I made a strange looking guitar

This is a project I've been messing with on and off for a long time now. Since I've known my friend Daniel I've been learning about guitars, the forms they've taken, and musical things in general. One thing I've often tried to do is imagine strange configurations or ways of modifying guitars to make them elicit a previously unknown sound, this proves to be very difficult since there have been close to 80 years of people doing strange things to guitars to amplify them. It seemed like every time I would think up or imagine some combination of parts to make a guitar do something none had before Daniel knew of some obscure instrument that does just such a thing or my idea had been tried and wasn't of any real use.

During one of my idea-making moments though, playing with one of his guitars while it was partially disassembled, I came up with an idea he hadn't heard of before. The idea was to take a Stratocaster-style guitar, and move the middle pickup to the outside of the guitar, sitting over top the neck pickup. I figured it might make for a clean sound like a single-coil pickup, but also be useful in clearing up the "hum" that humbuckers "buck", or cancel out.

Between the two of us, we got a Squire Bullet from a pawn shop, a simple, no frills strat and set about figuring out how to turn it into something neither of us had ever heard of. We eventually came up with the idea that as long as we're modifying the guitar and since we'd have to route room in the body for switches to set phasing, turn on/off pickups, and run pickups in series or parellel we might as well make a spot to move the bridge pickup and modify the bridge to have an extra run of strings below the bridge with a pickup under it. This would allow for the guitar to directly pick up playing on this short and high pitched length of strings. To the left is what a similar Bullet looks like, and what the Hoverbucker started out like.

I quickly dumpster dived some white sheet plastic (shower wall panel) and made blank copies of the Bullet's original pick guard. A month or two later I cut and shaped an old aluminum "out of order" sign into a replacement bridge and made a mount for the exposed pickup from some scrap plexi-glass and wood left over from making the lightbox. There won't be much of an ability to intonate the bridge without filing it down, but we'll cross that bridge when it comes (holy-crap-pun-lol). Since I'm not familiar with the specifics of setting intonation (I can scarcely tune a guitar) I'll leave that to Daniel to advise on. I also removed the bridge saddles from the stock tail piece so it can be used for a tail piece at the bottom of the guitar.

After that, I posted pictures and the idea on the Harmony Central Forums, asking anyone there for their input and ideas, as well as finding a wiring diagram for a similar setup that allowed for a lot of choice with regard to the switching setup. From here the project sat untouched for several more months while other things in life needed more attention such as school and my nephew's guitar. It went in a bag next to my hand made longbow that needs to be tuned and set. Now that I've had some time to work on it some more and I already had need of a router thanks to the cigar box guitars I've worked on over the last week I figured it would be a good time to make the body modifications that the hoverbucker guitar needed. I got to try my hand for the first time with both a table and hand-held router and they both were nice to use thanks to Mr. John's assistance explaining their proper use.

As a side note, this blog is serving as a good motivator for me to finish projects that have otherwise sat half-done for a while. It's nice having somewhere to show off the stuff I do with the added bonus that someone might actually care enough to read about it. What ever will I do for updates once I run out of half-finished projects to finish for a quick post's worth of material? I might have to go back to building things from start to finish. :O

Anyway, I then went about cutting up another of the pick guard blanks into a cover for the bridge pickup, I just cut it into a rectangle, rounded the corners, and smoothed it with a file. I then drilled some holes for the switches to mount into, widened the hole for the kill switch from the original volume knob hole, and for the screws in the bridge cover. I put it all together and dummied up everything in place. I have to wait until tommorow to get a DPDT switch to replace the SPDT switch I have in place for the phase switch right now, but you can get an idea of how it will all look now. I'm still not sure how it will work or if it will unlock some strange, never before heard sounds, but it certainly looks interesting so far and even if it's just a strat with an extra weird pickup it'll certainly be a unique instrument.

(Update 1)
I finished the guitar, and it does some interesting things. After showing it off on this Harmony Central thread it seems to be getting a good recepion. Here's a couple videos of Daniel playing it. He seems pretty stoked about it too.






As usual, there are more photos on my Flickr page.

I Made a(nother) Cigar Box Guitar

About a year or so ago I read in Make magazine about how to make a guitar from basically a stick, some bolts, string, and a cigar box. I made one and it was a functional 3 string guitar, but it left a lot to be desired. It wouldn't hold tune, had no frets or fret markings, and didn't play very well for a number of other reasons. It did show me how easy making a stringed instrument can be though, and taught me a lot about the fundamentals of guitars. Pictured here is the old cigar box guitar.


Fast forward to today and I've since rebuilt one guitar from the wood up, rewired a couple, and generally learned more about them, and when I saw some nice cigar boxes for 50c a piece the other day I decided it was time to try my hand at making a better one. I got some parts first, with the strings and tuning machines being the only things I had to get that were purpose-made for a guitar. The rest of the materials were a couple thin pieces of red oak (quickly becoming a favorite wood of mine), a length of poplar, some dollar-store stainless shish kabob skewers, and some other odds and ends.

I decided that I wanted this guitar to be made to a full scale, so I copied the bridge length and fret pattern off my strat-o-monster (another top secret project everyone I know knows about). I also wanted to have the fretboard above the body of the guitar as most normal guitars have, so I did a lot of eye-balling and a little measuring and wound up with a layout that uses a piece of red oak as a shim and another as the fretboard. I decided the neck would be much too thick for anyone short of an orangutan to play with those two and the poplar neck together, and the tuning machines needed the headstock area to be thinner, so I went to work rasping down the needed areas.

Rasping always seems like it won't be too bad before I start. "I'm just taking off 1cm of wood, it's not too bad." an hour and a half later I'd roughed out the shape of the neck and ensured my Popeye-like forearms won't be going anywhere soon. I glued most of the neck together and smoothed all the pieces together with my trusty surform rasp. I also cut a pair of notches for the neck to stick through the body with. With the neck glued together, it slides into the box and begins to look like a guitar. The neck is super-wide. It'll mostly be used for playing slide though, so no worries.

I had to drill out new string holes in the tuning machines since the stock ones sat very low on the pegs. I picked up the cheapest set of tuning machines I could find, which wound up being for a classical guitar. I just made sure to drill the holes perpendicular to the stock ones to keep from weakening the pegs. The ornate brass style of them matches the look of the box well though.

A few ideas I was entertaining but decided against: (1)Making it 3 string. There was too much fretboard and I had the tuning machines already. (2)Adding frets. That was the original purpose of the skewers and superglue, but since the neck is so wide and I got too impatient to make the notches in the fretboard I justify pushing on by telling myself this is something like an old blues guitar and the wide neck won't hurt playing slide.

Update 1:
I tried to make do with a set of metal plates I had for the tail piece, but it didn't drop the strings low enough for them to hold over the bridge, so I'll have to use some L brackets and shape a curve down the tail end to let the strings drop some. It'll look better like that anyway. I cut the bottoms out of both boxes and glued them together for more of an air chamber. I also filed out some groves for the nut and bridge bolts to sit in, glued the neck, tail piece, and top box lid together. I'll leave the bottom lid unglued until I figure out how I want to mount a pickup.

Update 2:
I got the guitar playable yesterday, adding the stop piece and stringing it. I filed down the tail end to let the strings get some fall, then made a stop piece from galvanized steel and strung the guitar. It still needs to be sanded, stained, and clear coated on the body, but it's playable and sounds pretty nice. The stacked boxes give it more volume than just one, and it works pretty well for slide. A friend who plays guitar says that it has a similar sound to a 12 string when played with slide. It also has a weird sympathetic effect coming from the bridge over the tail, which is interesting and not loud enough to be more than just noticeable. Though the neck doesn't have a truss rod it hasn't taken very much bow either, which was something I was concerned with initially.

Update 3:
I've finished sanding and clear coating the CBG, and I've also added bamboo frets. I also added a piezo pickup and jack so the guitar can be amplified. The frets could still use some fine tuning since there are a few places where a couple frets are short enough to cause fret buzz, but the piezo comes through very clearly and the guitar sounds very nice. I'll fix the maligned frets when
I get a chance, but it's very playable as-is as evidenced by my buddy Daniel shows below.



There are more pictures of this guitar on Flickr.

Update 4: Make: blog has posted about my CBG, Thanks guys! I've also made another guitar. It's pretty much the same, but I cleaned up some of the rough edges and clear coated the boxes before putting it all together. I might make some more, who knows.

I (re)made a guitar

Starting about 6 months ago, my nephew was getting into playing guitar and was showing some real promise and skill. He already had a couple, but really had his eye on a red Gibson SG. Being as I didn't have the 1000+ dollars to get him one for Christmas getting him one was out of the question until I traded an old motorcycle for a couple of guitars.

One of these was a very beat up and terribly modified Epiphone SG. It played pretty well (after an hour of tidying up ground loops and loose wires in the wiring cavity) but was still in terrible cosmetic and electrical shape. I read up a little and already had some experience working on guitars and figured that a custom painted and rebuilt guitar would be a nice gift and wouldn't be terribly hard. I was wrong.

I started by disassembling the whole thing down to it's base parts. I started a list of the problems with it.






Problems:
* Missing knob
* Ugly skull knobs
* Spray painted Zach Wyld bull's eye
* Flat black spray paint over entire rest of guitar
* Missing almost all pot/jack mounting hardware (washers, nuts, etc...)
* Chipped wood on back and under two knobs
* Grime and super glue stains on fretboard
* Roller nut attached by super glue
* Wiring (total rat nest)
* Stripped screws on a couple places
* Locking tuners missing top nuts

I could tell this thing would be a lot of work, but I also wanted to see if I could get it looking good, I wanted to give my nephew a nice axe, and I didn't have any money in it, so if I ruined it it wouldn't be too bad.

Next I needed to clean off the old paint. I thought the best way to do this would be with paint stripper. I liberally coated the back in paint stripper after a trip to the hardware store for supplies, but after getting through the top coat of spray paint, the factory candy apple red (damn! the color he wanted!) was too strong for the chemical to do much more than turn a little easier for me to pry loose from the wood than if it was dry. I moved on to trying to chip the paint off, since if the stock paint was in good condition I would be able to just restore that. That went out the window when the paint on the front had deep gouges where an exacto knife had been used to carve out some "sweet flames". I moved on to sandpaper.

60 grit sandpaper is a wonderful thing. Just a couple hours and what would be the start of Popeye-like forearm muscles later, I'd gotten the SG down to it's bare wood. I'd gotten the paint off the neck with the side of my trusty paint scraping knife. I was on a roll, but before I started spraying paint all willy-nilly I decided to do some research. The articles on ProjectGuitar.com are a wonderful resource for restoring and repairing guitars, but the more I read, the more I realized that with less than two weeks before Santa made his rounds to gorge himself on cookies there was no way I'd be able to finish in time. Instead, I gave my nephew the bare wood body, neck, and a sandwich bag of electronics and mounting hardware, and told him I was sorry it wasn't done, but I'd have it done before his birthday. He was ecstatic and excited to have me building him a guitar.

In the mean time I also had to get some parts. The SG came with some very nice EKG pickups, which just happened to be the very same ones a friend of mine was looking to put into an explorer he'd just gotten. I was wanting to go with less heavy sounding pickups for a broader range, and the stock explorer pickups were just about exactly what I was looking for. I traded the pickups out of his guitar and helped install the EKGs, then went to get some knobs and pickup bezels (probably not the right term) since the ones that came with the SG were terrible and beat up.

I then got back to the finish for the body. I'd discovered that the bridge mounting holes, which I'd assumed were molded into the body, were actually metal. They'd just been too covered in paint to tell. I sanded the body down to 200 grit sandpaper since the 60 grit left the body about as smooth as velcro. I then sprayed several coats of clear over that to seal the wood, leaving each coat at least one day to dry between. I wanted this to look as close to a professional paint job as spray paint from Lowes would get me. With each coat I sanded the body to help slowly smooth out imperfections. it was pretty much the same story with the color coat and clear coat. Hang body in garage, choke on paint fumes, wait a couple days, sand, repeat.

As the body got smoother and shinier I felt better and better about the decision to go with spray paint. Cut to two months later (and about 4 months of off and on time into this project) and I'd gotten ready to spray the second of many coats of clear coat on. As I sprayed, the clear stopped being clear. It turned into a milky white leaving the guitar looking like I'd ruined the paint somehow. I didn't know what had gone wrong. I'd done everything the same as before, the clearcoat was from the same can, and it wasn't too humid. I went to bed since it was late and I didn't know what else to do.



I came out the next day after class to inspect the damage and to my wonder, the guitar was a nice shiny red again. It turned out that the clear coat just behaved that way, so I added the last 7 or so coats of clear (WHAT A PAIN!) and got ready to start wet sanding. By this point my forearms had gotten tough enough that I felt like I had the wrist strength to bend steel. I guess pressing on something and doing who knows how many reps of back and forward for a few months will do that. Wet sanding is interesting, you don't feel like you're doing anything and progress is so slow you have no idea when it'll be done since "just a little more" could easily mean from 1-3 hours. Anyway, my nephew's birthday on St. Patrick's day was coming up quick, so I dedicated every spare minute I had to getting this guitar done before then. Wet sanding takes forever.

After I'd gotten the body to as near a perfectly smooth surface as I could, I used rubbing compound on it to bring it to a nice shine. I could finally see myself in it and see the work I'd done starting to look like a finished part of a guitar. It was about 4 days before people around the world would start upchucking green beer.

I mounted The parts I could, but there was still a problem with the roller nut, I had no way to make it stay or figure out how high to mount it. I cleared off all the super glue in about an hour, and swapped the tuning machines from my other guitar onto the SG's headstock and wired the electronics that night (it was the day before the party. I'd have to work on it some from work the next day before the party.





I wound up getting the last odds and ends finished, including a complete rewire since the one I'd done the previous night was totally wrong. Talk about cutting it close. I put the guitar in it's bag not even knowing if it worked and headed to present it. When I got to the party, I carried it in and told my nephew that I didn't get him anything other than the guitar for his birthday, but that since I'd already given him the guitar for Christmas, his birthday present was all the work, time, and brain cells I'd put into the guitar since then. It did wor and he loved it. People at the party could hardly believe him when he said I'd made it. I'm now known by his friends as "my uncle who made me the guitar". That kicks ass.
If I'd known how much work it would take to do this before starting would I have done it? Maybe not, but I think this way it's worth a lot more than a guitar I'd bought. I hope he gets many years of use and enjoyment out of it. You can see more photos from making this guitar on this Flickr set.