Damn, how'd I miss this?
OK, here we go.
First off, for buying wood, the best bet, if you have the equipment for it, is to buy rough stock from a local hardwood lumber yard. The one in my neck o' the woods is called Youngblood, but I never did find any in Boston, when I was living there. Mind you, I never tried, so don't take that as meaning anything.
But there's a trick; you need to be able to do all your surface prep, which means you need a jointer (at least six inches), a planer, and a table saw - at the very least. If you don't already have these, then this option is not really open to you.
Another option is to go to a woodworker store, such as Rockler or Woodcraft. They carry a lot of woods in what is called "two sides surfaced." It is not nearly as good as buying rough, as the wood goes through so many environmental changes after it leaves the mill that the "flat" surfaces are no longer flat, and you would still need a way to edge joint it, so a jointer is still really nice to have, but you can do it with a jointer plane, or a table saw, or even a router table if you know how. There are a lot of articles on this kind of stuff in woodworking magazines, so I won't go into it.
And then there are the specialized wood suppliers. People who supply wood specifically for the guitar industry. The most well known is
Stewart MacDonald and
Luthiers Mercantile. You might also check with Gulab Gidwani at
Exotic Woods, as he always has good stuff at competitive prices, and then there is also
Allied Lutherie. Amongst those places you should be able to find what you need.
As for tools, the only high end tool you need to build guitars is an 18-24 inch ruler. I prefer 24" Starett, but they cost an awful lot, and the Woodcraft ones are just fine. It will also act as a reliable straight edge. A band saw is nice, and I wouldn't really want to not have a drill press, but just as important is the
Belt/Disc Sander. The belt disc sander is the tool which gets used more than any other in the shop. It is great for thicknessing bone nut and saddle blanks (watch your fingers, and don't say you haven't been warned), and is essential in fairing curves from the band saw, which is a fine tool, but is useless for getting a clean edge, no matter how nice the blades are (and I use really nice blades). The belt/disc sander cleans up the convex curves, and then you need a spindle sander for the concave curves. Trust me, you do not want to try and do it all with a spindle sander. It IS possible, but it will take you 10 times as long, at least.
Buying your neck makes a lot of sense for your first guitar. It is one of the more challenging and demanding parts of the guitar. But it is also the most fun. When you make your next one (and you probably will), you might think about just buying a fingerboard and making your neck.
Bolt-on necks are fine, as are set necks, and the same with neck-throughs. None of them are better or worse, they are just different. Think of an analog synth with and its filter banks. They have a thing called ADSR, which stands for Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release. These are the four basic stages of a notes existence. well, each of these different neck designs have different ADSR characteristics. Bolt on necks emphasize the attack, but not because the attack is so great. They have a tendency to suck the energy out of the guitar pretty quick, as they are not a very solid neck joint, so they act kind of like a heat sink for the kinetic energy or the strings. This is NOT a bad thing. What happens is; when you first hit the string, the energy is all there, but it gets zapped away by the neck joint, so in essence what you have is a quick attack followed by a quick decay. It is kind of like using a compressor with a slow attack setting to make a kick or snare drum punchier. Set necks and neck-throughs take a little longer to get moving, but when they do, the decay is much smaller, so you have a slower attack and a long decay, meaning the attack of the note is de-emphasized. Neck-through guitars emphasize this even more than set neck guitars. I have built neck-through guitars which have such a smooth attack that they almost sound legato when you pick every note. And that too is a good thing, if that is the sound you are after.
One last point. Don't do this thinking you will save money. You won't. Period. Building guitars takes a lot of specialized tools and the fact is you are paying for them with one guitar. Also, you guitar will have a resale value of about zero. If you buy a Strat, you can make
SOME of the money back by selling it. Even if you did not spend more money to make the guitar (and you will), you would still have lost money due to the resale issue. And the workmanship on your first guitar (particularly if you have as little experience as you SEEM to have) will probably not be up to the level of a factory guitar. I don't want to discourage you, I just want to make sure you do this for the right reasons, which is to say, because it is FUN and fascinating, not because you think you will save money or will get a better guitar. But do build a guitar, because it is fun and fascinating. I have built quite a few, and I still love it. My father has built more than 500, and he is still in love with it. Just remember, it is an expensive hobby.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
