Getting closer!

Happy new year everybody!

After the winter holidays, I finally upload and document my progresses in the building process of my first handmade guitar!
I left the last post by promising to test it as soon as I received the parts I bought from the internet. The parts arrived on the FIRST day of holiday... what a perfect timing! So I was heading towards a very very interesting new years eve (there are no Xmas holydays in Japan!!).

First addiction: The Bridge.
I decided to mount a tune-o-matic bridge on this guitar, simply because I have never played one! The form is way more elegant than the standard hard tail/strato-like tremolo and way more relaxed than the floating bridges, so I was quite intrigued by thinking that the guitar will be probably wood finished and looking for an aggressive/elegant look.

Second addition: The machine heads
I bought the cheapest machine heads I was able to find (the only constrain being the black color). I am already regretting this decision as the winding ration looks like 1:1.... more on that later.

Third addition: Strings-through-body holes.
I have been fascinated by the "strung through" guitar type... of course every Strat or likes is strung through but you don't actually see the strings! I designed a bird tail shape for the strings and opened 6 holes in the body. The edge of the holes are lined up wit a black metal ring for avoiding damage on the wood.

Fourth addition: The frets.
I had a ready fretboard but I still didn't have the frets installed. I took an hammer and cloth and put the frets in place.

Here is the picture of the guitar in this step:

With just these modifications the guitar was ready to be strung, so I took my Rotosound Pinks (suggested by D_Drive members during a clinic event) and mounted them as you can see in the picture above.
I was so excited to realize that the neck was withstanding the traction without bending or squeaking that I tuned the guitar and made my first play test! This guitar actually IS PLAYABLE!!!! It had a damn high action and some dead frets.. but I was actually capable of extracting some music from her. I was just surprised by the incredibly high action (6/7 mm!!!!). Another problem comes from the pegs.... tuning this guitar is fu_king difficult! I got used to my Schecter guitar pegs (uuupss... I still hav to write about that here!) that tuning with this kind of pegs is impossible... I was a dumb ass....
 
Back to the high action, as I hate high action which results for me in an almost unplayable guitar, I was really concerned about lowering that. The workaround is a trivial one, which also was the reason why I did not think of a set-neck guitar. I just created a plate wood addition to put below the neck to give it a proper angle. I don't know the exact angle but I measured the action using the low E string while tilting the neck. Fastening back the bolts was a breeze and the action problem was fixed in 10 minutes.
The next problem was a major one! Which kind of electric guitar does not have neither controls nor amp line connection??? There is not even one... or it would be an acoustic guitar! So I proceeded to route by hand the control box on the back and to properly wire the components. Here is the result:

I just put one tone knob and one volume plus the 3 way switch for selecting the pickup, no complex splitting or complicated functions I will never use...
Having all the things ready, I engraved the pickup cavities and throw in an old spare pickup I had in my toolbox, that is the one I tore off the ZO-3 when I mounted the Entwistle Hard Drive.
The amp test was one of my happiest moments! Feeling the sound coming out from the guitar you built by yourself is something I cannot explain. You should try!

At this point, the only thing left to do before finishing the neck was the fret dressing. I don't go in the detail as you can find a lot of tutorials on the internet but it was painful I have wounds on the fingers as I was scrubbing the metal frets and constantly missing the grip... painful. I still have to test if the dead frets are gone but it looks like the height is more even, so I proceeded to put a first lacquer on the neck to see how it looked like. This is the result:

I am really close to the completion of my handmade guitar and this makes me really excited! I just miss a very important component: the pickups! I am still undecided on which kind to install but I would like to insert blade humbuckers as they look terrific and aggressive!!! Stay tuned for the (probably) last post on this series I will upload next time!

Rock on!

The work continues

I'm slowly proceeding on my crazy adventure of building my own guitar!
Here is a picture after the addiction of the neck:

You can see the fretboard with its (almost final) treatment with natural shellac and the yet rough body and headstock. Still have to keep digging for the pickups and the control box but the major part of the woodwork is almost finished!!
I am now in the process of waiting for the parts I bought from the internet that are taking a loooong time to come.

Next step: fit all the metal parts (frets included) and take it for a test play, without amplification or intonation or whatever.... just to see if the neck withstands the bowing deriving from the string tension.

Cant wait to see if it actually is a playable guitar or an "on the shelf only" piece of junk!!

Rock on!

The proceedings to the ambitious project

The proceedings to the ambitious project, AKA how to build your own guitar.
As I posted in the last blog entry, I'm devoting my free time to building a DIY guitar, starting from scratch.

I started making the neck, which I believe it is the worst/most difficult part. The process is really easy: first of all you mark your preferred shape on a wood blank and then you cut it. Easy. Easy to say, difficult to do. The first decision you have to take (even before buying the wood) is the shape of the headstock:

- Tilted headstock
It is the most common on "shredding oriented" guitars and it comes from the Gibson les paul design. The tilted headstock allows to remove a couple of string stoppers which should help with sustain (I am not sure).
(My Washburn and Schecter guitars have this design)

- Straight headstock
It is the standard Fender Strat/Tele type of neck. You need the string blockers to avod strings jumping down the nut.
(This is the design of the Fernandes ZO-3)

When you buy a guitar, if you are a believer of the sustain difference issue, the headstock becomes a mere aesthetic affair but when you build you own guitar it takes a different role. The headstock is the most difficult part of the guitar building I encountered until now (I'm pessimist and think I'll find something worst sooner or later). When you plan to build a tilted headstock you need to choose a wood blank think enough to accommodate for the headstock both in its width and in its height. This limits the wood choice either by the price or the availability, so keep this in mind if you want to try your own project.
Of course, as I wasn't preparing myself in advance as usual, I ended up planning for the far more difficult tilted headstock. This simple choice required me to work harder and longer so, keep this too in mind.

The step themselves are easy: once you have the headstock design, the right neck length (hint. use your fretboard!) and the width you just have to:

- Cut the profile of the neck
- Mark the neck thickness for the whole blank length and proceed to cut close to it using the jigsaw.
- Mark your headstock. In the tilted one you need to carve all the excess material for which you can use standard wood carving tools. Keep a lot of wood between the wood and the tool and don't overdo it.
- Start sanding/filing the neck profile until you get a close approximation of the finished one. After this, clamp the fretboard on (no glue, see the pic) and start sanding to make the two pieces fit perfectly.

This is all you need to know to build the guitar neck but it is not yet ready to be mounted on the body for two reasons: no truss rod and no paintwork has been done yet. Of course this depends on the final shape you want to give to the guitar but I convinced myself that painting the neck and only then installing the fretboard could be the best practice.... I'll report.

Rock on!