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Not Enough Space For Bridge


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So I redesigned it starting with the correct scale length. I was assuming that if the scale is 25.5, the 12th is at 12.25 and the 24th is at 18.75, is this right, half and quarter divisions? Also, I had an interesting idea, what if the neck extended past the fretboard, long enough to include the pickups in the neck, and then make the pickups connect with clips like EMGs, so it has the upper fret access of a neck through, but the adjustability of a bolt on? Like a bolt on, but with a really long bolt on piece? The wraparound bridge is cool, but, alas, I have already ordered my parts.

If the scale is 25.5", the 12th would be at 12.75" and the 24th would be at 19.125". I think you left out the .5 and just did a scale length of 25" in your calculations.

As far as I know, those necks are incredibly stable and the transfer from neck to body is great. There's also some supposed tone voodoo with having the pickups attached to the neck. I don't know about that, but it can't hurt. Sounds like a good idea. Pickup placing may be tricky though.

Edit: Oh, and that's impossible for the wraparound to change the tension. Tension = (w^2)(f^2)(m/l), where w is the wavelength, f is the frequency, and m/l is the mass per unit length of the string. Wavelength is determined by the scale length of the guitar, intonation adjustments at the bridge, and fret positions. Frequency is kept constant. And the mass per unit length only depends on the gauge of the string, the construction of the string, and the density of whatever it's made out of.

Edited by Keegan
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The Martin Oakham book "build your own electric guitar" has some pretty good info about designing. I found it at my local big box book store. Takes you through starting with a smaller drawing, then scaling it up.

I usually start my full size drawing with a full size drawing of the neck. That way I can figure out what fret I want the body join at, how many frets it will have, and then come up with the shape of the heel or tenon(be it a bolt on or set neck) Once I have that I can lay out the body. First I'll draw out the tenon or heel, then mark the scale length, then I can work out the body shape.

I was playing with a V design, and man those things have some short tenons. Looks to me like they end up routing the neck pickup pocket into the tenon.

Good luck with your project. Let us know how you make out.

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Well, I'm making a practice guitar out of that cabinet, for free, with only stuff I already have, and with no power tools besides an electric screwdriver. I made one working tuner (and I can make more) from a piece of maple that was lying around and a screw (complicated process, not going to describe it unless someone wants me to.) It's one of those small "traveler" style guitars, with a string through at the "headstock", and the tuners behind the bridge. Not sure how I'm going to do the frets or truss rod... can I use regular metal wire glued in for the frets, considering it's not going to be a great playing guitar anyway? I'm thinking about a way to mount 6 more strings on the back, in little channels, to counteract the string tension, replacing a truss rod. How you cut a U shape out of wood? I can't see how I'd saw the bottom part of the U (keep in mind my only real saw is one of those long triangular ones, I think its called a handsaw.) Don't worry, when I build the real guitar, my dad will be around to help with my lack of knowledge of woodworking :D

Edited by Razortalon
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I made one working tuner (and I can make more) from a piece of maple that was lying around and a screw (complicated process, not going to describe it unless someone wants me to.)

Sure...I want you too!

It sounds like a similar project I did for myself...I decided to try and build a travel guitar at little to no cost including recycling the strings...

lowtechguitar1.jpg

Mostly made of 3mm MDF it sounds like a banjo...lol...it is tuned to A and the frets were measured from the 5th fret of my acoustic....the frets were glued into slots with epoxy but were made of coat hanger wire...because of the short length and hardwood the neck does not require a truss rod...inside there is a block of wood to the tail tuners that takes the strain of the strings but allows the top to move.

Kind of prototype concept of course, but it was fun to build and instructional...only took a couple of hours too and no cost...the strings are cut down old ones strung backwards of course. The tuners are simply allan key bolts screwed into the wood with a hole in the side...you need an wrench to tune it (fits into a hole in the back of the body).

Not a great or very practical instrument...good for sticking under the seat of the car to practice a little, but that's about it. It's about the size of a mandolin and sounds accordingly...

...

I was influenced by the philosophy behind the later bar rashi design...

gittler.jpg

This uses fishing line for both the strings and frets and wing nuts for tuners. The earlier Gittler hi tech thing is better known, it is also built on the philosophy of essentials...no neck or fertboard...the originals didn't enve have the body of this commercial version!

...

The other ideas are interesting...but I really think you will need to get a bit more of an understanding of the mechanics and design before getting too far ahead of yourself...it takes more than an electric screwdriver too, to be realistic...

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How did you get holes in the side of the allan bolt? Anyway, i cut an egg shape out of this small piece of hardwood i have, i think it's maple. I drill a hole for a screw in the large part of the egg, and cross the thin part, i drill a hole perpendicular to the screw (parallel to the body of the guitar). Screw it into the body of the guitar, and when its screwed almost all the way in, stick a string through the hole, and tune by turning the egg piece by hand. When done tuning, screw the screw in as far as you can, and it's locked in tune. Not very precise though. Could you explain your allan bolt method a bit more? it seems easier, but I don't really see what you're saying. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to need too many tools. It looks ugly, but the only tough part about shaping it will be the neck, which I think is done by hand anyway. Obviously no pickups until I get a router though.

EDIT: How can I change the thread title? It's not really pertinent anymore, and I can't find where you change it.

Edited by Razortalon
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You can't change the thread title...a moderator probably could though...

lowtechguitar2.jpg

above is a better pic...you can see where the allan wrench is kept in the back and the tuners a little better. You can not turn them without the wrench. Basically, the bolt is put into a vice and a 2mm or so hole is drilled into the side as in a guitar tuner...thread the string through the hold and turn...the string is tightened around the bolt and in it being pulled closer to the top. The bolt holes are into a hardwood block inside and the holes are slightly smaller, the bolts make their own thread into the wood...so there is no nuts or anything in there, so they are pretty tight. The wrench gives plenty of leverage to turn the bolts.

The thing is practical to play, the shape is not for looks but ergonomics and structural reasons...the offset sound hole because of the wood between the neck and the back end (although the top floats above it) taking all the string pull for instance***. The back cutaway sits on the leg to stop it sliding off and holding it a little more upright...as in a mandolin. The shape also allows upper fret access but was also designed as the rims were easier to construct in these three parts...I think the finish may have been black shoe polish...I remember taking the concept as far as I could (but I do confess, I did by the six bolts for the tuners especially...so it was not literally free I guess!)

MDF is not a good thing to use to build...well anything really...but it sure bends easy around a mold when wet! For this exercise, it is a good and as it happened free material. The strings are from my acoustic, the frets are coathanger wire glued on, the timber of the neck is jarrah and obviously screwed from the top. The nut is a bit of 3mm round brass as is the bridge (tell a lie...looking now that is coat hanger wire too!) and the ball ends go through the top part of the neck. The neck was laminated from two left over jarrah floor board pieces I had lying around...no truss rod or anything.

The coathanger frets though are not the best idea and quite hard to get to stay on there...you still need to have a bit of a grove but oxidizing of the metal can be hard to epoxy and the heat from fining them will soften it so they can pop right off. Also, little to know fretboard curvature either.

But...it was a bit of an intellectual exercises...I called it a lo-tech guitar...basically going back to essentials and avoiding costs and any typical guitar hardware and stuff. Perhaps it is a high tech cigar box guitar!

One of the problems with the idea of an electric travel guitar is that you need to carry an amp...which kind of defeats the purpose a little. I had this fantasy of using it (and i did have it hidden in the car for a long time) to practice scales and picking...it isn't loud nor does it sound "good" but it does play in tune and is makes enough sound for this kind of practice.

I am thinking of making a travel guitar again, I took my acoustic away camping but it took up a bit of space and didn't really play it that much. Next time though, I would use better stuff, probably real tuners and a full length neck...most likely not coathangers for frets or anything...and be expecting a much better sound from it.

...

In an earlier post, you mentioned no wanting to use a bolt on neck...I wouldn't feel that way about it. You need to be a little practical...can you make better with the tools and lack of experience that you have...better probably to get a cheap guitar (neck and all parts...btw I got too many I am trying to get rid of for this very purpose) at least to start with and learn a lot about the design considerations and ergonomics.

pete

***heehe...I just looked inside the thing...in fact the block inside is clevererererer...hehehe Actually it is a bit of pine where the neck screws on and glued to the top...and proablebly the same at the tuner ends about 3/4" thick...then there is a strip of 3mm ply between these two blocks to allow for the top to vibrate and provide an internal mini sound board as well the plywood...the whole structure adequately taking the strain of the strings while still remaining light...i think there maybe some influence of djangos guitars inner sound box going on in my thinking there!

Edited by psw
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one last thing, how did you get the holes through the allen screws? A drill press? I'm thinking of just getting real tuners, because so far it's going quite well, and it'll be next to useless if I can't get it to tune properly. Also, what glue did you use for the frets? White glue doesn't seem strong enough.

Edited by Razortalon
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hmmm...WARNING long psw post forthcoming I suspect...

....

well...remember this thing was experimental and based on a philosophy of what can be done...very much like a cigar box guitar...

coat hanger wire will make for very bad frets!!!

No...white glue is not going to cut it. Most wire will oxidize, a thin layer of corrosion that looks kind of gray. This will need to be sanded off and the wire immediately glued in place into slots at the correct distances. Any delay at all and oxidization will begin...the strongest glue will then only stick to this thin corrosive layer...some will not be held in adequately. As mentioned earlier...even with epoxy....the filing of the "frets" will cause heat and this will soften up the epoxy and they will come off for sure...it is not easy...fretting with conventional frets is a lot easier and a better result.

For the bolt tuners...I suspect that I didn't have a drill press at that time...but I did have a propper electric drill, sharp drill bits and a reasonable vice. I may also have got a block of wood and drilled a hole for the bolt to thread through, held that in place and then drilled through the wood and the screw so it wouldn't move around or the bit slide off it...if I didn't, that's what I would do!

Don't think that you will get a "good" guitar out of these kind of experiments...they are just that. It is possible to make a funky kind of thing, but the neck and fretting is the heart of the guitar really...at least from the playability angle and coathanger wire is not the kind of thing you want at all.

Also...design and expectations are crucial. It only took an couple of hours to build...but a fair bit of thought went into it...it worked as a proof of concept, but little else really.

If looking to make a decent playable guitar...using a neck and tuners and such is a far easier way to approach things. There are reasons why guitars tend to look as they do generally, they work. Same with materials, it would have been far easier and better had I used fret wire believe me...coat hangers are free...but epoxy and hassle and reinventing the wheel is not and the results are not great and never will be. For instance, it is virtually impossible to put any kind of radius on the board and the frets definitely wont be even...every correction risks a fret or two popping off!

On the other hand...I did enjoy making it, it cost nothing and I was able to try out a lot of different ideas (like the internal bracing second soundboard thing...which I had completely forgot about)...so for me, it was an expression of lateral thinking as much as a guitar.

Perhaps, do a search on some of the cigar box ideas about the place. There have been a range on interesting and innovative instruments, some travel guitar style...

But...there are no short cuts in guitar building...much of it is by necessity requiring extreme accuracy and some skill and specialized tools generally. Particularly with the neck and fretting...and it is very hard to justify the tools and equipment required to make a few necks to get it right over buying one for less than materials to begin with. Even a solid body will require things like a router really...and this can be a tricky and dangerous tool to master.

The best way, in my opinion to start, would be to get a cheap guitar...even if only for the parts...typically a strat and go to work on that to build up skills and understanding. Generally you can get at least all the parts cheaper than buying them individually. You can practice with wiring, with finishing, changing the body shape, hollowing it out and particularly setting it up...understanding what the truss rod is for, why the bridge is adjustable, why a guitar might not stay in tune as well as you might like and fixing it!

An example is a guitar that I know I keep bringing up...but it is still a great example of this kind of thing...some people even like it!...

StratTop.jpg

This is the sustainer strat. I got it for $50 from a pawn shop and hid it from my wife for a year or so...it was pretty much unplayable and I probably paid too much for it! Still...I replaced the bridge with a pretty cheap one and the tuners as well. I sanded the crappy finish off it, hollowed it out all over the place, used it as a test rig for a whole lot of different wiring ideas...then I decided to use it to test out the DIY sustainer...so I routed even more out of it to fit a battery and still more stuff in there. It even had a piezo in there for a bit, I think some kind of preamp thing at one stage. I did a lot of things with the set up to get it to play decently...I used washes to make a staggered tuner kind of thing and add mass to the headstock. Basically, it was a test bed for any crazy idea I had for about three years...it's now retired and hanging by my front door. I have though, replaced it with another test guitar so I am not tempted to try this stuff on any real instruments!

The result is that I learned a lot...many of the ideas turned up in my latest guitar...the telecaster linked in blue below. Here again though, I have used a decent squire guitar and went to town on it with very high end hardware...probably overkill for a low end instrument...but it plays really well and is unique for a tele.

Now building a guitar is a great thing...and many jump right into it...but there is a lot that needs to be learned before you can really even go about designing something...test guitars like this are an ideal introduction and test a lot of these things out. As much as I got some good ideas from the old strat...I learned that some ideas were really quite bad and to be avoided...these lessons are even more valuable. But, there were ideas in that guitar that I still haven't used yet...one of the things about it is that it is incredibly light, and that's not such a bad thing...hehehe

...

However...if you do want to try out some ideas and use coathangers for frets...as long as your expectations are realistic...who am I to put it down, after all, I think I may be the only one around here to even try such a crazy idea...so I am happy to lend support and suggestions and encouragement if that is where you want to go. But, do a little planing and show us some design ideas.

best of luck...

pete

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Well, most of the design is done, so I'll give you more pictures than are really necessary instead :D

I decided I'm probably going to go with real fretwire and real tuners, (because I have no drill to put a hole in a screw with), because I'm now kind of attached to this guitar, and I like the way it feels to hold, so I want it to play reasonably nicely. The neck isn't done being shaped yet, but it feels nice, and it seems incredibly strong. Are fretboards always raised above the body of the guitar? If so, I'll have to use shims to raise the entire neck out of the pocket.

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EDIT: Read picture posting rules, removed some to comply

Edited by Razortalon
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