Making your own Electric Guitar

After spending lots of time learning to have fun with the electric guitar we believed the urge to start building my very own guitars. We saw a movie known as »It might get loud« where Jack White is nailing a pickup to a plank of timber, hammers nails to hold the strings and jams along. It performedn’t appear too dificult.

Then I invest allmost all my free time to look at movies on youtube in which individuals revealed step by step how to make a guitar from three items of lumber, in just about every feasible information. I was hooked.

Now for my initial electric guitar i did son’t wish spend a lot of income on lumber and tools. I needed to create the best feasible electric guitar i really could make. I had some bits of wood lying around which were used to make a bookshelf. I purchased a cheap neck on ebay and then I bought some bits of MDF.

One saturday I moved by my personal favorite small customized electric guitar check around the corner to inquire of whether or not they had a very cheap telecaster bridge as well as performed. In addition purchased an audio jack, two potentiometers, a capacitor and a bridge pickup that they make by themselves. I paid 90€ for all the parts and I also was all set.

Right back at home we put all of the components I experienced on the ground to observe how every little thing could fit. We sized the scale size to know where in actuality the bridge has to go then I started cutting the piece of wood toward desired length

In the next picture you can observe the way I made the cut. I attached another piece of MDF with a screw clamp as a rail / guide for the jig saw. In this manner you are able to completely straight slices and is recommended in the event that you don’t have much better saw.

Then we already attached the neck into the body of this guitar thus I could make exact measurements the bridge. Its crucial that you have center line on your own electric guitar human body which you yourself can relate solely to everyday. Once the neck is within its last place, figure out the precise center line and place the connection as exactly as you can upon it. From the next picture you can view how I received the roles associated with connection while the pickup in the timber so I could constantly see if one thing does not fit before putting everything together.

Since I have performedn’t have a router as well as the timber the human anatomy ended up beingn’t dense enough anyhow, I made the decision to use a supplementary level of MDF, made of two pieces to carry the connection. in the exact middle of the 2 pieces I left a gap for pickup. We used wood glue and screw clamps for connecting the MDF and that worked well.

After that ended up being done we drilled some holes when it comes to strings while the bridge and attached the connection into body for an initial test with strings.

I didn’t have an electronics area yet and I additionally form of forgot about this that evening so I screwed the potentiometers in addition to sound jack into some cardboard and soldered every thing together. The schematic for 1 pickup, 1 tone and 1 amount control you will find regarding seymour duncan site. They have a lot of awesome wiring diagrams for several types of configurations (always be cautious about the various humbucker cable colors though)

Here you can observe a video clip of the very very first soundcheck:

Now the final missing had been the electronic devices compartment and like we said before I kind of forgot about this. About i must say i didn’t think of how I would do it aided by the resources I experienced accessible. I could’ve done something such as the bride but everything We emerged performedn’t fulfill me. Luckily for us I talked to a pal of my own that time and then he stated he'd a CNC mill/router which we're able to used to result in the compartment right behind the connection. We accepted the offer while the next day We drove to their workshop. I'd to disassemble the connection once more for that but that performedn’t matter.

When I had the 8x8cm storage space I drilled a small hole the pickup cable. I screwed the potentiometers (tone controls) on a slim little bit of MDF and utilized that whilst the cover/control panel for the electronics compartment. Finally we sanded down a number of the sharp edges associated with timber and connected some Dunlop Straplocks.