Hey everyone,

Joining here per a recommendation. After painting, modding and setting up my own guitars over the past year I realised there was nothing stopping me from building my own. As a lefty, all the interesting stuff has a price point that I'd rather spend developing a cool skill. £1000 for a Mustang? It would only feel worth it if I got to build the thing myself.

I'm interested in weird pickup combos, hand-painted bodies (I'm an illustrator), weird Fender designs and weirdo guitars from the 60s. As a member of gen z I'm also required to be into offsets. My general goal is to mess around building myself a couple instruments and perhaps some bodies to decorate and maybe even sell (they'd better not be strat-shaped for now lol). Among many things I'd love to build one of the Fenders that never got a lefty - the Meteora, the Sixty-Six, the Maverick, the Venus and especially a 50s-style Musicmaster, 22.5" scale and all. I've been inducted into a hackspace here in London (although I'm new here, lived in Scotland my whole life) and joined here per the recommendation of the founder. Looking forward to chatting with people. If anyone has any experience making lefty shapes (especially from righty plans); painting on bodies (as in, painting designs with a brush and traditional artists' materials - oils, gouache, acrylics, even egg tempera) and safely finishing them; wooden and metal pickguards; alternative or interesting wood sources (even if I were inclined to believe in 'tone woods', I'd still be interested in what they have to sound like compared to everything else!); or minimal plastic in builds (especially regarding paint and finish), please hit me up!