Aluminum Guitar Build

[Reinhold]

I decided that I'm going to build an aluminium guitar now that we have a new laser cutter at work that would be able to cut out everything I need without taking away too much time from making product. Since I don't own an LP style guitar I'm pretty sure I'm going that direction with this one, but a semi-hollow doublecut would be another option. Didn't have time to do a model of that yet but here's one I did of the LP style while I was taking a Solidworks class this week. Let me know what you think so far and any suggestions you have. The dimensions on the P90's might be a bit off because I'm not sure of how accurate the dimensions on the drawing I found were, they look a little fat to me here. Do they look right to you and does anyone have dimensions on a dogear set that I could use to redo them?

[SwedishLuthier]

The first thing I noticed is that the neck pocket will need to be reworked. The P90s seems to be Fat Cat style pickups (P90 in HB shape),

[zyonsdream]

I hope you don't plan on making it out of solid billet aluminum. The F-holes seem to say that you plan to have a hallow or semi-hallow body with an aluminum top glued on. The adhesives used to glue aluminum are really caustic. If you do plan to use solid aluminum, no one will be able to pick it up and play it. I have a solid acrylic telecaster that weighs 17 lbs.. that's super heavy for a guitar. Can't imagine a solid aluminum guitar.

[Reinhold]

It won't be solid, I'm going to do a semi-hollow out of aluminum and just weld it on my welding robot there or have one of my co-workers do it for me. I know I need to rework the neck joint but since I didn't have a neck to measure I just sketched a pocket to get something there. I'm thinking of making the guitar tree/nature themed so I designed the f-holes to what I thought gave a leafy feel.

[maull]

The f-holes reminded me of holly. That combined with the green makes me think Christmastime.

How much are you expecting the aluminum shell to weigh? I don't have a ton of experience with aluminum but I wouldn't expect it to be too heavy.

[Muzz]

Fantastic, can't wait to see this take shape

[Reinhold]

The aluminum like that would probably make it lighter than a normal les paul. I was originally going to weld blocks of aluminum in there to mount the pickups but now I might just them leave hollow there. I feel like I should still put one under the bridge because I'm unsure of how I would be able to mount the tune-o-matic studs without it.

[YetzerHarah]

Random suggestion, take it or leave it: You could do a reverse bolt on w/ an extended tenon, & bolt the bridge strait into the neck, like on this Travis Bean

(It works if your neck is wood, not just on aluminum neck/body combos)

[Reinhold]

Now that is an interesting idea. Something like that may be better if it can work with what I'm planning. I may have to end up just buying a premade neck (probably warmoth unless someone else can do one for a comparable price) for time's sake since I'm hoping to get this done before summer is over and I don't have access to tools all of the time (I used a friends shop for my first build, still never put pics of that one up, I'll have to do it sometime). If I can get some time in his shop this seems like the most attractive route at this moment and if I can't maybe I can machine a block that a bolt on neck will attach to and the body could attach to that in this fashion. Thanks a lot.

[maull]

Since the main aspect of a bridge is mainly to transfer the vibrations of the strings you could also consider gluing a block of hardwood inside the shell under the bridge point. Just a thought. I am not an expert by any means but I think it would be worth trying. If my thought isnt valid or someone else has seen this tried before I am sure they will pipe up.