Custom Guitar Build - First time build

[Armaan]

Hi - I play the guitar as a hobby and setting out to build my first electric guitar. I am a corporate lawyer and have no woodworking or mechanical skills.  The only experience I have is building a kit guitar and painted it. 

This will be a challenging project and a lot of things will go wrong . It will probably get a expensive too, but I'm willing to tough it out and learn on the go. 

Here are a couple of initial drawings I made - they are rough and are based on approximate measurements. I will be refining it as I finalize the design and look up guitar plans for reference. I plan to make it a 6-string, twin humbucker style with neck-through construction.  

I am a complete novice at guitar building and any guidance would be very helpful.

Cheers!

[Armaan]

I changed the designs - here is a revised drawing.

 The body shape is based on a guitar build that I saw from crimson guitars which I found really interesting - the link to the youtube video for that build is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oq2DZ_pqGs

 

[Bizman62]

Welcome to the addiction!

You've got a good start, full size drawing can be really helpful in finding any weak spots. That said, your plan is a neck-thru, isn't it? Otherwise there would not be too much support for the neck...

I also see that you're not going for the fanned frets which is good for a first build. Facets on the body are nice, they aren't too difficult to make and they sure add character to the looks. And they can improve the ergonomics as well.

 

[Armaan]

I revised the drawings again - this time I used autocad. Took me a while to learn, but I seem to have got the hang of it to make at least a basic 2D drawing. 

I made a couple of different designs, with minor differences. A key point was to figure out if I should I was also deciding whether the guitar I the wings should be lighter with dark thin stripes in the neck through, or vice versa. My initial preference was the former, but once I saw pieces of walnut that were available I decided to go with walnut wings with thin maple stripes. I will post the pictures of the woods I selected separately.

I printed the model I liked the most to scale, placed it on two of my guitars (epiphone les paul standard plustop pro + Harley Benton strat kit guitar) to visualize the size of the guitar. I felt that it was a bit short and made the body and the headstock a little longer. The guitar would be approx. 39.5 - 40inch, depending on the headstock angle (I'm thinking of a 15 degree angle, using a scarf joint). 

The one I decided to go with is the one in the separate image.

Any suggestions on the shape or design?

[Armaan]

7 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Welcome to the addiction!

You've got a good start, full size drawing can be really helpful in finding any weak spots. That said, your plan is a neck-thru, isn't it? Otherwise there would not be too much support for the neck...

I also see that you're not going for the fanned frets which is good for a first build. Facets on the body are nice, they aren't too difficult to make and they sure add character to the looks. And they can improve the ergonomics as well.

 

It really is addictive! I've just shared some images of my full sized drawings. I used images of EMG H3/H4 pickups and a Schaller 3D-6 bridge that I'm considering buying to try and make the guitar look realistic. I'm sourcing an ebony fretboard from a local exporter so I used an image of an ebony fretboard as well. I thought ebony would make sense and add some contrast, considering the guitar is predominantly walnut.

Yes, it is a neck-through using five strips of maple and walnut - I thought this would be strong enough but let me know if you think otherwise? I was thinking about carbon fiber rods initially, but I thought I could get away with it with a laminated neck?

I really like the carves from a design perspective. I tried to ensure that the carves will work as an arm rest and a belly cut. Though the way I have designed the guitar, I don't think I will get perfectly rounded edges. 

[Bizman62]

11 minutes ago, Armaan said:

Any suggestions on the shape or design?

Not from me. As long as you like it all is good. The shape of the body is only about looks and ergonomics so you're free to build it to whatever shape you like. The bigger the heavier etc, then again a too skinny one can be difficult to hold especially on your knee. Much the same with the headstock. Straight string pull can help tuning and that's what you've already planned there.

[Bizman62]

4 minutes ago, Armaan said:

I thought this would be strong enough but let me know if you think otherwise? I was thinking about carbon fiber rods initially, but I thought I could get away with it with a laminated neck?

A five piece laminate is plenty strong for a six string guitar. I've made a few laminated neck-thru guitars - from three wide pieces to 9 piece ones with 0.55 mm veneers between thicker ones. The glue acts as a stiffener as it doesn't flex up and down. A truss rod for fine tuning the release is recommended, I guess you've already planned to use one.

[Armaan]

 

6 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Not from me. As long as you like it all is good. The shape of the body is only about looks and ergonomics so you're free to build it to whatever shape you like. The bigger the heavier etc, then again a too skinny one can be difficult to hold especially on your knee. Much the same with the headstock. Straight string pull can help tuning and that's what you've already planned there.

I'm currently thinking of a 1.75inch wide body, which I think is not too thin and not as thick as my les paul. I would have thought about making it a little thinner, but I want to be on the safe side and have extra room for the electronics and pickup cavities. 

 

1 minute ago, Bizman62 said:

A five piece laminate is plenty strong for a six string guitar. I've made a few laminated neck-thru guitars - from three wide pieces to 9 piece ones with 0.55 mm veneers between thicker ones. The glue acts as a stiffener as it doesn't flex up and down. A truss rod for fine tuning the release is recommended, I guess you've already planned to use one.

Yes, I will be using a truss rod. 

[Armaan]

Wood for the Project: Walnut and Maple

I spent 3 weeks calling various lumber suppliers in Mumbai and other parts of India. It was really difficult to find someone who would supply me the quantities that I needed without spending a huge amount of money. After a lot of searching, I was able to find an exporter who had Ash, Wenge, Maple, Walnut, Sapele, Jackwood and some local woods. I picked Walnut for its colour and figuring and maple for contrast and its strength for the neck.

- For the neck, I got 2 long pieces of walnut and 3 long pieces of maple.

- For the body, I got 4 pieces of walnut (2 left wings and 2 right wings - i.e. top and bottom) and two pieces of maple (1 left wing and 1 right wing - middle layer between the walnut). 

Here are images of the wood. Some of the maple pieces had knots in the middle, so I will be getting these replaced.

[Armaan]

I was able to find a really nice piece of ebony for the fretboard. It is already pre-tapered, but has enough margins for me to reduce it to the right size.

Fretboard specs:

-        25.5” scale with 22 frets

-        18.344” fretboard length

-        1.693” fretboard width at nut

-        2.203” fretboard width at 22^nd fret

I pasted an autocad template to the fretboard and taped it in place using masking tape. I placed the template such that the light figuring in the ebony would be approximately in the middle of the fretboard after I cut it to shape.

I will plane it, cut it to shape and then work on the frets. I plan to sand it to a 12” radius, but after I paste it on the neck.

I bought a Zona Saw from amazon with a 0.02” kerf to use to cut the frets - Zona 35-380 Thick Dovetail Saw, 18 TPI, 020-Inch Kerf, Blade Length 8-Inch, Cut Depth 1-3/4-Inch

Here are the work-in-progress images.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Armaan

[Crusader]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

At first I thought "why change the body shape?" but I quickly changed my mind. You are organised with your plans which is a very good thing, unlike myself, I just chuck myself in the deep end. However when you start actually using machines on the wood is when things might not go to plan! Practice using tools on scrap wood so you learn the nature of the beasts, especially routers

I like the more Walnut less Maple concepts by the way and the neck-through design allows great access to upper frets. Great ideas all round so hope it goes well for you!

[ScottR]

Welcome!

Looks like you are off to a great start. Take your time and ask questions as they come up, and as Crusader says--practice on scrap!

SR

[Armaan]

2 hours ago, Crusader said:

Hi, welcome to the forum!

At first I thought "why change the body shape?" but I quickly changed my mind. You are organised with your plans which is a very good thing, unlike myself, I just chuck myself in the deep end. However when you start actually using machines on the wood is when things might not go to plan! Practice using tools on scrap wood so you learn the nature of the beasts, especially routers

I like the more Walnut less Maple concepts by the way and the neck-through design allows great access to upper frets. Great ideas all round so hope it goes well for you!

I seem to have a bit of OCD when it comes to drawings. Just realized I forgot to post 4 other versions of the design that I had made before arriving at the latest one. Frankly, I really enjoy the process of tweaking the designs. My wife, however, insists that my last five drawings look the same 

Machine work will be uniquely challenging for me, as I don't have experience and I have limited access to machines and tools. Will definitely do practice runs before working on the project. I'm doing a wood-working workshop to learn the basics.

Will definitely be asking a lot of questions along the way. Thank god for forums like these!

[Armaan]

2 hours ago, ScottR said:

Welcome!

Looks like you are off to a great start. Take your time and ask questions as they come up, and as Crusader says--practice on scrap!

SR

Thanks! I've got a question already! 

I am using a Schaller 3D-6 bridge - which is described as having "minimal G/d string height above body 11,1mm," I've attached a PDF with the technical specs for the bridge and a link to the specs on the Schaller website is here - https://schaller.info/en/bridges/336/3d-6 

Assuming the minimum bridge string height as 11.1mm, fret height at 1mm and a 1.5/2mm action, I could think of the following options for the neck:

1. Retain the fretboard at its current thickness of 9mm - this way the fretboard can be glued onto the neck and the neck will be flush with the body. I can't see a downside to this, but I haven't seen fretboards this thick. 

2. Reduce the fretboard down to 6.5mm or so and angle the neck. This would be more difficult to achieve and I can imagine the scope for error will be high.

3. Reduce the fretboard to 6.5mm and cut out 3mm from the neck starting from the end of the fretboard. Effectively, this would resemble a bolt-on neck which rises above the body and then starts the fretboard.

4. Reduce the fretboard to 6.5mm and recess the bridge into the body. I should be able to manage a 2-3mm recess, depending on the placement of the intonation screws at the back of the bridge (the SD-6 is top-loaded).

My preference is option 1, being the simplest. I doubt I'll have a problem visually with the fretboard looking too thick. My next preference would be option 4 i.e. to recess the bridge.

Would be great to hear your thoughts! Is there anything I am missing?

Schaller 3D-6.pdf

[Bizman62]

3 hours ago, Armaan said:

My wife, however, insists that my last five drawings look the same 

She may be right, she may be wrong. Sometimes it's the tiniest little change that either makes a decent looking guitar or something that makes you oooh and aaah.

[Bizman62]

3 hours ago, Armaan said:

Would be great to hear your thoughts! Is there anything I am missing?

Option #2 would give you the most space for strumming. On a neck through the neck break angle is pretty straightforward to cut. You can draw it directly on the side of the neck blank! Like so:

1. you draw your string line which is about 2 mm above the fretboard. You'll have to imagine that as it's in the air...
2. you sum the thickness of the frets, the fretboard and the clearance between the strings and frets and draw another line which will be along the blank
3. you measure the height of your bridge
4. you draw a line from the neck break to the bottom of the bridge

[curtisa]

Option #1 will either require you to make the neck extra thick or risk having the truss rod dangerously close to poking through the back of the neck, particularly near the nut where you need the most strength. I've used a fretboard up to 8mm thick in the past, but the neck was extra chunky to compensate for the truss rod effectively sitting deeper into the overall bulk of the neck.

[Armaan]

 

7 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Option #2 would give you the most space for strumming. On a neck through the neck break angle is pretty straightforward to cut. You can draw it directly on the side of the neck blank! Like so:

Right - this makes sense. Thanks for the helpful illustration.

I assume that the angle break should start at the point where the end of the fretboard meets the neck? I guess I will need to plan the carves at the point where the bass side horn meets the body to make sure that it doesn't stick out above the neck at the point of contact with the neck. Though I think the neck angle will be small (approx. 1 degree) so it should not be too hard to manage. I will work on a plan for the angle and check it out. 

Re: strumming, Option 4 would certainly reduce the strumming space due to the recessed bridge. But wouldn't option 1 and option 3 provide the most space above the body? Option 1, 2 and 3 would have the same height at the bridge, but option 2 would taper towards the angle break - whereas Option 1 and 3 would not as they would maintain the same height?

[Armaan]

7 hours ago, curtisa said:

Option #1 will either require you to make the neck extra thick or risk having the truss rod dangerously close to poking through the back of the neck, particulalrly near the nut where you need the most strength. I've used a fretboard up to 8mm thick in the past, but the neck was extra chunky to compensate for the truss rod effectively sitting deeper into the overall bulk of the neck.

Got it, thanks! - I will look into this. I'm undecided on the neck profile, so I will do research and figure out whether I can live with the additional thickness.

[curtisa]

1 hour ago, Armaan said:

Option 4 would certainly reduce the strumming space due to the recessed bridge. But wouldn't option 1 and option 3 provide the most space above the body?

The 'strumming space' under Option #4 can be set up such that it would be no different to a typical Strat or Tele. If you're familiar with those kinds of guitars (and their many subsets and variants) you'd just need to decide if that was acceptable to you given your hardware and playing preferences.

For a first build and for simplicity I'd be steering towards Option #3. Ease yourself into the building process by setting yourself a target that can be attained on first attempt and crank up the level of difficulty later on once you have some more experience behind you. The Schaller bridge you're proposing to use is actually shallow enough that your build doesn't really warrant recessing the bridge under Option #4, or dealing with potentially complicated angled cuts and the chance of error under Option #2. Personally I'd avoid Option #1 simply because I think you'll regret making and playing a neck that thick, and the extra thick fretboard will look out of place.

I believe @Gogzs is also using the Schaller 3D-6 bridge in his current build. Maybe he'll stop by and share his thoughts

[Armaan]

41 minutes ago, curtisa said:

For a first build and for simplicity I'd be steering towards Option #3. Ease yourself into the building process by setting yourself a target that can be attained on first attempt and crank up the level of difficulty later on once you have some more experience behind you. The Schaller bridge you're proposing to use is actually shallow enough that your build doesn't really warrant recessing the bridge under Option #4, or dealing with potentially complicated angled cuts and the chance of error under Option #2. Personally I'd avoid Option #1 simply because I think you'll regret making and playing a neck that thick, and the extra thick fretboard will look out of place.

Hmm - makes sense. I'll get the laminated neck ready and reassess - hopefully I should enough extra material.

@Gogzs Would be great to hear your thoughts!    

[Bizman62]

10 hours ago, Armaan said:

I assume that the angle break should start at the point where the end of the fretboard meets the neck?

The right place is where the body ends and the neck starts.

Speaking about the Fendery style, you aren't limited to a thick fretboard. In fact, Fender fretboards are quite thin compared to many others. That can be considered a variation of the neck break angle as well, in this case the angle would be zero.

Here's illustrating what I mean, hopefully making sense:

[Gogzs]

What is this thread... am I Beetlejuice? Say my nickname three times and I get summoned?  Jokes aside, that second body shape that you're committing to, looks really good, godspeed! 

Let's see if anything I'll post here will make sense, it worked for me and if it helps you, then it's even better. My first build wasn't really normal shaped when looked from the sides. The core of my first build came at a bit less than 1.5" (around 38mm if I remember correctly, might have been 36mm even) and then the idea was to get everything not needed, thinned down (that means basically everything where the pickups aren't).

I ran into the same issue like you, my fretboard was around 6.5 mm tall, with frets and everything, I needed the bridge a tiny bit more than 2 mm lower. So here is how my guitar looks from the side:

And now one more pic from top and then I'll explain the thought process behind getting it right how I like it...

Soooo somewhere around the green line, he body starts to get thinner towards the bridge, it's not really a "break angle" but more of a slope towards the bridge (smooth and slow, blends in really nice with all the other curves that are flowing from the core towards the edges, so it's really hard to take a decent picture). Then from the red line I started a much steeper slope towards the edges to get the body thin and ergonomic in that area, specially where the arm is resting. 

What the exact angle is, I have no idea. I knew I had to get 2mm down, so what I did was clamp the body down onto the table edge. The table edge was around the green line, and I stuck a 2mm thick shim I made out of wood under the bridge. When it was clamped down, the area where the bridge is was raised 2mm higher compared to the rails that are parallel with the table, the rails I used to ride the router on to get this done. I didn't take off all 2mm with the router, maybe 1.5-1.6 with the router, rest with the oscillating sander, so I can smoothen out the slope and not have an "edge" around the green line. 

So that's what I did with build nr. one, here is my plan for build nr. 2... 

I plan to recess the bridge into the body, since this one won't be as curvy as the first build, so I can't "hide" the slope towards the bridge within the other curves. And the fretboard on this one is thinner than on the first build, around 5.5mm. So I need to get the bridge around 3.5mm into the body. I don't plan to route out a perfect fitting hole for the bridge, but instead the hole will be a bit longer towards the red lines and I will blend those edges in, while the green edges will stay "sharp" and flush with the bridge.

If you cut the finished guitar into half length wise, this is how it would looks roughly.

Grey is the bridge, black are the "edges" you would see, red is the red marks at the same spot where they are in the picture.

So yeah, that's how I did it in my first build, and what I plan for the second. I'm not really sure this will help you, since in both of my builds I'm doing things the way I'd like to see em done, and the way I feel like suits me the best (both in what I can do tool wise in the building part, and what aesthetically and ergonomically pleases me). 

So much text, and most of it doesn't fit into your 1-2-3-4 choices haha. If I was you I'd go either with 2 or 4, both should be easy to pull off even with basic tools. And if you go with break angle approach, don't calculate the angle, just look at from where you want to start the angle, and where you want it to finish. Mark how much you need to get off where the bridge is, connect all 3 of those markings, and you have a line that tells you what you need to take off. It's a rather low tech no calculus approach, and I like those the most  

Also, welcome to the forums, and best'o'luck  

[Armaan]

 

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Speaking about the Fendery style, you aren't limited to a thick fretboard. In fact, Fender fretboards are quite thin compared to many others. That can be considered a variation of the neck break angle as well, in this case the angle would be zero.

Here's illustrating what I mean, hopefully making sense:

Thanks! The variation in the first image is what I meant as option 3 

Am currently leaning towards using this option    

[Armaan]

1 hour ago, Gogzs said:

What is this thread... am I Beetlejuice? Say my nickname three times and I get summoned?  Jokes aside, that second body shape that you're committing to, looks really good, godspeed!  

Haha! Well it worked! 

The shape of your 1st guitar is amazing and I really like the idea of the body slopes. The side view looks really nice - especially the sharp taper after the bridge.

1 hour ago, Gogzs said:

I plan to recess the bridge into the body, since this one won't be as curvy as the first build, so I can't "hide" the slope towards the bridge within the other curves. And the fretboard on this one is thinner than on the first build, around 5.5mm. So I need to get the bridge around 3.5mm into the body. I don't plan to route out a perfect fitting hole for the bridge, but instead the hole will be a bit longer towards the red lines and I will blend those edges in, while the green edges will stay "sharp" and flush with the bridge.

This would effectively be my option 4. I was not sure about access to the intonation screws at the back of the bridge, but I guess I can now assume a 3.5mm recess will not cause a problem. I think what you're doing with the bridge in the second guitar is really nice - the bridge will sit low and blend in nicely. 

Thanks for the detailed post - I found it very helpful. The more detail the better, considering this is my first build.

By the way - what software do you guys use for the illustrations?