mattharris75

Ahh, that's it. I was thinking it was a First Act guitar, but didn't want to say so without being sure.

VW actually did this recently. I think if you bought a Jetta or GTI they gave you some cheap electric guitar. Can't remember the specifics on it though.

Thanks. Yeah, I actually copied Skelf's shape straight up. I ended up making it slightly fuller in the back once I went to make the template, but it's a pretty minor difference. Thanks for the advice. Tearout was my biggest concern with going that route. Yeah, i'm only the width of a sharpie line from the finished shape. Maybe i'll give it a go.

Well, I got the top and bottom of the body blank glued up and everything went well there. The glue set up a bit faster than I expected. Perhaps because of the heat? Also managed to finish hand sanding the template so that it was nice and smooth. This evening I had a little time in the father-in-laws shop to work on the build. Managed to get the body rough cut. It went fairly smoothly. I found that taking my time was the most important thing. I managed to get it quite close, within 1/8th to 1/16th. You can see the red sharpie line in the picture that shows where the inside of the template went to. I figured if I got to the edge of that line I would leave myself a fairly easy job when it came to finishing the outside of the body. Which brings me to the first dilemma of the build. Do I route the edge using a pattern bit or use a robosander? I'm not sure which way I'm going to go with that yet. In the meantime I need to firm up my neck design. Since I decided to do a laminate neck rather than building it out of a 1" strat style blank that frees me up a little bit. I need to make the modifications in CAD and hopefully next weekend i'll have a chance to go pick up some maple for the neck. The nearest hardwood store that i've found is about 45 minutes away, which makes it tough to go on a weekday. Anyway, so far so good. I'm pleasantly surprised how well things have gone so far. I know that I'm still in the infancy stage of the build, but cutting out the body makes you feel like you have finally done something significant after spending so much time preparing the blank and template. Enough talk, here's the pic:

StewMac

If I go without the pickguard i'll definately do a side jack. The strat style jack was just in there as a concept to see how it looked. I wasn't set on it to begin with. Just trying to think a little 'outside the box' with regards to this style of guitar. In fact I had pretty much decided to do a side jack regardless of whether or not I use a pickguard. But it's always fun to experiment with different looks and ideas when you are at the planning stage of a build and it doesn't cost you anything. However, as far as saying 'you should have made your own design' if you wanted to be original, I think that's a load of hogwash. Just because a particular guitar was designed one way originally doesn't mean it is required to stay that way or that that is neccessarily even the 'best' way. Designs are refined and changed all the time, and often by their original owner. It's not always a matter of being better or worse, sometimes it's just a choice to be 'different'. Look at the guy who posted the double cutaway telecaster with the interesting pickguard design yesterday. That's not the way a tele was originally designed, but it sure is cool nonetheless. For as long as Gibsons and Fenders, etc have been around people have been altering their original designs. Often to great effect. But the point is, people doing things a little bit different is what generates new and interesting ideas. Alan makes great guitars, one of my absolute favorite designs (That's why i'm making one like his rather than a strat copy or something of that nature) but just because he did it one way and it looks great doesn't mean it's the only way to do it that will look good. Anyway, not trying to be a jerk. I just think people can sometimes be a little too callous and heavy handed with their statements with regards to peoples ideas. I'll get off my soapbox now. Maybe i'll just do the control cavity in the back and set it up not to have a pickguard, then make one when I get to that stage and try it out and see how it looks. That way I can have the option of going either way with it.

Got some more work done tonight. I printed out my pattern yesterday and cut it out. Tonight I bandsawed and belt sanded it out of 1/4" MDF. The MDF cut so nicely, it was a joy to work with. I can see why it is so ideal for patterns. Still need to hand sand a few corners. And as you can see in the pic, I changed the shape on the back slightly just to add a little more wood in. I also cut down the width of the top and bottom body pieces and planed them down so they are ready to be glued together. The bottom piece was 3 separate pieces of walnut, and they ended up with a few minor alignment problems. There was still a little bit of bow to 2 of the 3 pieces. The planer took care of that and i'll be gluing up the top and back tomorrow! I'm pleasantly surprised so far that everything has pretty much gone as planned. I know that i'm not exactly deep into it yet, and issues are bound to come up, but since this is my first project like this there was a considerable amount of fear and trepidation. It feels good to finally jump in with both feet! Also, I am rethinking my plan of using a pickguard. I just like the way the wood looks so much it would be a shame to cover it up! I still think that the pickguard shape would look really cool on here, so i'm debating which way to go with it. Anyway, here's the results of the evenings work. A pic of the template sitting on top of the planed top and bottom pieces of the body.

Yeah, that's the only logical way I can see doing it. He does a nice job, the most impressive thing to me is the cool look and figure of the woods that he uses. I wonder how he generates those textures? Abstraction of a photograph? Handdrawn? Anyway, like Greg said, sorry for the thread jack. The bass is going to look great.

Yeah, vector is where it's at for that kind of thing. But creating textures and effects for rendering is much easier with a raster based program like photoshop. That said, what I like to do is create the shape in Illustrator, since bezier curves are ideal for that kind of thing. Then import it to photoshop to add the effects and textures and whatnot. That's the best of both worlds.

He most likely uses Adobe Photoshop, you can do amazing things with it if you know what you're doing.

Yeah, I put the top mounted jack in the drawing because I thought it weould be something a little different for this style of guitar (along with the pickguard), and i'm not trying to do an exact copy of a Skelf. But I'm not dead set on it yet. It's just a concept.

Yeah, i've been lurking around for a few months and i'll give you the easy answer. The process in a nutshell: Buy Melvyn Hiscock's book and read it cover to cover. Read all the tutorials on this site. There's a few links if you search that people have done where they detail their guitar builds beginning to end, with instructions. Follow the forums for a while and read all the threads to see the kind of problems people are running into. Once you feel confident, work your way through the entire design of the guitar mentally and on paper/computer. Then ask any intelligent questions you can't find answers to. Start your build, and if you run into trouble, come back here for more help. Good luck.

Good point. I just got 2/3's of the bottom glued up this afternoon so I'll be going to get more clamps within the next few days. I'll make sure I look them all over before I get them. Also, I've decided on a body shape. It's a familiar one to a lot of folks on here. Body Shape (In this image I used an actual picture that I took of my walnut top, to scale, to get an idea of what the grain will look like with the body shape.) Thanks Alan!

For 5 bucks a piece you can't beat them. I'm probably going to have to go back and get a couple more clamps, maybe a deep throated C clamp, and a few others for joining the front and back. I've got 4 quick clamps that were too small for this but will work for that.

Well, a few months ago I had grand ideas of a semi-hollow guitar using an expensive Koa top and high end hardware. As I've learned and read over the past couple of months I've come to the decision that my first build should be something a bit simpler and a lot cheaper! Also, at the time I was considering buying a pre-made neck. Many people encouraged me to try to build the neck myself. So, I've decided to go ahead and try that. Got to learn sometime. I've got 2 sets of full sized body plans designed in photoshop (just have to decide which one to go with) and a strat style neck plan I drew up in Solid Edge. Rather than buy expensive wood, I noticed a while back that my father-in-law (Who has done a little wood work in his time, and has a pretty nice shop that I am fortunate enough to have access to) had a big pile of old hardwood timbers sitting in his basement that came off an old edition to their family owned business. I wasn't sure what they were, they were very rough and beaten up. A few weeks ago he cut off a piece of one of them and planed it down, and as it turned out he had a large pile of reclaimed walnut. I managed to sweet talk him into letting me pick out a board or two to make a guitar body with and the other night we cut, planed, and joined enough wood for a 2 piece top and 3 piece back. So with that done I've started gluing this bad boy together. This morning I glued the top, hopefully by next weekend I'll have the whole body glued. I don't know that the grain on this would be considered particularly perfect, but I think it's pretty interesting. I managed to get the light streaks lined up in the middle against each other, which I think looks pretty cool. And there is a nice looking blacker streak on the bottom piece of wood. I think it should make for a pretty interesting guitar top. What do you guys think? And here's a different angle that shows off the grain a little bit differently. Oh, and yes, that is a coaster that i'm clamping around on one end. It was convenient and my wife didn't put up too much of a struggle. Walnut top gluing 2 Once I get it all glued together I'll start working on the MDF template. (Guess I'll have to make a decision on which body shape to go with soon. )

Looks nice. Love the mahogany! Nice finish on it. How does she play?

Make it shiny!

I love the look of this guitar. One of the coolest I've seen. Can't wait to see it finished!

That's too nice a piece of wood to paint it an opaque color. Definitely a translucent black.

I don't know, but maybe this is what you're referring to, the 'Theremin'. Probably most famous for its use in the Beach Boys song 'Good Vibrations'.... Theremin on Wikipedia

Here is where I am currently at with my guitar body design. Obviously a lot is subject to change as I learn more. Right now I don't have the holes shown for the knobs or the bridge, since I haven't decided for sure what bridge to use. I've got this setup in photoshop so that everything is 1:1 scale, 300DPI, and I can print out templates easily to make my MDF templates. I can also move things as necessary since i'm not sure about a lot of things particularly with regards to the position/size of the neck pocket (I'll just used the finished neck as the actual template for routing that anyway) or pickup/bridge placement. I'd guess that i'll probably do 2 templates here. One for the body shape and everything to be routed in the top, and one for the control cavity and chambering. I'll probably do the wiring channels freehand or make a simple template for them, since their placement isn't as critical. I've got a lot of questions at this point, but most will probably be answered once I get my copy of the Hiscock book. Since i'm a few months away from any actual cutting i'll just keep planning and reading and refrain from asking any dumb questions until i've exhausted all other options.

Another possibility if you don't like the way the wood underneath looks is to purchase a flamed maple or other wood veneer. That will give you a much nicer top to stain/dye. You can get flamed maple veneer from www.universaljems.com. That's what i'm doing to my mexican built fender telecaster. Also my first project, before I start on my first build.

I've got the Hiscock book bookmarked. I'm on a spending freeze until I start my new job next week, but i'll be ordering it shortly. I was merely asking to find out if there were any other preferred references that people had. As far as the headstock is concerned, I can kind of see what you're saying. I restricted myself a bit by basing it around the warmoth headstock, but I actually do like the shape of it. I might tone down the flare at the end a little bit while mantaining the matching curve. But we'll see, i'll likely play around with the headstock some more. I'm pretty happy with the body design, however, and an working on a full sized template so I can make a practice run on the guitar. I need to dig up old strat neck from somewhere so that I can bolt that on to test things out.

OK, a question for all you experienced (And not so experienced) builders. If you were to pick up one book that detailed the construction of the electric guitar, what would that book be and why? Obviously there are numerous books on the market that claim to lead you through the design and building of an electric guitar, but of all of them you've seen which one has been the most helpful to you? What has been the single best written reference that helped guide you through the process?

Yeah, if I do make my own neck I would most definitely do the headstock differently than in that rendering. It would be somewhat larger, but not a massive difference. I would really just try to make it match the lines of the guitar a little bit more while keeping it a 3 and 3 style. Here's an idea of the modified headstock...