Thread: Contemplating my first guitar build

Welcome Bren.

Good to see another enthusiast join the forums. Everyone here is great and very helpful.

That is an ambitious first build but I know you'll get there.

Take a look at some of the great work here - AndrewB, Floody, Walcen, Seb, r3r and many many more various leveled and multi skilled builders. Youll learn heaps from these guys.

Good luck - Now get back to work!

Cheers
Manny

Cheers Manny

I've learned a lot already just trawling the site. I'm looking forward to learning more, for I have a lot to learn!

Off to Bunnings this weekend if time permits to get some "practice" wood and some extra tools to make life a bit easier. I'll have a crack at the body and the electronics for starters, and just steal the neck from an old Yamaha I have lying around that I've been using for parts just to walk myself through the process.

There's a council cleanup on around my place at the moment. I'm half tempted to cruise the streets for any decent wood that might be getting discarded... but I'm not really sure what's good and what's bad yet - LOL

Originally Posted by bdecelis

Cheers Manny

I've learned a lot already just trawling the site. I'm looking forward to learning more, for I have a lot to learn!

Off to Bunnings this weekend if time permits to get some "practice" wood and some extra tools to make life a bit easier. I'll have a crack at the body and the electronics for starters, and just steal the neck from an old Yamaha I have lying around that I've been using for parts just to walk myself through the process.

There's a council cleanup on around my place at the moment. I'm half tempted to cruise the streets for any decent wood that might be getting discarded... but I'm not really sure what's good and what's bad yet - LOL

Practice on your neck pockets dude. Thats a make or break area.

A few details to consider
-Your drawing shows the neck at constant width. I presume you have just done this as a convenience for now.
This needs to be refined to final nut width so that string paths at the heastock are correct and also so that any laminations in the neck are not interupted by the neck taper..
-The pickup selector position will be difficult to acheive with a one piece body as you show. Take acount of how you are going to get your wiring between the various cavities.
-The fretboard inlays will be difficult, not saying dont do it but be prepared for a trial run. It would be easier on an ebony board where filling around the inlays is easier to hide.

Good advice there from Jeff.

Bren, take your typical Fender 25.5 inch scale or Gibson 24.75 inch scale nut widths around 43mm is pretty standard with the 21 or 22 fret mark around 56mm or so. There are some good Fret and Nut spacing calculators on the web also.

Also buy fret wire uncut and bend it and cut it yourself. I made the mistake of buying "Fender" pre-cut frets for my first one and they didnt turn out that great. Stewmac in the states and Australian Luthier Supplies as well as other sources sell them in 2 foot lengths or rolls. A typical Electric guitar will need about 6 feet of fret wire allowing for some errors here and there.

There are some cool plans for fret bending jigs on the interweb as well.

Cheers

Manny

Thanks fellas. I'll definitely be getting some practice wood and trialling my techniques. I have a lot of reading to do!!!

Hi bdecelis, pretty nice design,,,, pointy, but nice
I was just thinking if your into designing and want to get a more realistic look over a design, you might like to try Blender.
Its a FREE (open source) modeling program that is in some respects, fairly easy to get your head around.



Just download it, install and your good to go. Plus theres heaps of plugins and tutorials online.
It also does *.eps, which means you can desin your stuff and have it CNC cut directly from those designs.

Ive found it MUCH easier to model in Blender than Studio Max, but Studio Max is much easier to do texturing and animation in.
I make my models in Blender, save them as an *.obj, *.dxf or *.eps, then import them into Studio Max if I want to animate.

Anyway, its free and it seems like you dig playing around with designs, so I thought I should let you know about it

Originally Posted by AussieOzBorn

Hi bdecelis, pretty nice design,,,, pointy, but nice
I was just thinking if your into designing and want to get a more realistic look over a design, you might like to try Blender.
Its a FREE (open source) modeling program that is in some respects, fairly easy to get your head around.



Just download it, install and your good to go. Plus theres heaps of plugins and tutorials online.
It also does *.eps, which means you can desin your stuff and have it CNC cut directly from those designs.

Ive found it MUCH easier to model in Blender than Studio Max, but Studio Max is much easier to do texturing and animation in.
I make my models in Blender, save them as an *.obj, *.dxf or *.eps, then import them into Studio Max if I want to animate.

Anyway, its free and it seems like you dig playing around with designs, so I thought I should let you know about it

And it'll work with Linux Thanks Oz, I'll add that to my list of cad progs.

regards

Wal

Thanks for the tip with Blender Aussie. I'll have a play with it. I've tried using 3D designers before and found that I am pretty hopeless with it. I'll have another go with Blender. So far, not so good. But just like playing guitar, I'm sure practice makes all the difference.

Thanks to all of the beautifully documented builds on this site and some good advice pointing me to some reading materials and excellent web resources, I've done a lot of homework and have a much better idea about the guitar building process now than when I joined a week ago. I've decided to go for something a little simpler for my first build.

Here's a 2D mockup of the new design:



The dice inlays are available on eBay. The big white section underneath the pickup selector switch is going to be an N-Tune tuner. I'm going to have single master volume and single master tone pots. I'll modify an existing Les Paul P90 pickguard to make it look like it does in the pic. The body will be one piece. I'm going to try to finish it in coloured lacquers so the wood patterns show through. The bulky part of the headstock will probably be glued on. I'll make it out of some lighter wood and biscuit join it to the rest of the head, then spray the design on (no, it's not my design on the headstock/yep, it's the famous Santa Cruz screaming hand).

I'll upload the 3D Blender version when it's done (might be a while, as previously stated, I have no idea how to use it yet..)

Manny was kind enough to give me his StewMac catalogue so I'll be compiling a list of what I have and what I'll need to order over the next few weeks and will start playing around with some ideas. I'll be getting a router first and practicing some neck joints with some cheap wood. I was thinking about just using my Dremel with some jigs, but I'm an impatient bugger. This might be handy for some of the smaller work on the fretboard etc though.

Jeffhigh - note the change in neck diameter this time around. Thanks for the tip I've been playing for 15 years and I never noticed that the fretboard got wider from the nut to the body until you pointed it out. I look at my axes in a new light now. It would have been an epic fail on my part if I had've build the neck all one width

Cheers everyone, you are awesome

Brendo