My Second Guitar

Guitar #2 is in its final stages of completion.  I just finished the final sand and am debating how I'm going to seal it, whether it be poly in a spray can, poly in a can that I either apply with a sponge brush or use a paint sprayer, or try this 2 part resin I found online.  Once I make my decision and actually get the guitar parts finished, I can go ahead and solder all the electronics back together and do my final assembly.

 Now that you can see how it came out, minus the final sand and shine, I'll go through the process of making it.  Not quite as detailed as the first guitar, since I basically did all the same things I did with the first guitar.  I'll spend most of the time with this guitar just talking about actually designing the guitar around a shape I was given and components.  The first guitar was really just making a new body and pick guard but remaining true to the original shape and style of the body the parts were taken from.  This second guitar was a little more on the design side as the person that gave me the old guitar also gave me a picture of a BC Rich Draco and asked if I could incorporate the components from that guitar into a guitar that looked like the picture.  Being full of confidence that day, I said that it would be no problem and started work on his guitar.

There were plenty of speed bumps in guitar #2 as I've been affectionately calling it, trying not to get too attached so that I can give it up if it turns out really cool.  Everything started out easily enough, I roughed in a shape of one side of the guitar on two sheets of paper, and once it was to my satisfaction, I traced that shape onto the piece of poplar I'd picked for the project.  Then I flipped the paper over and traced the mirror of the shape to create an entire guitar shape.  Once that was finished, I made a few minor tweaks in places it didn't look quite right and took it to the band saw.  Being an impatient and easily excitable person, I couldn't just stop there and since I didn't have my camera with me, there are no actual pictures of the body before I started routing it out.  If you can imagine it without the pen marks, routed holes and rounded edges, this was basically what I came up with.

There you have it, and that brings me into the next couple parts of the build.  I stared at the body a while trying to figure out the best place for all the parts and in the end they ended up getting moved anyway.  While I was trying to figure out the components, I figured I could at least get the neck in and with the limited space, could also fit in the bridge as I knew I wanted it as low as possible to afford myself as much space above to squeeze in three single coil pickups.  The original picture of the guitar I got had 2 humbuckers and a single knob which I assume is a volume knob.  I had to fit 3 pickups, 3 knobs and a switch into this body and although it doesn't look like it, there really isn't that much body there.  So I routed out the neck hole, drilled the screw holes and attached it. 

I then routed out the hole for the bridge in about 4 passes, then came back from the backside and with 3 more passes made the ledge so the bridge could rock a little in the hole.  This is for the tremolo or "whammy bar" action.  I also routed out the back to make room for the springs that attach to the bridge.  Then I set the bridge in and drilled the 6 holes that would hold it in place.

With all that in place, I used 2 strings from the old guitar, one on each end of the neck to the bridge, to pencil in lines so I could center the pickups and make sure once it was all together the strings would be above the proper places on the pickups.  Next was the main pick guard which would house the 3 pickups.  This was the easier of the two, since I could really only put them in one way and wanted them spread as far apart as possible.  Most pick guards mimic the body shape or at least follow it to some degree so that's what I did.  After that, I routed out the holes for the pickups and after using a dremel tool to open the holes up just enough to allow the pickup through I used one of the cases to drill the holes that would hold the pickups in place.

With that out of the way, I came to what would end up being the biggest speed bump in the build, where to put 3 knobs and a lever with the remaining available, and usable space.  I toyed with more than a couple ideas.

I started out with the idea on the left to continue following the guitars shape and then someone suggested the setup on the right to also continue the symmetry of the guitar.  I thought this looked good also, but wasn't sure which I liked more, so while I decided, I went ahead and drilled the holes for the 3 pots and cut out the line for the switch and drilled the 2 holes for it as well.

I put the secondary pick guard together and then tried to figure out how it would fit where I needed it to fit.  When it was just a piece of wood it was fine, but once it had the pots and switch and had to have a hole routed out to accommodate it, it no longer fit like it needed.  So it was back to the drawing board.  The main problem I was having was that I didn't want to unsolder and more than I already had and pulling the pots and switch apart completely looked intimidating with the capacitor and all the wires running to and fro.  I finally settled on moving the switch down closer to the knobs and changing the positioning of the knobs and created a pick guard that had a decent and almost inconspicuous shape behind all the electronics it was holding.

 With all the pick guards finished it was time to route out the body so I could set everything in place and see how it looked.  It took 3 passes in each place to get to the desired depth and a fourth in the area of the switch and once I was finished it also took a few hits with my dremel in a couple places to get the guards flush with the body.  Once I had it in place, I just took a few steps back and looked and I was excited to see that it actually didn't look half bad.  I held the guards in place while I drilled 6 holes through the main guard and body to hold it in place and 3 more through the secondary guard.  Once that was finished, I moved them out of the way and used a 7/8" boring bit to drill a large hole in the side of the body to make room for the jack and jack plate.  Once I had the hole deep enough for the jack, I went back with a drum sanding bit on a die grinder and rounded out the hole to make a hole that the jack plate would fit into.  Once I was satisfied that it fit flush to the side of the guitar, I drilled the two holes that would hold it in place, along with the holes for the two strap knobs.  I also drilled a smaller hole from the hole in the side for the jack into the lower cavity where the pots and switch were.  And finally a hole from that cavity into the main cavity that would hold the pickups so that I could wire everything together once it was nice and shiny. 

So there it is in a nutshell.  I hope in the next week or so to be done with this guitar as I've already started my next project which will be even more creative.  This time, I'm not taking apart an old guitar and using components that were already working together, but instead will be buying all the components separately and combining them in what I hope will be something cool.  There are just so many choices, it's hard to decide which components to pick and then even harder to spend the money on them while second guessing yourself as to whether or not they're the right ones.  Look for final pictures of this guitar here in the next few weeks and maybe with this next guitar I can do the blogging as I'm making it, instead of after so it's fresher in my mind.