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The Great Guitar Build-off

Mark Waudby

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Hi! I'm Mark, I'm a self-taught amateur guitar builder. I'm originally from Glasgow, I live in Leeds with my wife and two kids, and I have a small workshop in my garage. I've been messing around with guitars and playing in bands for 27 years, but only started building guitars over the last year or so. Starting with a partscaster Tele and then a ground-up rebuild of my very first guitar (a Sunn Mustang Strat), I went on during lockdown to build a 12-string of my own design, followed by a 6-string later in 2020 - you can see these on my Instagram. I enjoy the design process almost as much as building them, and I like to fabricate as many of the parts of a guitar as I can.

After closely following the competition last year, I've been planning my GGBO entry since the 2021 competition was announced. It's still in the drawing stages, but (as it stands at the moment) it will be something of a mashup, with some features from a thinline T-style, and others from a DC Special - albeit a completely new and original design in its own right. It will be a chambered body, with a double-cutaway shape. It will have a set-neck, 24.75" scale, and an angled 3+3 headstock. It will have phase switching, and possibly series/parallel, depending on pickup selection. My aim is to build the best players guitar that I possibly can, incorporating some of my favourite features.

I've chosen a design like this in order to stretch myself and keep moving forward as a builder. New skills for me to learn on this build are likely to include:

set necks;
binding;
inlays;
chambering;
angled headstocks;
burst finishes.

Many thanks, I'm really looking forward to the competition!

You can visit my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9thraLZKiCqVR4DUdEmjEQ

You can see the video of my final build here: https://youtu.be/ZO5Py0-8eTo

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