Hey, Welcome to my 1st ever tutorial (yay)... So bear with me if it's not exactly clear, and of course understand i'm an amateur too, just trying to help out the community that helped me out. Also, I won't be giving out numbers and stuff, cause its just a general tutorial on how to model basically any guitar, it's probably better this way for you. I'm sorry if I am not specific enough on certain parts, remember this is a pretty general tutorial... however if you would like clarifications on any aspect of it... just give me a shout.

	Of course you must realize that their is always more than 1 way to model an object, and this might not be the best for you, or for anyone even :) This is just one way I would go about modelling.. a guitar. Ok first off, it's useful to have a picture to base yourself on, I'm gonna be doing a Gibson Lespaul with a heritage cherry sunburst finish, so i got my picture and I'm set to go. In lightwave, make this picture as your backdrop on the face view. This will be a great guide for your work, without it everything would be guesses and it would be far from exact. (fig1)
	Now, we're gonna start with the guitar's body... Start off by laying points (shift +) around the shape of the body.. once your done press ctrl + p to make a spline, (fig2). You can then move/add/remove the points until you are satisfied with how they are place, then press ctrl+d to freeze that spline. name that surface "Guitar Body - Front" or whatever you like, so you understand. Pick a color and set some specularity, not quite that important now... we will fix up surface later on in layout.
	Now extrude it on the Z-axis.. whatever distance you see fit, depending on the guitar your modeling. Select the polygons on the x axis, and name that surface to "Guitar body - side" or whatever you like once again. Select the back poly, and name it "Guitar Body - Back". That should be good for that (fig 3), if theres bump detail on your guitar a nice little bump map will always do the trick, it can also be done by modelling but with my guitar its a pretty simple shape so I'll leave it at that. A little bevel on the front and back surfaces can look neat too :P (fig3)
	Now, enough on the body for now, we'll get back to that later. Let's move on the neck of the guitar, to model this what we'll do is on a new layer, create an elongated elliptical disc.. (uh whatever) on the x axis, and then on another layer, create a box that covers the front portion of it, and with the disc layer selected and the box layer in the background, perform a boolean substract (shift b). I then performed a taper along the y axis because it is not a perfect rectangle. (Fig 4)
	Name your disc surface "Neck - Back", and your box surface "Neck - Front", that way when it substracts it will keep its surface as Front. For the frets, I just made a disc which I cut in half along the neck - front, and adjusted some points (with knife tool and drag tool) and copied it while placing it along the neck where they belong. Finally I performe the same taper as the neck, so the size adjusted with the neck. (Fig 4-2)
	There, now you can ajust that booleaned disc so it fits how you would like it too. Next we will move on to the head of the guitar, you could do this two ways depending on the shape. I chose to use the same technique as I did on the body, which is make a spline, freeze it (ctrl+d), and extrude it. Always naming my surfaces accordingly. Make sure that it fits nicely into the neck of the guitar and there you go. for the little thingies on the head, I made a spline and lathed it, made a disc on another layer and substracted it from the lathed object. For the knobs and such, it's just a matter of simple boxes and even nurbs if you like. (fig5)
	Enough of that, now for the details on the body. For the pickups.. I just made a box, metaform (shift+d) a couple of times, depending on how sharp i want the corners, and put on metanurbs (tab). I then selected the inside polygons and place sized them up. Once I was satisfied with that I smooth shifted them (shift + f) and pushed them back in the z axis. I then renamed it to "Chrome parts" because its a nice and shiny pickup and smooth shifted again and this time moved it the other way in the z axis. For the screws, its just a flattened ball with a rectangle booleaned out of them. (fig 6)
	Now for the pick guard, I again went with the spline / freeze / extrude technique. After I layed out the points, ctrl+p to make the spline, adjust the points, ctrl+d to freeze, ctrl+e to extrude on z axis, then I just moved it around, rotated it, moved some poly's until it fit nicely into my guitar. The volume and tone knobs really are quite simple, they are just a cone with a disc over it, the base of the cone sticking out of course. That's about it for that part, the other details are quite simple, just simple geometry, smooth shift a lot, and sometimes nurbs. Finding your own way through these simpler things will help you learn alot I feel, because thats how I did it. (fig 7) Tip : After smooth shifting, if you want the top polygon to not be smoothed out, cut it then paste it back and you're safe.
	For the strings, I could of just made a disc and stretched it, knifed it, moved some polys etc. But the other way was to make a spline.. following the path of the string, and then on another layer make a 2d disc about the size of the string. Now with the disc layer selected and the spline in the background layer, press ctrl+r and perform a rail extrude... default settings are good but make SURE your disc is at the START of your spline or else everything will screw up, the same rotation helps too =) Now repeat this process for the rest of your strings. (fig 8)
	Thats about it for the modelling part, yay! You probably still have some extra details to add.. depending on the guitar your modelling. Remember to take your time on details, cause if their not right they will be spotted by the audience :D Anyways, once its all done, and all your surfaces are assigned, you can freeze what you got and export to layout. You might have to reduce poly's before exporting depending on how much freezing (on nurbs) you actually did :D Here's a pic of my model untextured... (fig 9)
	Now there is the surfacing part, which really deserves a tutorial on it's own. However, I will give you a start, here is how you would go about texturing .. lets say the body. In modeler, the face view, stretch out that window and select the layer with the body. Now zoom in until it takes up the window and press "print screen"... In photoshop.. or whatever program your using to make textures.. paste this into and crop the outer borders of your shape. This way you know exactly where to texture and where it will be when its rendered in 3d. When you surface in layout, apply this texture and make sure you click on automatic sizing and that it is on the right plane (x,y,z). That should start you off texturing, it's the same thing for basically every other surface to be textured. (fig 10)