The first guitar that I built back in 2006, was a flamed maple sunburst telecaster type guitar. The body & neck were made by Mighty Mite and the pickups were a Joe Barden mini humbucker set. All of the parts were bought from Axes - R - Us. I later sold this on Ebay to a guitar collector in Scotland.
Later in 2006 I built my first Warmoth guitar. Warmoth are a guitar parts company based in Washington State, they make the best guitar bodies and neck that money can buy! The first one I tried was a hard tail black korina strat body with an all maple neck. I finished it with tru-oil gunstock finish and fitted a Wilkinson vintage pickup set. I sold this one on Ebay at a reasonable profit. I don’t seem to have kept any photos of this one though.
The next guitar I built in 2006 was a telecaster with a Bigsby tremolo. I bought an undrilled tele body & a tele neck on Ebay. I then fitted the Bigsby & a set of genuine Fender US Tele pickups. This was also sold on Ebay.
The next guitar built was in 2007. A mahogany telecaster type guitar. The body & neck were again purchased from Warmoth in the US. The mahogany body was finished in a metal flake orange “Candy Tangerine” paint job. The neck was maple with a Pau Ferro fretboard. The pickup were a Fender “Noiseless” US tele set and the neck was fitted with an Earvana compensated nut. The bridge was a Danny Gatton signature model. This guitar had the classic Telecaster tones with lots of country twang! This guitar was too good to sell at the time and was not sold until 2013.
In 2008 I built an all mahogany telecaster type guitar. Solid mahogany body and mahogany neck. These were again sourced from Warmoth in the US. The pickups were hand wound and made by a company in the US called Vintage Vibe. They were ordered overwound by 10%. This was a tele with a Gibson sound! It was nicknamed “Satan’s Telecaster” and there weren’t no twang in that thang! I kept this one too until 2013 when it was sold.
My 2009 guitar build was a bit of a change. I bought a walnut stratocaster type body and a maple strat neck with ebony fretboard from Warmoth in the US. The pickups were a Seymour Duncan Blackout strat set. These pickups were active so I had a battery box route cut at the time the body was manufactured. The pickups had a high & low output setting selected using a hard disk type jumper. I have wired the jumper terminals up to a mini toggle switch so they can be changed at will without taking the pickguard off.
Early in 2011 I decided to re-build my Warmoth walnut strat. I had not been happy with the finish - I had finished it with danish oil topped off with a coat of poly varnish. It never really looked right. I stripped it back to bare wood and sprayed it white. I was never really happy with the Seymour Duncan active pick-ups either, they were too glassy and harsh. Whilst I had the guitar to bits I changed them for a set of Axes-R-Us vintage single coils. It now sounded like a real strat with all of those Knopfler tones! I did some more work to this one in 2014.
I changed the pickups for a better set from Ironstone Pickups and fitted a new tortoiseshell pick guard. I carried out some relicing work to make it look older and worn. This was sold on Ebay too in 2014.