Intro
I have been wanting to build a a guitar for a long while (since high school, I think). The easiest way to start is to get into what are called ‘partscasters’. ‘Parts’ for, being built from parts, and ‘casters’ due to the style often resembling the bolt-on neck style of Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters.
Ordering
I recently found about GuitarFetish, a retailer of guitar parts made overseas. I saw their ad about their ‘factory buyouts’, misc guitar parts, which were onsale. I then went overboard, and bought multiple necks and bodies (enough for about 4 full guitars). Soon after making this purchase, I realized I did not all of the required hardware, and ordered many more cheap parts, this time from aliexpress, to fill in the gaps.
The parts arrived, and then went into storage, as is tradition with all projects.
Assembly
Body
Months later, I took what looked like a nice guitar body and neck, and saw cracks in the finish on the body. The coat was a poly, and I had red online you can fill those sorts of cracks and dents with superglue. So I went to town, and it came out alright. I did not account that I would need multiple layers to fill the very large crack, though. Feeling impatient, I assembled the thing.
I chose the only loaded pickguard that would fit, a SSH with 2 hot rail compact rail humbuckers, a killswitch, and coil splits for each pickup. This thing is crazy. I think it was $16 shipped, fully loaded. One of the rails is wonky, but it doesn’t seem to affect the sound. 
I got to test my new-to-me drill press, and drilled all of the pickguard holes.
Neck
The neck is made by a company named Bergen. Little exists about the company, except that they’re out of japan, and most of their stuff is hand-crafted. Seems to be of 1-piece maple. 22 frets. I can’t complain. I had to level it, and crown the frets. I also had to plug the previous mounting holes, which I did with a Harbor Freight plug cutter (which I would not recommend) in some maple board.
Final Assembly
I put it all together, put the bridge on, and strung it up. This thing plays and sounds awesome. I like it more than my real Fender, but that could just be pride in my own creation.
