Shakia plays her cartoon tiger guitar through her headphone amplifier. The amp is so small, it's hard to see in the picture.

Nick soldering up a headphone amplifier.

Seon's guitar, with the names and symbols of electronic components... in preparation for building amplifiers.

Top to bottom: Nadeesha's polka dot guitar she's making for her sister. Anisha's New York guitar, Taylor's boot guitar, Jose's red guitar-- we take the strings off so we can cut the slots for the frets. Once the strings are back on, it's done! The last picture is of Francisco's rocketship flying v and Natalie's colorful figure 8 guitar.

Top to bottom: Tyrone, Vishal, Nick, Hector and Rashid of F.K.Lane HS show off their guitars. We had an unusually high number of leftys this year.

Anisha with her New York flower guitar. Anisha spent a lot of time painting her guitar, and it shows! In case you're wondering, yes, the schools do have heat in the buildings. The kids just like wearing their coats inside. I have no idea why.

Shante's Teddy bear rock! guitar, and Tameeka's pink skull guitar. The output jack to plug in the skull guitar is in an eye socket!

Ayonde calculates where his frets will go, using a chromatic tuner. This year, we used real fret wire instead of umbrella spokes, and the frets were set to seven-tone equal temperament, a scale that is used in parts of Africa and Indonesia.

Rashid paints his guitar. Photos by Seniz Lennes.

Staining the guitar necks: top: Seon and Hector; middle: Natalie. bottom: Rashid and Seon; Photos by Seniz Lennes.

Natalie paints her guitar. Photos by Seniz Lennes.

Tameeka paints her skull guitar, while Anisha works on her flower guitar.

Shakia paints her guitar body, designed after a familiar cartoon character.

Shante designs her guitar body.

Shakia helps Nadeesha paint her guitar. This was one of several designs Nadeesha's guitar went through...

Nadeesha gets ready to saw her guitar body.

Nick saws out his guitar body.

Taylor paints her boot guitar.

Francisco saws his guitar neck.

Crystal paints her guitar.

Ayonde cuts out his guitar body with a jigsaw.

Taylor drills holes in the headstock of her guitar neck, with some help from Anisha.

The kids have been working hard, making their guitars, and some of them are finished and are making amplifiers now. To the left is a picture of Anisha drawing designs to paint on the guitar body she designed then cut out with a jig saw. The pictures are not in chronological order.