I just want to share some experiences I have had with project guitars.
Lesson #1 - do not use maple top or ebony fretboard with single coil pups.
I assembled my first project guitar in 1992. I bought a body and neck from Warmoth. The neck was birdseye maple with ebony board. The body was like like a LP - maple cap on mahogany body - but it was shaped and routed like a hardtail Strat. The guitar was beautiful to look at but, unless I used highly overwound pickups, it sounded bad.
Lesson #2 - that true cow pasture twang comes from maple boards and lightweight swamp ash bodies.
In 1997 I assembled a Tele from a USA Custom body in alder. I used the neck from Lesson #1. This guitar played fine and sounded good, but the brightness of the ebony does not equal the nasally brightness of maple. I played this guitar for a few years and sold it to a friend.
Lesson #3 - Sometimes even simple doesn't pan out.
I put together a hardtail Strat from lightweight alder body and maple/rosewood neck I bought from USA Custom. This guitar plays very nice. The sound is good, but there's not quite enough ring and sustain to make it a super Strat. My son plays this now.
Lesson #4 - you get what you pay for.
I bought a very nice 52 RI Fender Tele from Larry Miletich at Music One. It wasn't cheap because I had Larry pick it out and set it up. The guitar was perfect. Stupidly, I sold it in 2003.
Lesson #5 - sound samples can be very misleading.
I wanted to put together a guitar that would be good for blues to jazz. I stumbled onto Jim Soloway's website. (Jim Soloway is a builder of ultra-fine guitars in the NW). At the time, Jim had approx 25-30 guitars with sound samples, and he described the wood choices and pickups for each. I spent countless hours with headphones allowing my brain to make correlations between tone and wood. In the end I decided to get a hollow-T swamp ash body and mahogany/pau ferro neck from USA Custom. I put a pair of Pete Biltoft's humbucker-sized P-90's in the guitar. I also, elected to try a new fretsize - 6125 (.095" x .047"). The guitar plays well, but I wish I had picked 6130 or 6150 frets. The sound is pretty good. The guitar is extremely "alive" and sustains very well. But I just can't get rid of that hint of high frequencies that comes with swamp ash, and the lows are rather full, too, because swamp ash does those well, also. The wound strings sound super. The plain strings, especially E, are a bit thin sounding in comparison. Bottom-line: too much eq'ing is required for me to be happy and I don't like the feel of the neck/fretboard.
Lesson #6 - Today you can get more than what you pay for.
A few months back I bought an Agile AL-3100. The guitar plays very well. I replaced the electronics because I'm picky. I'm very pleased to be able to avoid spending $2k or more on a set neck, humbucker guitar. So, I'm now in the process of putting pickups back in an Ibanez AS-80. The Ibanez has great upper fret access, very ample accoustic tone and sustain, and the neck/fretboard feel good to my hand.
So, to conclude, I will not be building another guitar. A good project guitar costs hundreds of dollars more than a beautiful, new guitar from Asia. I can change the pickups or even the bridge and tuners. But a project guitar is like having a kid - You never know how the child will be when they reach adulthood. I've never been trying to find a new, never-before-heard tone. I'm not going to risk any more money or time on tone. I'm just going to buy it ready-made.
