Why bother? Why spend your time and money on a guitar made out of parts when there are so many guitars that sound and play great right off the rack? It’s a good question, especially when gig-worthy guitars seem to get cheaper every year. Besides, who ever got famous playing a guitar made out of parts?  Well…Eddie Van Halen for one.

But you’re probably wondering why you need to get involved with all this worrying about neck shape and pickup selection when you can just grab a guitar that works and play the damn thing. Well, I only play partscasters, and here's why:

1.) You know every part that goes into it.

Most affordable guitars cut costs somewhere. Ever tried to do a volume swell on your guitar only to find that the volume pot does essential nothing until the last ¼ of its rotation? That kind of quiet/loud performance is a dead give-away for cheap pots, or a pot with a linear taper instead of the smoother audio taper. Other victims of cost cutting can include shoddy tuners, buzzing frets, and an improperly slotted nut. (Do you hear a “ping” sound from the nut when you’re tuning?) All of these issues need to get fixed eventually, so the real cost of affordable guitars can be hidden. When you assemble your own instrument out of parts, you know exactly what’s going into it. Quality parts equal fewer surprises and less maintenance.

2.) You can get exactly what you want.

At some point, most guitarists look at their instruments and say, “This guitar would be perfect if only…”  For instance, I love Telecasters, but I hate the standard Tele neck pickup. I’ll throw just about any other type of pickup in there instead. But in my quest for a better Telecaster, I’m not about to hack up a valuable American Standard while routing out the neck pickup hole. By playing a partscaster, I don’t have to worry about resale value. They aren’t worth much anyway, so why not experiment?

3.) A blank headstock is freedom.

Guitarists get awfully uptight about brands, but they shouldn’t. Especially when it comes to bolt-on type instruments, we’re mostly talking about mass-produced objects whose designs have been optimized for fast, cheap manufacturing. Guitars aren’t very complicated in their construction, and the instruments most of us play aren’t “crafted” so much as bolted-together.  For Fender-style guitars especially, there are few secrets left. Builders know how these instruments are made, which is why there are so many good Fender copies out there. So, why not skip the nail-biting over brands and focus on how you sound instead? Once you give up on having the “best,” you can focus on finding what works for you.

Convinced? Great. Let’s go ahead and assemble a Strat out of parts right now. For the neck and body, we’ll go with Warmoth, since they’re a highly regarded American builder and they do all kinds of options. For the pickups, let’s use Seymour Duncans, since I like them a lot. We’ll use Grover tuners and a Wilkinson tremolo because we should have the best parts in this guitar.  Let’s add it up:

And when we compare that to an American Standard Strat priced at $999.00, we find that we just spent an extra $89.00 by assembling our own!

Wait a second; I thought this was supposed to be Frugal Guitarist. I’m not seeing any savings here and we didn’t even go for any fancy custom options. This brings us to the one speed-bump in my love of parts guitars: if you make your own, you can easily pay more, not less. Companies like Fender save money through the economy of scale; they control costs by buying parts in bulk, using a lot of automated manufacturing, and limiting options. You’re probably not going to beat them for cost; at least not with the parts list I just assembled. Now, there are a lot of lower-priced parts manufacturers like GuitarFetish out there. I'll cover these companies in future installments, but even though many of their parts are quite good, their stock is made overseas and they don’t have the same reputation for quality that Warmoth or similar US builders have. For right now, it’s enough to understand that building a parts-guitar that really rivals a name-brand, American-made instrument is usually cost-prohibitive.

So, why did I just waste your time convincing you to roll your own when an American-made, name-brand guitar is often cheaper? For one thing, all the reasons I love partscasters still hold true; they’re still hackable, modable, tweakable instruments that free you from brand anxiety and allow you to get whatever options you want. Apart from commissioning a custom builder to make you a totally unique instrument, partscasters are the only way to really optimize your guitar to your needs. The options in woods, finishes, and electronics are staggering.

More importantly, there are at least two ways to get a partscaster on the cheap. One way to save money is learning to do a few simple assembly tasks yourself. By doing a little finish work or some soldering, you can save big money. The skills involved aren’t rocket-science and you get the added satisfaction of playing something that you made.

The other option is buying a partscaster used. While they cost a lost upfront, partscasters don’t have good resale value because they lack that name-brand appeal. Why not let someone else suffer the depreciation when they sell that fancy parts guitar? I’ve bought a bunch this way and I’ve been really happy with the guitars I got. This option limits the personal touch of assembling your own from scratch, but you can always make changes later. Buying used is probably the best way to get started with partscasters, so in my next installment, I’ll talk about finding and buying a partscaster for a good price.

Rex Krueger is a musician, writer, and teacher living in Gainesville, Florida. Read his blog on all things DIY at nonamecustom.wordpress.com