Joseph Balzli, 17, stepped onto the stage at Rick’s Cafe Thursday night, his Van Halen-themed guitar in hand, wearing denim from head to toe and a Motley Crue pin on his jacket.
He said he was nervous and had never played in front of a crowd before, but that was the easy part. The hard one? Learning how to build an electric guitar in the first place. The final product that made it on stage with hot red color and white zig-zagged striping.
“It just really stressed me out, and it took much longer than I thought it would,” Balzli said. “I really like Eddie Van Halen, so I modeled mine off his, but mine is a Les Paul and his was not. So I had to do something a little different.”
Balzli joined seven other Starkville teenagers over the last three weeks to build Les Paul electric guitars through a workshop at the Mississippi State University IDEA Shop — an outreach effort of the College of Business and located in downtown Starkville. Students conceptualized, built and painted their electric guitars before playing them Thursday in a public concert at Rick’s.
MSU E-Center Director of Outreach Jeffrey Rupp, who organized the event, told The Dispatch he obtained a $5,000 grant from International Paper to pay for kits and also received guitar cases from Backstage Music in Starkville. Students involved paid $50 to participate.
All the guitars were made out of wood in the Les Paul style — a guitar with a rounded out bottom and a crescent top, featuring two electrical pickups on the body.
The guitars ranged from dark and light reds, sparkled blue, teal, white and tan color schemes to even a classic wooden aesthetic.
Rupp, a musician who frequently plays gigs locally, said he began the annual project in 2020 to utilize the Idea Shop downtown and help area teenagers learn useful skills like building, electrical wiring and even some social skills as they prepare to play a set in front of a crowd.
The Idea Shop was established in 2019 to help young entrepreneurs do product development and possibly start some of their own businesses.
“We’re trying to think of creative ways to use the idea shop,” Rupp said. “Building guitars encompasses everything. There’s some woodworking, soldering and some artistic piece to it too. It seemed to be a good fit. And the response from the students getting to do it was overwhelming.”
Building the guitars
In March, Rupp chose a group of eight high school and homeschool students in the area. He met with them twice at the Idea Shop and then let them schedule times to go in and build their guitars and start preparing for a live set.
During the buildout phase of the project, students unboxed the bodies, necks, knobs, screws and electrical components of the guitar and quickly started scanning over building manuals and electrical setup guides.
First, they attached the neck and body pickups, which take the sound of the strings and transmit them into sound waves. Then, they connected them to sound knobs and dials on the other side of the guitar and soldered them to an electric board inside the body that connects to an auxiliary port, which is plugged into an amplifier to blast sound.
Once that was finished, they connected to the neck, strung up the instrument and added paint, color tones, stripes, pictures, or any other artistic flare to the guitar.
“I loved every second of it,” said Brayden Shields, one of the players. “We got to do the woodworking, and that’s something I love to do. We also got to solder the wires together on the inside. So, it was pretty much from scratch. I enjoyed every aspect of it.”
Playing the gig
At the concert, the guitarists played eight sets of one or two songs such as “Take It Easy” by The Eagles, “Build Me Up Buttercup” by The Foundations and the Marilyn Manson cover of “Sweet Dreams (are made of this),” just to name a few.
“I’m definitely afraid of messing up, but the reality is that doesn’t matter,” Martin Jelinek, 16, said. “I didn’t care about building the guitar as much. I wanted to do the performance. That’s what I was really excited about.”
The buildout and the concert weren’t the only benefits of the project. Throughout the process, players Luca Hoffmann, 17, and Aaron Thompson, 17, said they could use the electrical soldering skills they learned in the future, as they plan on pursuing a career as an electrician after graduating.
“I learned how to put things together like wires, and I plan to be an electrician,” Thompson said. “That was one thing with this that I really enjoyed, being able to see how the wires connect to each other and send the current and the different vibrations through everything.”
Another guitarist at the show, Lucy Jennings, 17, said the project was an experience in independence from her tight-knit family, with whom she spends most of her time, and learning to do something by herself is something she learned to value through the project.
“Since I’m being homeschooled, all the activities I do are with my siblings, so I’d never done something by myself before,” she said. “It was just kind of nerve-wracking because I’m used to having my siblings there and I have those automatic friends. So, you kind of had to make my own friends almost, or at least talk to people.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 33 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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