After wondering about how they make the holes for the pickups, I stumbled upon this forum and have considered making my own guitar. My grandfather was into wood working a lot (Built half my house.), which gives me every tool necessary from what I know to make one.
Well to get started I have a few questions, mostly about how to get the right sound out of it. (I'm pretty much new to guitars too, I've been playing for almost a year but I've only had one electric guitar.) But I usually play with a lot of distortion or overdrive, I want to make a guitar that will be good for more rock and metal as opposed to cleaner genres. (On a side note, I have been looking for a Dimebag Darrell [Pantera - Damage Plan] sound in particular. I know he used to take out the mid tones, run that through a silencer and then put the mid tones back on the amps and that he used Randall Warheads... But I'm gonna need a job to afford one of those cause I was considering just getting a Spider II halfstack for less then the cost of just a head.. )
From what I know I was thinking and EMG 81 and EMG 84 for the pickups and either an alder or mahogany body. I have heard that alder got the best tone out of that specific pickup combination. Also, is active pickups a good decision? All I know about them is that they take an extra battery, I have no clue otherwise what they change from passive pickups. Other then that I was thinking a matching wood type neck (Unless otherwise is better.) and a rosewood fretboard.
Another thing I was wondering about was the electronics. If possible I would like a knob for Bass, Middle, and Treble. From what I have seen on the stickies, I don't know if that would be easy or not.. :\ Also, can the electronics be bought pre-assembled and ready for use?
One other thing I was wondering about, could I use say aluminum or some other type of metal for the fret inlays? The reason I ask is I wanted a special design on the 12th fret that I don't know how I would order - or how much it would cost and my dad is a machinist that can easily make it out of metal (Maybe even other non metal materials, I will have to ask him what type of machines he has access to.). Also, how would I put that in the fretboard itself, for the dots all that is needed is to drill a hole but how would I make the slot for the custom inlay, possibly a metal cutout stencil and using a router to get the basis of it and fine carve it with some hand tool?
So far what I have is a mock-up I drew of what I want it to look like in the end...
http://romendo.gamingg.net/mockup%20copy.gif
(I want to have a floyd rose on it instead of a bridge, they are just hard to draw.. xP)
And I also have a TurboCAD 2D file of it that I got from the sticky, slightly modified. I figured I could split the blueprint into the head and the body, and then split those into 8 1/2" x 11" images to print out. Then I would glue (Or tape..) the images onto a piece of cardboard and cut out the shape, tremolo slots, pickup slots, and tribal marks (Cut out the tribal marks so when I am painting I can lay down a few black coats, then when its dry tape the cardboard cutout over the body and use it as a stencil.). Then from the cardboard I can mark the wood to cut with the bandsaw, joint the edges, and then route the edges and route out the pickup/tremolo/electronics slots. But that is all I know offhand, but I have found this nice tutorial.
So any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated, I like to plan ahead of time so I know my plan when the time comes to make this.