work, from simple dots to a photo inlay technique: cutting cavities, fitting material, filling and levelling without wrecking the board around it.

Part 6

How to Paint and Finish a Guitar Like a Pro

Two and a half hours on the stage everyone underestimates. Prep, color, clear, then the levelling and buffing that separates a decent finish from a professional one.

Part 7

Guitar Electronics Explained: Wiring Basics

An hour and a half on the part that intimidates people unnecessarily. Four components and one signal path, once you know what each does, you can choose instead of copying.

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Tools, pickups and specialist work

Standalone

Watch these whenever they become relevant. Nothing here depends on anything else.

Specialist technique

How to Wind Your Own Guitar Pickups

Two and a half hours on the deepest rabbit hole in guitar building. Magnets, wire, turns and pattern, and what each one actually does to the output.

Restoration and repair

How to Copy Guitar Necks for Restorations and Repairs

An hour and a half on reproducing an existing neck accurately enough that the replacement feels like the original. Essential for restoration work, and a useful skill in its own right.

Full build walkthrough

One Piece Guitar Build (OPS): Full Walkthrough

Two hours on a build with no neck joint at all. Harder to get right, unforgiving of mistakes, and there is nothing quite like the result.

DIY luthier tools

DIY Guitar Tools: Build Your Own Neck Jig

Commercial neck jigs cost more than most people's first build. This is how to make one that does the same job for a fraction of the money.

Workshop practice

10 Luthier Shop Tips for Smarter Guitar Building

The accumulated small stuff. None of it is complicated, and every one of them saves time, money or a ruined piece of wood.

Watch the builds on YouTube

Full build videos, start to finish, including the parts that went wrong.

Build series · New video most months
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Why every video has a written page

Because nobody wants to scrub through two hours to find one measurement. The written guide carries the numbers, the tool list and the mistakes, so you can read it at the bench with glue on your hands and no headphones in.

The videos are hosted on YouTube and only load when you press play, so a page full of them still opens quickly on a phone with one bar of signal.

Last reviewed: August 2026

Written by Will Gelvin

Former owner and luthier at Gelvin Guitars, builder of custom instruments, and inventor of the patented Variable Inductance Pickup. I built this archive to explain not only what works, but why it works. About my experience and approach.