How I Build 'Em -- Introduction
by Michael DeTemple

My goal is to make a guitar that once in your hands is undeniably an inspiration to your playing. Undeniably the best-feeling and best-sounding guitar you've ever held. The guitar that draws you to it every time you see it. The guitar that you have to pick up because you feel you have no choice. The guitar that you will feel is your guitar for the rest of your life. The guitar that is undeniably yours.

Dear Friends,

Many of you have requested a pictorial section on my building process. So we've gathered a collection of photos and attempted to organize them for you. It's a little crude and some of the photos aren't the best -- but the transformation from raw timber into instruments of this caliber is a fascinating one. Although there are some missing sequences I'll do my best to fill in those gaps as pictures become available.

These pictorials are organized into three sections: the neck, the body and the assembly. There's at least a couple hundred photos buried in here, so we've made liberal use of thumbnail pictures, multiple pages for each section, and captions to allow you to move efficiently. To see a larger picture just click on any of the thumbnail photos. Each photo is approximately 20-30K -- which provides the optimum detail without taking too long to appear in your browser.

As the photos will indicate, each guitar of my Spirit Series™ is handcrafted to order with an absolutely minimum use of machinery. Specs often change from order-to-order, and I'm continuously tweaking, modifying and improving the techniques. These guitars have the reputation as being the best-of-the-best of the solid-body vintage design electrics, I'm really proud of that.

Fortunately websites lend themselves to frequent changes and editing ;-)

Please feel free to email me if you have questions.

Enjoy!

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 INTRO   |    THE NECK    |    THE BODY    |    THE ASSEMBLY

The distinctive guitar bodies are licensed to DeTemple Guitars under a quality control trademark license with Fender Musical Instruments Company. Fender®, Tele®, Telecaster®, Strat®, and Stratocaster® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC). All Rights Reserved. DeTemple Guitars is not affiliated with FMIC.