Project Information
After speaking with a fellow Lumberjock and good friend about building an electric Guitar I decided to post the progress of how to build one here.
Since this is not a "Full-time" gig at the moment I am not doing this full time but I can get you through this as I build one (or 4 as the case may be).
In the first part of the building process you need to determine what kind of Giutar you want to build. The things to consider is Bass vs. 6-string. And then you need to decide whether you want a bolt on neck, a "set-neck" (which I havent done yet, but have a few Luthier friends that can help or a "Neck-Through" where the neck runs the entire length of the guitar.
In these first photos I have a Bass Neck with truss rod and fretboard already put in/on (truss rod has been put "in" the dado slot in the neck and the fretboard has been glued on).
One more thing you need to consider is what "style" of fretboard to use. There are several, what I call styles, ranging from 3 different Gibson fret layouts, a Fender layout and a Paul Reed Smith layout. All these are common on these different makes of guitars and the fret layout template can be purchased from Stewart=MacDonald ( from here on referred to as "Stew-Mac".
The fretboard that im using on the Bass is a 34" scale bass layout.
To get started on this design I used a 3" x 3" piece of laminated Maple/Purple Heart/Brazilian Cherry neck and it should be 40" long (just to be safe).
There is no room for anything short of perfect as harmonics are very important. Everything must be square, strait and perpendicular.
After The neck is laminated, I cut a 12 degree rake 7" from the head of the guitar.
By placing a piece of self adhesive 60 grit sandpaper on a perfectly flat object and making sure that there are three lines (approximately 1 16th" apart from where the rake in the neck starts I turn the neck top-down and make sure that the head piece is perfectly strait, square and perpendicular.
this is all for now, you can e-mail me at obiwan_themonk@yahoo.com if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to answer them. Or bounce there from here
I'll try to get some more pictures as soon as I find someone who can operate a camera.
Since this is not a "Full-time" gig at the moment I am not doing this full time but I can get you through this as I build one (or 4 as the case may be).
In the first part of the building process you need to determine what kind of Giutar you want to build. The things to consider is Bass vs. 6-string. And then you need to decide whether you want a bolt on neck, a "set-neck" (which I havent done yet, but have a few Luthier friends that can help or a "Neck-Through" where the neck runs the entire length of the guitar.
In these first photos I have a Bass Neck with truss rod and fretboard already put in/on (truss rod has been put "in" the dado slot in the neck and the fretboard has been glued on).
One more thing you need to consider is what "style" of fretboard to use. There are several, what I call styles, ranging from 3 different Gibson fret layouts, a Fender layout and a Paul Reed Smith layout. All these are common on these different makes of guitars and the fret layout template can be purchased from Stewart=MacDonald ( from here on referred to as "Stew-Mac".
The fretboard that im using on the Bass is a 34" scale bass layout.
To get started on this design I used a 3" x 3" piece of laminated Maple/Purple Heart/Brazilian Cherry neck and it should be 40" long (just to be safe).
There is no room for anything short of perfect as harmonics are very important. Everything must be square, strait and perpendicular.
After The neck is laminated, I cut a 12 degree rake 7" from the head of the guitar.
By placing a piece of self adhesive 60 grit sandpaper on a perfectly flat object and making sure that there are three lines (approximately 1 16th" apart from where the rake in the neck starts I turn the neck top-down and make sure that the head piece is perfectly strait, square and perpendicular.
this is all for now, you can e-mail me at obiwan_themonk@yahoo.com if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to answer them. Or bounce there from here
I'll try to get some more pictures as soon as I find someone who can operate a camera.