What Parts Do You Need to Build an Electric Guitar?

Building your own electric guitar sounds relatively straightforward until you start making a list of everything you actually need. A body, a neck, some pickups, a bridge, and a set of tuners. That should pretty much cover it, right?

Well, not quite.

I’m currently working on my own Jazzmaster project, and while the body is already taking shape, there is still quite a bit of work to be done before I can call it a playable instrument. More importantly, there are a surprising number of individual parts that need to find their way onto this guitar.

Having built two guitars before, I’ve learned that making a proper parts checklist is a very good idea. Otherwise, it’s ridiculously easy to forget something small but essential, only to realize halfway through the build that you’re missing a component worth a couple of euros.

For this article, I’m going to walk you through the parts I’ve chosen for my Jazzmaster project and explain what they’re actually needed for. We’re leaving the guitar body, neck, and fretboard out of the equation and concentrating on everything else.

And as you’ll soon discover, there’s quite a lot of everything else.

Starting With the Obvious: Bridge, Tremolo, and Tuners

Let’s begin with the parts that almost everyone remembers when thinking about building an electric guitar.

One of the first things you need is a bridge. This is obviously a pretty important part of any guitar, and for my Jazzmaster project, I’ve decided to go with a Gotoh roller bridge.

Since I’m building a Jazzmaster, I also wanted a tremolo system. My choice was the Duesenberg Tremola, specifically the shorter version. These two components will take care of the bridge and tremolo arrangement, which is a pretty significant part of the overall design.

Next up are the tuning machines.

For this project, I went with chrome Fender locking tuners. I’ve used locking tuners on several guitars, and I generally like the convenience they offer when changing strings. They’re not absolutely necessary for building an electric guitar, but since I get to choose every single component for this instrument, I might as well pick the ones I want.

Then there are the pickups, which are probably among the first components most guitarists think about.

For my build, I’ve chosen Fender ’65 Jazzmaster pickups. I wanted to keep the guitar fairly traditional in terms of its pickup configuration, so these seemed like a suitable choice.

At this point, the collection of components on my kitchen table was already starting to look like something that could eventually become an electric guitar.

Of course, I also had to spend a little time straightening everything out on the table because apparently, I can’t stand looking at guitar parts that aren’t properly aligned.

Some things never change.

The Electronics: Pots, Switches, and Capacitors

Once you’ve sorted out the pickups, you’ll need some way of controlling them.

For a conventional electric guitar, that generally means volume and tone potentiometers, along with a pickup selector switch. Depending on the guitar you’re building, the number of controls and their configuration can vary quite a bit.

For this particular Jazzmaster, I went with Emerson volume and tone pots and a fairly standard Allparts three-way toggle switch.

Emerson makes high-quality guitar electronics, and since I’m putting this guitar together from individual components, I wanted to use decent parts rather than simply choosing the cheapest option available.

Another small but important component is the tone capacitor. I picked up an Orange Drop capacitor for this project, which will work alongside the tone potentiometer to control how much high-frequency content is rolled off when adjusting the tone knob.

It’s one of those little components you might easily overlook when ordering parts, especially if you’re concentrating on the larger pieces of hardware.

And speaking of things that are easy to forget, there’s the output jack.

I seem to recall forgetting to order one when I was putting together my first Telecaster project. It’s a fairly insignificant-looking component until you realize that you can’t actually connect your guitar to an amplifier without it.

You’ll also need knobs for the volume and tone controls. Again, they’re not particularly exciting components, but they are something you need to account for when putting your shopping list together.

Building the Neck Requires More Than Just Wood

Now we’re getting into the components that might not immediately come to mind, particularly if you’ve never built a guitar from scratch.

One of the most important parts of a guitar neck is the truss rod.

The basic idea is that the tension from the guitar strings pulls the neck in one direction, while the truss rod allows you to counteract that tension. By adjusting the truss rod, you can control how much relief or forward bow the neck has.

Without a properly functioning truss rod, setting up the guitar becomes considerably more difficult.

Then there are the frets themselves.

For my Jazzmaster, I ordered regular jumbo fret wire. Nothing particularly exotic here, and no stainless steel frets either. Just traditional jumbo frets, which should suit this project perfectly well.

Another absolutely essential component is the guitar nut. I went with a Harley Benton bone nut, and for whatever reason, the package actually contained two of them.

I’m certainly not complaining. Having a spare nut around is never a bad thing, especially when you’re working on a custom guitar build.

The nut is one of those parts that might not look particularly important, but its dimensions and the way the slots are cut have a significant effect on how the guitar feels and plays.

We’ll get back to that when we talk about strings.

String Trees, Fret Markers, and Other Small Details

Since I’m going with a fairly traditional Jazzmaster design, the headstock won’t have an angle like you’d find on something such as a Les Paul.

This is where string trees come into play.

I ordered two string trees for the project. Their purpose is to provide sufficient downward pressure on the strings as they pass over the nut, helping keep them properly seated in their slots.

It’s a small detail, but one that can make a difference to how the instrument behaves.

Something else I almost certainly would have forgotten without a checklist is the material for the side dot markers.

These are the small position markers along the side of the fretboard that allow you to see where you are while playing. The material I ordered is essentially a small round piece of plastic that will eventually be cut and installed into the neck.

I’ll cover the actual installation process in a future part of the Jazzmaster build project.

And then there are the fretboard inlays.

I know some people like the minimalist look of a guitar without fret markers, but personally, I couldn’t imagine playing one without them. I like being able to see where I am on the fretboard without having to think about it too much.

For this project, I ordered pre-cut, four-millimetre black pearloid fretboard markers. They’re a fairly simple choice, but I think they’ll work nicely with the overall appearance I’m going for.

When you consider that the fret markers and side dots are technically separate parts, you begin to see why the list keeps getting longer.

Don’t Forget the Screws!

One thing that becomes very apparent when you’re ordering all the parts for an electric guitar is just how many screws you actually need.

There are screws for the neck, screws for the pickguard, and various other pieces of mounting hardware. Individually, none of them are particularly interesting, but without them, you’re going to have a difficult time assembling anything.

Since I’m building a guitar with a bolt-on neck, I’ll also need a neck plate.

The neck plate serves a couple of purposes. It helps distribute the clamping force of the neck screws over a larger area and prevents the screw heads from sinking too deeply into the guitar body.

Naturally, I managed to forget to order the actual neck screws.

So much for having a checklist.

During the video, I ended up using four random screws I found at home to demonstrate what the neck screws would look like. Obviously, I’ll need to get the correct ones before assembling the guitar.

I also ordered a bunch of Harley Benton mounting screws, mainly for attaching the pickguard. I deliberately bought some extras because screws have a remarkable tendency to disappear whenever you’re working on guitars.

It’s much easier to have a few spare ones lying around than to interrupt an entire build because you’re missing one tiny screw.

Another hardware component worth mentioning is the strap buttons.

Or, in my case, Schaller Security Locks.

If you want to hang your guitar ridiculously low and pretend you’re a rock star, you’re going to need some way of attaching a strap. I prefer using strap locks because they provide additional security when playing.

The Pickguard

A Jazzmaster wouldn’t look quite right without its distinctive pickguard, so that’s another item on the shopping list.

For my project, I bought a Harley Benton three-ply pickguard. It has the traditional black-white-black layered construction, which means there’s a white layer sandwiched between two black layers.

The interesting part is that I’m planning to shape the pickguard for this particular build.

Once the initial outline has been cut, we’ll use a suitable router bit to create the angled edge that exposes all three layers of the material.

It’s a relatively small detail, but I really like how that kind of bevelled edge looks on a guitar pickguard.

And since I’m building this instrument myself, I get to make those decisions rather than simply accepting whatever came from the factory.

One Last Thing: Guitar Strings

After you’ve assembled the body, neck, hardware, electronics, and everything else, there’s still one rather obvious thing missing.

Strings.

Technically, you might not consider a pack of strings part of the actual guitar hardware, but you can’t do much playing without them.

More importantly, having the correct strings available during the build process is surprisingly important.

One thing I’ve learned from building guitars before is that you should decide on your string gauge before doing the final setup, particularly when it comes to cutting the nut slots.

For example, I normally use 11–49 gauge strings. That means the nut slots need to be sized appropriately for those strings, including the high E string.

If you cut the nut slots for one gauge and later decide to install something significantly different, you may need to make additional adjustments.

So my advice would be to have at least one set of the strings you actually intend to use on the finished instrument.

It’s a simple thing to plan ahead, and it can save you some unnecessary work later.

So, How Many Parts Do You Actually Need to Build an Electric Guitar?

As you can probably tell by now, there’s a lot more to building an electric guitar than simply buying a body, attaching a neck, and installing some pickups.

The exact number of individual components depends on what you’re building and how you choose to count everything. A Jazzmaster with a tremolo system will naturally require different hardware from a Telecaster with a fixed bridge, and a guitar with a more complicated electronics setup might need additional switches and controls.

And if you decide to count every individual screw as a separate part, things start getting a little ridiculous.

What surprised me during this project wasn’t necessarily the number of major components, but how many small things you need to remember. A capacitor here, a string tree there, fret markers, neck screws, strap locks, and all the other bits that don’t immediately come to mind when you picture an electric guitar.

Having already built a couple of guitars, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I needed. And yet I still managed to forget the neck screws.

That probably tells you everything you need to know about the importance of making a proper checklist.

My Jazzmaster project is still very much a work in progress, and there’s plenty left to do before I get to hear what this collection of parts actually sounds like together.

I’ll be documenting the build as it progresses, including the process of turning all these individual components into an actual playable instrument.

For now, at least I have a pretty good idea of what needs to go where.

Well, apart from those neck screws.