The Partscaster Cookbook by Shane Speal

In The Partscaster Cookbook, Shane Speal, the "King of the Cigar Box Guitar," shows you how to build wild electric guitars from junked guitars, new guitar kits, miscellaneous parts and unusual found objects!  

• Step-by-step details on a Telecaster style guitar with a Mexican "Day of the Dead" altar embedded in it that lights up!
• Full details on an electric resonator guitar built from a junked Disney guitar.
• Uncommon finishing ideas for guitar kits
• Information on Teisco and Harmony solidbody guitars that are Shane's favorites to mod and transform.
• Full color photos and a boatload of creative ideas.  60 pages.
• Back cover includes a 15% Off coupon for C. B. Gitty instrument parts and more.

From the book:

What is a Partscaster?

A Partscaster is any guitar that has been heavily modified or “built from the ground up” using new and salvaged guitar parts. These creations are also referred to as Frankenstein Guitars or Frankenstrats. These instruments are usually built by a musician looking for their own individual Holy Grail of tone or playability. Unsatisfied with simply grabbing a guitar off-the-rack from a music store, these DIY players will swap out pickups, necks and just about any part in order to get the exact sound and feel they’re looking for.

Eddie Van Halen created the most famous Partscaster with his red/white/black striped guitar. Van Halen wanted a guitar with the tone of a Les Paul and the playability (with a whammy bar) of a Stratocaster. He created his ultimate instrument by using a factory-seconds Strat-style guitar body and a neck loaded with jumbo frets, and he routed out the body for a single PAF humbucker from a Gibson ES-335.

Van Halen’s guitar went through many mutations, paint schemes and hardware, always being tweaked in order to grasp the music he first heard in his soul.

The guitars in this book represent various paths of inspiration I’ve traveled down over the years. Some were built because I had a curious itch for mixing certain parts. Others were artistic expressions, such as the Reso Rat pictured here. Unlike many Partscaster builders, I like to find ways of adding found object parts to my guitars such as the ceiling tin, door handles and the air conditioner badge used on this guitar.

I’ve filled the pages with many techniques and creative ideas for you to use as you hack into unsuspecting guitar bodies. The goal isn’t to copy my guitars, but to find a Holy Grail for yourself.

The majority of traditional guitar parts seen in this book can be found at www.CBGitty.com. A special thanks goes out to Ben “Gitty” Baker for encouraging me to build these pieces of objet d’art and document them.

Grab a scalpel. We’re going in!