So, I have built a 4 stringer tuned GCEA, acoustic.

My grandson, age 10, wants an electric guitar, likes rock, and I was thinking of building him a 3 stringer.  Would that work as a first guitar for someone who likes rock?  Also, piezio or coil pickup?  With the coil pickup I could do solid body and have it look more like a rock guitar.  Any other considerations?

TIA,  Matt

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i'd do  a 3  stringer  ,   with a   mag  pickup  .( preferably a  humbucker    or  2 ) .

   piezos  dont like   distortion    much. 

I think a 3-stringer would be a good place to start. Check out Shane Speal on YouTube. He and his band have some good distortion/rock stuff to demo what can be accomplished with a 3-stringer.

As for pickups, piezo would work with a good tone pot, but your grandson would still be fighting some box noise until he learned to deal with the unique properties of a piezo. A mag pickup might be a better choice for him since it would (for the most part) only puck up sting vibration. Humbuckers are nice, but single wound coils also have advantages such as a warm tone. I think either would be fine. For a young rocker, you may want to work up a design that fits the image. Check out the photo below. It is a three-stringer with a hollow body and a four pole humbucker. Scale is 24" which makes stretching out for those chords a little easier than with a 25 or 25.5" scale.

Good luck with your project. Keep us all posted with photos.

Hi Matt, my $0.02 would be that you want to go with a magnetic pickup if he wants to play rock music on it, and preferably a humbucker at that.

I did make a solid body 3 string with a 'bucker and it came out like this:

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/photo/albums/31-pine-body-electric-3-...

The finished article

I found making a solid body much more of a challenge than making a CBG, but it was a lot of fun. A cigar box with a magnetic pickup would probably be fine too.

Look up Loog guitars for kids

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