Make Your Own

Electric Guitar

Make Your Own

Electric Guitar
Make Your Own
Electric Guitar

Melvin Hiscock

Blandford

Make Your Own

Electric Guitar
Melvin Hiscock

Make Your Own

Electric Guitar

Contents
A Blandford Book

Acknowledgements 6
First Published in the U.K. 1986 by Blandford,
(a Cassell imprint), Villiers House,
41-47 Strand, London, WC2N 5JE
Reprinted 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 (twice), 1994
Copyright 1986 Melvyn Hiscock
Distributed in the United States by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.,
387 Park Avenue South,
New York, NY 10016-8810
Distributed in Australia by Capricorn Link (Australia) Pty Ltd
2/13 Carrringston Road, Castle Hill, NSW 2154
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hiscock, Melvyn
Make your own electric guitar.
1. Guitar--- Construction
I. Title
787.612 ML1015.G9
ISBN 0 7137 1705 X (hardback)
0 7137 1705 8 (paperback)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information
storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the copyright holder and Publisher.
Typeset by Graphicraft Typesetters HK
Printed in Great Britian at The Bath Press, Avon

Instroduction 7

First Considerations 8

12

Mixing the Styles 112

Parts of the Guitar 10

13

Finishing 118

Designing Your Own Guitar 13

14

Wiring Your Guitar 126

Tools 39

15

Setting up the Guitar 150

Woods 44

Appendix Addresses 156

Truss Rods Explained 51

Further Reading 158

Fretboard Theory and Fretting 58

Index 159

Safety 66

Guitar No 1 68

10

Guitar No 2 85

11

Guitar No 3 101

Designing Your Guitar

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Designing Your
Guitar
As we have already decided
that the most important part of
the guitar is the string it seems
logical to use this as the starting point in the design of a new
instrument. I will presume that
the minor point of deciding
whether a guitar or bass us to
be made has already been dealt
with and the following notes
are applicable to both.

Scale Length

Frets

The first stage is to decide on the length of the string

or scale length of the new instrument. A linger scale
length will, to a point, give better sustain. The reason
for this is that the lighter a string is stretched the longer
it will sustain. A string of any given thickness will have
to be tensioned less over a shorter scale length than a
string of the same thickness over a longer scale length
in order to sound at the same pitch. The disadvantage
of the longer scale length is that the distances between
the frets are longer so the fingers have to stretch further
in order to reach the chord positions. The Gibson Brydland semi-acoustic guitar has a short scale length of
23 in that makes fingering complex jazz easier, and,
since most jazz guitarists use fairly heavy strings, it still
manages to sustain. However, if you were to put a set
of extra light gauge RocknRoll strings onto the same
guitar, it would feel and sound fairly dull and lifeless as
the scale length would be too short.
Most guitar scale lengths vary between 24 and 26
in. Of these the majority of electric guitars use just two.
These are 24 or 24 in. They have become standard
as Les Paul has 24 in scale length and the Telecaster
has a 25 in scale length. Most basses vary between
30 and 34 in. Fender Jazz and Precision bases use a 34
in scale length. Rickenbackers 4000 and 4001 use a
32 in scale length and many of Gibsons basses use
a 30 in scale, as do some of Fenders cheaper instruments.
With basses, the problem of sustain for a given scale
length seems more acute than it is with guitars. A short
scale length with any thickness of string can sound dull
and lifeless and, even if it is easier to play, may still
come in second place to a longer scale length when
choosing a new instrument. My own preferences are
24 on a guitar, for the simple reason that I am lazy
and it is slightly easier to play, and 34 on a bass as
it seems to give a more even sustain across all four
strings and, since I cannot play bass, the stretches do
not bother me.

Once a scale length has been chosen, the next step is

to decide on how many frets the new guitar will have.
There are usually between 20 and 24 frets on most
instruments. Some have slightly less and others have
slightly more. The Dan Electro Guitarlin or Longhorn of
the mid-1960s had 31 frets.
There is, in theory, no reason why you should not try
to fit as many frets as possible inbto the instrument, but
in practice there is little point in trying for too many. As
the frets get further up the neck, the spaces between
them get smaller up to a point where they are impossible to play as there is no room for the finger to get between them to fret the note effectively. This, however,
is not the only consideration.
The more frets that are fitted to the guitar the less
space there is between the end of the fingerboard and
the bridge. Clearly, if the guitar is to have a mass of frets
it cannot have multiple pick-ups; there simply would not
be space to fit them.
Too many frets would also be difficult to play as the
fingerboard would extend quite a way across the face
of the guitar and would be difficult to get to, as the
hand would not only have to reach around the neck but
would also have to stretch across the guitar body. Compensating for this by making the neck longer and the
body shorter would give a badly balanced guitar with
a weak neck, as the longer the neck would be much
more difficult to keep straight.
If you do happen to decide that you do want a large
number of frets on your guitar it is worth asking yourself why. The Dan Electro Guitarlin was marketed as
a cross between a guitar and a mandolin, hence the
name and extra frets at the top end. They may have
come in handy for the occasional song, but does the
amount that they are likely to be used justify their inclusion with all of the extra work, and thought, needed to
fit them into the guitar?

The Les Paul has 22 frets, in common with most Gibson guitars that preceeded it, and the Telecaster has 21.
Both Gibsons and Fenders basses have 20 frets. In recent years guitars with 24 frets, or a full two-octave fingerboard, have become fashionable. In practice these
frets are seldom used, and in certain designs, especially
basses, the extra length in the neck can lead to stability problems although careful design can minimize this.

Neck Depth
The depth of the neck must also be decided. Overall
depths are usually 1 in at the body end of the neck
and between 5/8 and 7/8 at the nut, with the average being about in. Fingerboards usually accountfor
about in of this total. It must be remembered that the
thinner the neck is made the more difficult it will be to
keep straight.

Body Shape
The next stage is to decide on the body shape of your
new guitar. When making a first guitar it is worth avoiding any outlandish designs in favour of a simple one- or
two- cutaway body. If you really must have a Flying V,
and Explorer or a guitar in the shape of a contour map
of Switzerland make it s a second guitar but start on
something straightforward.
All sorts of weird and wonderful guitar designs have
come off the drawing boards of many manufacturers
over the years, from Gibsons Flying V and Explorer of
1957 through the Gretsch Bikini, which had interchangeable necks, to the pistol-shapes guitar that was marketed in England in the mid-1970s.
One thing that most of these designs had in common
was the fact that even though they may have been very

Designing Your Guitar

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

interesting as design exercises they flopped as guitars.

Even the Flying V and Explorer, which are currently enjoying popularity, hardly sold when they were first introduced. There is a story that says that some were even
used as ship signs!
It must be remembered that an electric guitar is,
first and foremost, a musical instrument that has to be
played successfully if it is to be of any use.It is no good
if all that you can do with it is pose.
One of the main failings with many of the more outrageous designs is one of balance. If the guitar is neckheavy, the left hand, if you are a right-handed player,
will have t support the weight of the neck as well as
play it. Clearly this is not an ideal situation.
One offender in the balance category is the Gibson
Thunderbird range of basses, and to a slightly lesser
extent the Firebird range of guitars that were first introduced in 1963. The Thunderbird has a very ling neck,
fitted with a large set of Kluson Bass machines, and
a very small body. This has led to accidents, as when
both hands are removed from the bass, while it is being
worn on a strap, the neck is heavy enough to swing towards the floor. If it hits the floor hard enough the head
of the instrument can break off. This is not as uncommon as it may sound.
The reason that this happens is that the body of the
guitar is small and light in weight and its point of balance is fairly far back towards the bridge, there being
no horns on the top half of the body onto which a strap
button could be fixed. This has not stopped both the
Firebird and the Thunderbird becoming very popular
over the last twenty years. There are many people that
think the looks of the instrument justify the extra effort
needed in playing them.
When a guitar is played on a strap, as most electric
guitars are, the point of balance is the point at which
the strap button is fixed. If most of the guitars weight is
on the body side of this point then the guitar will probably balance. If there is more weight on the head end
then the neck will feel heavier. Guitar machine-heads

are fairly heavy units, and when combined with the

turning moment, or leverage caused by the length of
the neck, can cause havoc with the weight distribution.
This is made worse on a guitar with a longer neck; for
example on a guitar or bass with a large number of
frets clear of the body. The Dan Electro Longhorns got
their name as in order to keep the guitar balanced with
their long 31-fret necks the two cutaway horns were
made very long making the guitar look something like
a lyre.
In the last few years several guitars have appeared
on the market with strings anchored at the head and
the tuning engines on the body. This certainly helps to
balance the guitar, but care must be exercised in the
design of these instruments so that the machine-heads
will not be fouled by the players arm, and that they do
not get damaged when the guitar is put on a stand or
leant against a wall.
It is no accident that many guitars have a simple oneor two- cutaway body, as they are much easier to balance.
In designing the body shape of the guitar there are
several considerations that will have to be thought
about together. The first is the overall body shape. I
have always found is best to plan this full-size onto a
piece of paper; the paper can be used as a template
later in the construction, since the drawing is full-size it
is easier to take in the dimensions and mentally compare them with other guitars. Obviously there is little
point in making a totally massive guitar, and a tiny one
may never balance. It is worth looking at other guitars
to try to work out what it is that makes them successful.
Remember too that the pickups and their controls
must fit neatly into this shape, and be easily reachable
when the guitar is being played, but they must not be
positioned so that they get in each others way.

The Neck-to-body Join

The positions along the neck at which the neck-to-body
join will be made should also be considered, along with
the method that will be used to fix the two parts together.
We have already discussed how the length of the
neck can have a marked effect on its stability, and how
too much fingerboard over the body will be difficult to
reach. Both the Les Paul and the Telecaster have the
neck-to-body join at the sixteenth fret; this is also true
of the Stratocaster. The cutaways are then designed to
allow access to the top frets without weakening the join.
If a glued-in neck is chosen for the guitar there should
be sufficient area available for gluing areas and will prevent the neck from moving side to side and straining the
glue joint. This also applies to bolt-on necks, as enough
area is required for the fixing plate and its screws that
hold the neck in place, and this too must be supported
to stop it moving.
The alternative to gluing or bolting the neck is to carry it straight through the body. This does away with the
need for a bulky neck joint, and the neck is held from
moving side to side by the body. This style of construction has some very good advantages but also some pitfalls for the unwary.

Neck Angle and Bridge Height

In order for the strings to be carried over the fingerboard at the correct height it should be decided what, if
any, neck angle is required. There are two ways of solving this problem and both have quite a marked effect
on how the guitar will feel to play. The deciding factor
is the height of the bridge.
The Telecaster has quite a low bridge and no neck
angle. The fingerboard sits slightly proud of the top surface of the body and so the strings are presented to
the fingerboard at the correct height. The Les Paul and

10

Designing Your Guitar

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Fender Precision Bass.

The Dan Electro Longhorn guitar
(photo: Tom Wheeler, Guitar Player).

A 1970 re-issue of the Gibson Firebird

5 guitar. The Thunderbird Bass was the
same shape but with a longer neck.

11

12

Designing Your Guitar

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

A Les Paul neck join. Here the tenon is

supported on both sides by the body.
Leter Les Pauls have shorter neck tenons
that do not extend into the pick-up cavity but are still more than adequate.

The single-cutaway Les Paul Juniors

and Specials neck tenon was the same
width as the end of the fingerboard. In
order for this to be supported the shape
of the cutaway was changed slightly.

many of Gibsons subsequent guitars have higher bridges and the fingerboards are closer to the top surface of
the guitars body. In order that the string is presented
in the fingerboard in a way that will keep the guitar
playable the neck has to be angled back very slightly.
This angle is very small. On the Les Paul it is about 2 degrees, and on some other guitars, for example doublecutaway Les Paul Juniors and Specials, it is as little as
1 degrees.
This not only gives the guitar the required low action
but also brings the head of the guitar back towards the
player. This makes the low position on the fingerboard
a little easier to reach as the arm does not have to
reach forward as well as out to play the bottom notes.
It is not much of a difference; being able to play on
one style does not mean that playing the other will be
impossible or even difficult, but it is a noticeable difference that may make one style a little more comfortable.
Gibson have made one or two guitars with their stan-

The later double-cutaway Les Paul

Juniors and Specials had the last fret
very close to the body join and to
the neck tenon was extednded into
the body to stop the neck from the
magazine from moving side to side.

dard tunomatic bridges and no neck angle, the SGs

made between 1972 and 1974 and many of the re-issue
Flying Vs are examples. On these guitars the correct
string height is obtained by raising the neck to the correct height. The fingerboard stands about in proud
of the face of the guitar. This gives the right action
but leaves the strings a long way off the front of the
instrument. This design not only makes the end of the
neck harder to reach, as both of these guitars have very
long necks, but it means that the pick-ups have to be
raised higher in their mountings so that they are close
enough to pick up the string vibrations, and the strings
are quite difficult to play, as to all intents and purposes
they are suspended in mid-air. These are not Gibsons
best guitars.
The height of the bridge is a deciding factor in the
choice of neck angle and the make and model of bridge
should be decided early on. I once had a customer who
wanted a guitar made using, among other things, a

The Stratacaster bolt-on neck is well supported on one side and adequately on the
other. The older four-screw fixing tends
to be a little former than the later threescrew fixing, but providing the two parts
are made correctly both are satisfactory.

13

On early Gibson SGs the team was

again taken into the body. The pick-up
position wekeaned the join a little not as
much as on some Les Paul Specials.

genuine Gibson tunomatic bridge and tailpiece on a

straight-through necked guitar. The guitar was started
and a short time later he came to me saying that he
had changed his mind and he wanted a Fender-style
tunomatic bridge on the guitar. By this time the guitar
was almost finished and had been made with a small
neck angle suitable for the Gibson bridge. There was no
way that I could alter the guitar, especially since it was
a straight through neck design, so I had to politely point
out that it was tough luck and he was too late.
One advantage of the bolt-on neck design is that the
angle of the neck can be subtly altered by inserting
small veneer shims or, in the case of some of the later
Fender instruments, the patented neck tilt system. This
is sufficient to make very slight adjustments (for example to give the required action on a guitar when the
screws on the adjustable bridge pieces are at the top
of their travel leaving none to protrude to lacerate the
hand), but will not do in the event of a serious design er-

ror. Too much of a shim can make the neck joint a little
weak. The position along the neck at which the neck
and body join should also be decided. Since you know
the scale and length and the number of frets that you
intend to have it is a simple job to decide at which fret
the neck and body will join. Using the fretting tables
that are printed in Chapter 7, the distance from this fret
to the bridge is easily found. The amount of fingerboard
that will overhang the body can also be calculated by
working out the distance from the end of the fingerboard to the bridge and subtracting it from the distance
between the body and neck join and the bridge.
It must be remembered that the distance from the
last fret to the bridge is about 3/8 in longer than the
distance from the end of the fingerboard to the bridge,
as you must allow for a little fretboard after the last fret.
For example, the last fret on a Gibson Les Paul is slightly under 7 in from the bridge but the fingerboard ends
about 6 2/5 in front of the bridge. If you intend to use

14

Designing Your Guitar

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

a Fender-style bridge with a bolt-on or glued-in neck,

it will probably be worth making the guitar without a
neck angle and fitting the neck so that the fingerboard
sits slightly proud of the face to the guitar. The dimensions for this will be the same as on the Fender guitars.
For example, the Telecaster and the Stratocaster both
have bridges that are about 3/6 in high. The neck on
both guitars is made so that it is 1 in deep. This is let
into a slot in the body that is 5/8 in which leaves 3/8
in proud of the body. On most guitars with separate
fingerboards the board usually accounts for between
and 3/16 in of the total. In this case the face of the
neck would need to be between 1/16 and 3/5 in proud
of the face of the body, so that the totally would be
correct.
Making the guitar with the neck joint the same dimensions as the Fender would simplify construction, as
if there is no neck angle being used no angles would
have to be cut into the guitar.
A mistake that is sometimes made on guitars with
straight-through necks and Fender-style bridges is to assume that the Fender has no neck angle the new guitar
can be made without one too. This is not the case since
the fingerboard on the Fender is raised. If the guitar to
be made is to have a Fender-style bridge and the fingerboard flush with the top of the body then a small neck
angle will have to be calculated.
Most guitar bridges are made so that they are adjustable up or down. All calculations regarding the height
of the bridge should assume that when the bridge is at
its lowest point the strings should be just touching the
fingerboard so that the bridge can be raised to give the
guitar its correct actions. It is easier to raise the strings
to their lower limit, which is the point at which they
stop rattling against the other frets on the neck, than it
is to try to lower the action an acceptable level.
The amount of angle needed can be found by drawing some of the guitars dimensions full-size onto a large
piece of paper. Firstly a line is drawn across the paper.
This is to represent the front face of the guitar body. At

one end of this line a point is marked to represent the

bridge position. The distance from the bridge to the end
of the fingerboard is marked, as is the position of the
fret at the point where the neck and body joins. The
height of the bridge is calculated and this is marked
to the first line at its correct position. The height of the
fingerboard is decided and this measurement is subtracted from the height of the bridge. For example if the
bridge were in and the fingerboard were to be 1/16
in a mark would be made 5/16 in above the position of
the bridge. A second line is drawn to link this point with
the point representing the end of the fingerboard. The
angle that this gives is measured and this is the angle
at which the neck will have to be set into the body.
Once the neck angle has been decided, its effect on the
guitar body will need to be dealt with.

A Gibson Les Paul (photo: Steve Howe)

15

16

Tools

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Tools
The major manufacturers of
guitars from all around the
world use a variety of specialised tools to make their instruments. These range from drills
that will cut all six machinehead holes at once to large and
expensive computer-controlled
machines that will turn a rough
plank of wood into a finished
body or neck in a very short
space of time.
Obviously these machines are
essential to these makers as
they have to mass-produce in
order to stay in profit, but for
the person making their own
guitar at home descriptions of
such machines will serve to
produce a state of painful frustration. However, it must be remembered that these machines
do a job that was once done,
in the main, by hand, and it is
far from impossible to make
a guitar using just the tools
that you would expect to find
in a reasonably well- equipped
home workshop. Some more
specialised tools that will make
the job easier can quite easily
be borrowed or hired if you
know where to go.

What is most important for the success of your venture

is not the amount of wonderfully labour-saving power
tools that you can lay your hands on, but how you go
about looking after and using whatever tools, hand or
power, that you have at your disposal. If you are not
used to dealing with woodworking tools, I would again
urge you to take a little time to learn about them, how
to use them, and how to keep them in good condition,
as it cannot be overstated how much easier, and safer,
this will make your chosen task whether it is making a
guitar or putting up a shelf.
The most important part of the guitar makers arsenal
is the workbench. Ideally this is situated in a warm and
dry workshop with ample room and plenty of storage
space with all tools easily to hand and tidy. In practice,
this is highly unlikely to be the case, but the nearer you
can get to this ideal the easier the job will be. In any
case the workbench needs to be firm and rigid. There
is no point in even trying to cut or plane in a straight
line if the workbench resembles a nervous jelly. A good
woodworking vice is also essential. This is not only
used to hold the wood or the complete guitar while it is
being worked on, but it can also be used to hold such
things as the fretting jig or workboard.
It is also important to use your chosen tool properly,
and to use the right tool for the job. Some of my earliest
efforts were made with what was available. I have, in
the distant past, cut guitar bodies from 1 3/4 in mahogany with a coping saw. This is stupid. It is not only hard
work but also is not very accurate. There is no chance
of working close to a line, so I had to work rough and
tidy up using spokenshaves. One of the most graphic
examples of using the wrong tool for the job was when
somebody I knew, who thought he was the bees knees
in guitar repairs, used an electric drill for everything. I
once saw him try to use it with a 1/16 in bit. There
was far too much torque for the drill bit to handle and
the bit broke sending half of it spinning away, and the
other half, still in the drill chuck, went straight through
the top of the guitar he was working on. You do not get

enough control over an electric drill to use it in this way.

They are very good for a number of jobs but they must
be treated with care. Perhaps that person learned his
lesson. Who knows?
Apart from the standard joinery tools such as plane,
chisels, saws and knives there are some specialised
tools that are not impossible to get hold of. For example, there are two ways of cutting out pick-up cavities.
You can either remove as much of the waste as is possible with a drill and then tidy up using chisels, or you
can use a router. Routers are the electric guitar-makers
friend; they are basically an electric gouge, and can

17

be used for any number of jobs. The problem is that

they are expensive. Buying even a second-hand one will
push the cost of your guitar up very steeply. The answer
is to hire. There are plenty of hire shops around and the
rates are not excessive.
Cutting the body of the guitar can be done by hand,
although not with a coping saw, but this is time-consuming. It is easier to use a band saw, but a good band
saw is even further out of reach than a good router. It
is the same with a power planer. There are times when
machine-planing a piece of wood could save hours of
hard work. The answer in these cases is to try what I

18

Tools

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

used to do before I got labour-saving goodies for myself. I found that by a little polite talking I could get to
use the machinery in a local joinery firm. All that was
needed was to ask very nicely and make a small donation into the workers tea and coffee fund. Of course,
they would not have been too happy if I had been there
every day using their machines while I turned out loads
of guitars for a massive profit, but for the small amount
that I was doing it was acceptable. I found that the
guys who worked for the company became interested
in what I was doing as, while it was all woodwork, it

19

Most of the tools shown are usually found

in a reasonably well equipped home
workshop. The remainder, such as the fret
files, truss-rod adjusters and the and the
swing-winder, are all relatively inexpensive.

was in an entirely different field to them. They were

also a great help as they offered advice on aspects of
woodworking that I either hadnt learned yet or was
simply too stupid to realise. You can learn from anyone,
not just those in the same line as you.

20

Tools

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

The basic woodworking tools that you will need are

as follows. For marking out and planning your guitar
you will need a good straight edge at least 18 in long,
and a rule marked in both feet and inches and millimetres. As well as pencils you will need a marking knife
and a square, and probably a protractor for marking out
the angle of the guitars head and neck if they are to
be used.
To prepare your chosen hunk of tree you will need a
rip saw, a tenon saw and a bow saw, for cutting out the
basic shape of the guitar if you do not have access to a
band saw, a shooting plane and a good jack plane. The
longer jack plane that you use, the easier it is to plane
a straight line.
G-lamps, in a selection of sizes from 1 to 8 in, will
be needed when glueing up the component parts of
the guitar or the laminates that make them. Clamps
can prove to be expensive and so borrowing is advisable, especially as they are only used when something
is being glued and when the glue is set they can be
removed. If, however, you do buy them it is worth looking in army surplus stores as they can often be bought
cheaply. At least two sash clamps of about 18 in in
length will be needed if the body of the guitar has to
be laminated and these too are expensive to buy but
often can be hired.
For the preparation of the guitars body and neck a
router will save a lot of time. It will be useful not only
for cutting out the holes for the pick-ups, but also for
cutting the truss rod channel, control cavities and binding channels.
For shaping the neck you will need spokeshaves,
both concave and convex, and wood rasps or surforms.
Sur-forms come in variety of shapes and make carving
necks and body tops a lot easier. They can also be used
to carve out the contours on Stratocaster-style bodies.
A selection of chisels will be useful for a number of
jobs from tidying up the tenon on a glued-in neck to finishing off roughly cut pick-up holes, and a small gouge
will be needed if the guitar is to be fitted with a Gibson-

style head and truss rod. A coping saw is essential for

a number of jobs, as is a junior hacksaw.
A pillar drill, or access to one, will take any of the
sloppiness out of drilling machine-head holes and
bridge-mounting holes, but, if one cannot be scrounged,
a domestic electric drill in one of the drill stands that
are often sold as accessories will suffice. The domestic
electric drill can be used for drilling all sorts of holes, although not with a 1/16 in bit, and a small wheel brace
will pay for itself many times over. A good selection of
drill bits from 1/16 to 1/2 in will see a lot of use.
For preparing the fingerboard you will need the
jack plane and the square as well as a small dovetail
or gentlemens saw for cutting the fret slots. If the
fingerboard is to be inlaid then a small router will be
very helpful and small sharp chisels will be needed to
tidy up the recess.
The frets are fitted using a pair of pliers to gently bend
them to shape and a small hammer to fit them into the
board. The ends are then cut flush with a pair of endcutters. These need to be fairly heavy duty as fretwire
is quite tough. I could not find a pair that cut flush so I
bought a pair that almost fitted the bill, and got a friend,
who works in the engineering shop of the local railway
depot, to grind them to the shape that I needed.
After the frets are fitted they are levelled using an
oilstone. It is probably worth buying a new oilstone just
for use on frets so as to ensure that it is flat. This should
be soaked at least over night in a bowl of light oil to
temper its cut.
One of the few specialised hand tools that will need
to be bought is a fret file. These are concave files that
are made in a variety of widths to suit the different sizes
of fretwire that are available. They are used to round
the fret over and remove the flat top that is left after the
frets have been stoned level.
The tools used for the painting of the guitar are covered in Chapter 13.
For the final assembly of the guitar screwdrivers,
both blade and crosshead, a socket set or a collection

of spanners will be used to install the pick-ups and

machine-heads into their respective places. A soldering
iron of about 25 watts is required to connect everything
inside the guitar. A smaller iron will not be powerful
enough for some jobs. A pair of wire cutters and a pair
of long-nosed pliers will also see a lot of use. Other
small tools that will be used for any number of jobs
throughout the making of your guitar will be a sharp
craft knife and a selection of files, and, if you intend to
make your own truss rod, a tap-and-die of the right size
should be bought or borrowed.
Lastly, sandpaper or production paper will be needed
in all grades from 120 through to 1000 wet-and-dry for
finishing the wood and the paintwork, together with different-shaped cork blocks to back the sandpaper while
it is being used. Also needed will be some scrap wood
or plywood to use as clamping cauls, and ^ in plywood
can be used to make up jigs that will take a lot of the
hard work out the job in hand. A fret saw will also come
in very handy for some small jobs, most notably cutting
out scratch or back plates.
This list of tools is quite long and if they were all to
be bought from new then it would prove to be very
expensive; however, I would imagine that, if someone
has taken the decision to take on something as large as
making a guitar, then they would be in possession of at
least some of the tools required, if not most of them. As
for the rest, it is always worth trying to borrow them as
the worst anyone will say when asked is a simple no.

21

22

Woods

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Woods
In my humble opinion wood is
the finest and most satisfying
material it is possible to work
with. It comes in a variety of
colours, textures, weights and
strengths and no two pieces,
even from the same tree, will
ever be the same.

Obviously some sorts of wood are better suited to a

particular part of a guitar than others, and over the
years several sorts of wood have become the standard
used for a particular job. The use of ebony and rosewood for fingerboards is just one example. Exceptions
to the rules are not uncommon. An example here is the
use by Leo Fender of maple for both the neck and the
fingerboard on most of his guitars. So, it can be seen
that other woods can be substituted for the standard
guitar-making woods providing that they have the same
qualities, in terms of weight and strength, as the woods
they are replacing. You cannot, for example, make a
guitar neck from balsa.
In recent years there has been a move away from
using these standard woods and it is not unusual now
to find a guitar made from some very exotic-sounding
woods. One reason for this is the steady decline in the
worlds supplies. Vast areas of hardwood forest are decimated each year to provide either much-needed farming land in developing countries, or big profits for some
very fat men who only have their pockets to think of.
In most countries, this forest is not being replanted,
and if it is very often only with softwood trees. Two
hundred years ago, England was covered with forests of
ash and oak and other indigenous hardwoods, and pine
trees were only to be found in Scotland. Pine grows
much faster than any hardwood and is, therefore, a
more profitable crop, so we now find the forests of England full of Scots pine.
Elsewhere, the situation is more critical. Each year the
forests of South America shrink by a massive amount.
This is not just a waste of a lot of the worlds available
timber, but it is dangerous to mankind as a whole. The
Brazilian rain forest provides almost one third of the
worlds oxygen by means of photosynthesis. The situation is not going to get better and few people are giving
any thought to the possible consequences of all this.
Ash can be very pretty; but it can be very difficult to

A 1959 Les Paul standard showing the

curly maple top which, on this guitar, is
unfortunately not bookmatched.

23

24

Woods

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

spray as it is very open-grained, and varnishes tend to

sink into the pores of the wood. Alder is a finer-grained
wood that can be pretty boring to look at but it has the
advantage of being light in weight while still being very strong.
There has been, and probably always will be, some
discussion on whether a heavy body will automatically
increase the guitars sustain and whether the wood
used will alter the sound of the guitar. I do not wish
to enter into long descriptions of different woods and
quote what I think are the hard and fast rules, as until
someone does some serious research on the subject
any such notes would be purely subjective. What I do
think is that the wood of a guitar body does seem to
have an effect on the sound of the instrument; a mahogany-bodied guitar does seem to sound different to
a maple-bodied guitar when all of the other fittings are
the same. Equally one mahogany guitar will sometimes
sound much different to another even when all hardware and pick-ups are the same. However, I do not think
that the weight of the body has such a marked effect
on the sustain.
A friend of mine once owned a pair of 1962 Fender
Stratocasters. One had an alder body the other had ash.
In all other respects they were the same. They certainly
sounded different and the lighter alder-bodied guitar
sustained longer than the ash guitar.
Over the years I have formed one or two ideas on
what I like and these have come about by trial and error. Maple-bodied guitars seem to have a harsher sound
than many other guitars. Mahogany seems to be very
warm-sounding and I prefer alder to ash. A good substitute for alder is parana pine; it is the same density as
alder, a similar colour, cheap and plentiful, but, unfortunately, often very knotty.
The weight of the wood used for the body is an important consideration. A guitar made from a 3-in plank
of maple will be unbearably heavy and will wear someone out if they play it for a two-hour concert.
The wood for the body may not be available in a sufficient width to get the whole body out of one plank. This

is often the case and several pieces have to be glued together to get the correct width. I have seen up to seven
pieces used for one body, but this is a little excessive.
It is more common to find two- or three-piece bodies.
One of the nicest ways of getting a piece of wood to
the correct width is to bookmatch it. Bookmatching
is when the wood is split down its centre and the two
pieces are opened out like the pages in a book, hence
the name. This gives each piece of timber a mirror-image grain pattern. Some examples of the Gibson Les
Paul made between 1958 and 1960 had very pretty
book-matched flamed maple tops. Not all of these Sunburst Standards were as highly figured as some, but
those that were are now worth a lot of money.
In recent years a lot of Japanese guitar companies
and some of the American replacement parts manufacturers have made guitar bodies and necks in some
very interesting woods. Many of the Japanese guitars
have straight through necks of maple with the body
sides made up of a sandwich of exotic woods. They
usually have a core of maple or ash and these are faced
with a thin veneer of the chosen wood. This type of
construction is covered in Chapter 11.
The American use of the woods is predominantly on
replacement bodies and necks for Fender, or Fenderstyle, guitars, although makers such as Alembic have
been using woods that are out of the ordinary for some years.
A list of these woods would be almost pointless, as
merely quoting their names will not do justice to the
beauty of some of them. Besides, unless you have access to a supplier who stocks these woods you will
have little chance of obtaining them. It is hard enough
to find maple and ash in most woodyards, let alone
such things as zebrano, paduak wenge or umbunga.
The answer is to find a specialist wood supplier and
to ask very nicely for small offcuts of exotic woods before you make your choice. My personal favourites
are hedua, Indian laurel and walnut, with paduak and
maple both high on the list; but for making a simple first
guitar I would recommend mahogany.

The choice of wood available at David

Dyke (Luthers Supplies) in Sussex.

25

26

Woods

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

As important as the type of wood that you use for the

guitar is the state that the wood is in. Ideally, guitarmaking wood should be straight-grained, quarter-sawn
and air-dried.
Quarter-sawn timber is not found very often. The term
quarter-sawn refers to the way in which the planks are
cut from the tree. Quarter-sawn wood is around 25 per
cent stronger than the alternative slab-sawn wood, but
the method of cutting it is very wasteful; many woodyards will not even consider it, and so the wood is cut
in slabs through the plank.
Air-drying the wood, as opposed to kiln-drying, is also
unusual. Here the wood is stored for twenty or thirty
years in the open air, slowly drying all of the time. Clearly this is uneconomic. The answer, therefore, is to use
the best of what is available.
When buying the wood for your guitar I would recommend looking at the wood and not buying it unseen. It
is well worth taking a little time and trouble to find a
piece that will not let you down by warping or splitting.
Firstly the plank should be inspected for checks and
cracks. These are often known as shakes, and are small
splits along the grain of the wood. Any wood in this
condition should be avoided.
Since it is unlikely that you will be able to find any
quarter-sawn wood, it is worth looking at the growth
rings at the end of the plank to find a piece of wood
that most closely resembles it. The growth rings should
be, as near as possible, perpendicular to the side face
of the plank. If the growth rings are clearly semi-circular,
the wood may well curve across the plank and split.
Wood like this should also be avoided.
It is an unfortunate fact that quarter-sawn wood is
no as pretty as slab-sawn wood, for the simple reason
that it is cut so that the grain is as straight as possible.
If intending to use figured wood in your guitar, it would
be a good idea to use wood that is as near as possible
quarter-sawn for the neck and a pretty slab-sawn piece
for the body.
The flame in curly maple, and some other woods, is
caused by the weight of the tree compressing the grain

Bookmatching, by splitting the wood

down the centre and opening out,
gives a mirror-image grain pattern.

in the lower part of the tree. This wood can be very

attractive, but even when quarter-sawn can be quite
unstable. A curly maple neck on a guitar is very pretty,
but I prefer to use a straight-grained piece.
Although air-dried wood is a little stronger than kilndried, it is almost impossible to find, but since most
wood is kiln-dried very carefully to retain just the right
amount of moisture there is little to worry about when buying.
It is possible to build a successful guitar using just the
mahogany substitutes that you can find in most woodyards or builders suppliers as long as you are careful
when you buy it.
Lastly, if you have any queries never be afraid to ask
someones advice. Most woodvards will have at least
one employee who has been in the business for a long
time and who will probably know more about wood
than most people know about themselves. If you feel
that the advice that you have been given is nothing but
salesmanship, then take your business elsewhere; if
someone does not like you choosing your own piece
of wood the chances are that what is available is not
worth buying.

Quarter-sawn timber (a) gets its name

as the log is first sawn into four and
then the planks are cut from this to
give the required grain pattern.
As can be seen this leaves a segment
that does not get used and is therefore
wasted. The slab-sawn method (b) is less
wasteful and careful inspection can reveal
planks with a quarter-sawn grain pattern.

27

28

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Guitar No 1

Guitar No 1
The guitars made in the next
three chapters to demonstrate
the various styles and methods
that are possible are relatively
straightforward designs, but I
have endeavoured to show as
many of the possible options as
I can with just the three guitars.

29

The Neck
These designs cover the following elements: bolt-on,
glued-in and straight-through necks with the truss rods
installed from the front and from the rear with their adjustment at the head or body end of the neck; one-piece
necks, as found on many of Fender's guitars, and guitars with separate fingerboards, both bound and unbound, and with dot and block markers; bodies made
from one piece of wood and bodies made of several
pieces of exotic wood or faced with pretty wood and
then bound; flat-topped and carved-topped bodies and
bodies with Fender-style contouring. The finishes used
include block colour finishes, sunbursts and an oil and
wax finish.
Finally, I have devoted some time (in Chapter 12)
to show how the various styles and methods can be
mixed in order that you can build a successful guitar of
any design using any combination of the methods that
I have outlined.
The first of these guitars is the one whose design was
given in Chapter 3, and it is a left-handed one. Most
commercial guitar companies charge an extra 10 or 15
per cent for 'their left-handed guitars, because the production run of right-handed guitars must be interrupted
in order to make the limited numbers of left-handed
instruments. This is not the case with a hand-built instrument and, if a certain amount of jig work is to be
done, it is a simple task to turn the jigs upside down.
The only problem that I, as a right-handed person, have
is to remember that the guitar is to be left-handed and
not to do something stupid, like forget and proceed as
if I were making a right-handed guitar.

The neck of this guitar is to be made of mahogany. I am

using three pieces each 25 x 2 1/4 x 3/4. One advantage of three-piece necks over one-piece ones is that
if one of the laminates tries to move slightly the other
two will hold it in place and so keep the neck straight.
If a one-piece neck bends, that is it!
The outside two laminates of the neck that I am making are from one plank and the centre laminate from
another. These are glued with the grain of the centre
laminate running the other way to the outside two Another way of doing this is to buy one plank 25 x 7 x 3/4
in and slice it lengthways into three, remembering to
reverse the centre laminate before glueing. Either way
the wood must be chosen so that the grain is straight
and most closely resembles quarter-sawn wood.
Before I got my band saw I used to cut out the three
laminates roughly to the shape that they needed to be
with a hand-held electric jig saw before glueing them.
The saw rarely went through the wood squarely, no
matter how well set up it was beforehand, and so a fair
amount of wood was left either side of the laminate to
allow for any angle on the saw cut and for any slippage
while the three pieces were being glued. This was not
the best way of doing the job but in the circumstances
it was all that I could do as the jig saw had difficulty in
going through 3/4 in of wood let alone 2 1/4 in.

The neck blank planed and marked.

Cutting the neck shape out after the three laminates

have been glued gives the same amount of waste as a
one-piece neck, and in theory cutting the laminates out
before glueing should give less; however, in practice
this is rarely the case.
The main advantage of cutting the neck out after
the three laminates have been glued is that it is easier
to hold the wood in the vice while the top surface is
planed flat, and the added depth at the sides of the
neck makes checking that the surface is square to the
sides easier as there is more wood to rest the square
against. It is also easier to keep the laminates from slipping while they are being glued.
I have used a woodworking glue sold under the trade
name of Titebond to join the three laminates but any
good woodworking glue will be adequate. As many
clamps as possible are used to hold the three pieces
together and enough glue should be used so that some
seeps out when the pieces are clamped as this will
indicate that the glue has spread over the whole area
being glued. The neck is then left overnight to dry out
thoroughly before the clamps are removed.
An alternative form of neck construction is used by
many classical guitar-makers. This uses less wood than
I am using and does not require a band saw to cut the
side elevation of the neck. The wood used on a one-

30

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Guitar No 1

The neck laminates glued and clamped.

Side elevations of how to cut the

classical neck. It can be seen that this
style makes the head stronger.

piece, or laminated, neck is 2 1/4 in deep to allow

sufficient depth for the angled head. By splicing the
head onto the neck and building up the heel with small
blocks of the same wood the whole neck can be made
from one piece. There are two ways of splicing the
head and these are both shown in the accompanying
drawings. One uses slightly less wood than the other
but both can be easily cut from a piece 27 x 2 1/4 x
3/4 in. One advantage of this style of construction is
that that grain in the head runs parallel to its face and
so it is stronger than a neck where the grain runs at an
angle across the head.
When the three laminates have dried the clamps are
removed and the top surface of the neck is planed flat
and square to the sides. It is essential that this is done
well as almost all measurements- and angles that are
subsequently drawn onto the neck depend on this being accurate.
The next stage is to draw on the plan view and side
elevation of the neck. Firstly the centre line is drawn
onto the top of the wood. The end of the fingerboard
and the position and width of the nut are measured,
checked, and the marks are extended across the face
of the neck with the marking square. The width of the
fingerboard at the nut and at the end of the fingerboard
is measured and marked as is the width and length of
the neck tenon. The fingerboard is a total of 42 mm
wide at the nut and 56 mm at the body; the tenon is
70 mm long and 40 mm wide.
The side elevation is then drawn onto the neck starting with the angle, depth and length of the head, the
The neck blank planed and marked.
depth and length of the neck tenon and finally the
depth of the neck and shape of the heel.
It should be noted that the join between the neck and
the body is not perpendicular to the face of the neck
but is angled back slightly toallow for the angle that
the neck will lay back from the body.
When the neck has been fully marked out and all of
the dimensions checked the side elevation of the neck

31

is carefully cut out on the band saw and the face of the
head is planed flat.
The position of the truss rod is marked and a curved
rod is fitted in the way described in Chapter 6. When
the fillet has dried it is planed flat and the neck is put
to one side while work on the body is started. There is
little point at this stage in cutting the sides of the neck
or the neck tenon as it is easier to cut the tenon to fit
the slot than the other way round.

The Body
The body of this guitar is cut from one piece of mahogany 17 x 13 x 2 in. Finding a piece of wood this
big could prove to be a problem and in such cases the
body could be made of two or even three pieces of
wood. A body with a 1 1/2 in mahogany base and a
1/2 in maple front would have a similar construction to
a Gibson Les Paul or Yamaha SG, although it would be
a little thinner. The Les Paul was originally made with
a maple front to improve sustain; however, early model
Les Paul customs, made between 1954 and 1960, had
one-piece mahogany bodies and these guitars tend to
sound a little more middly than the equivalent maple-fronted Les Paul standard. I am making this guitar
with a one-piece mahogany body as it is a little more
straightforward.
The body shape is marked onto the wood and the
shape is cut out. It is at this stage that if you do not
have access to a band saw, and you intend to do a similar job by hand, you will begin to appreciate just what
a band is capable of.
For this guitar I have not got too heavily involved in
working with jigs and so the body is cut out carefully
as close as possible to the drawn line so that it is easily
sanded to shape.
The band saw cuts the sides of the guitar vertically,
but leaves saw marks on the wood that have to be
sanded away, using firstly 120 grade sandpaper, then

32

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

240 grade and finally 320 grade on a block, taking care

to keep the sides square and all curves flowing.
If the body had not been cut out on the band saw
but on a bow saw then the sides will need a little more
work to bring them up to the required standard, as the
saw is highly unlikely to cut as square as the band saw.
It may be possible that sandpaper alone will not be
enough and spokeshaves may have to be used to remove most of the waste wood. Cutting out and shaping
the body in this way is hard work. It is not too bad in
winter when physical activity is helpful in preventing
hypothermia but during the heat of summer it can be
a little tiresome.
In order to use the Japanese tunomatic bridge the
neck needs to be angled back in the way described
in Chapter 3. Since the angle starts at the end of the
fingerboard the area on the face of the guitar that the
fingerboard covers will also have to be angled back. If
the same method of calculating the angle is used as in
Chapter 3, the distance between the two lines at the
point representing the end of the body is how much
lower the body will have to be at this point in order for
the angle to be correct. This measurement can be carefully transferred to the end of the body and marked in
pencil. A centre line is marked into the body at the point
where the fingerboard will end. A line is then drawn
across the face of the guitar from this point perpendicular to the center line. Since the top of the body is to be
curved and it is usual to keep and depth at the same
sides the same as the depth of the body at the neck
and body join, this measurement is taken abd marked
around the edge of the guitar, with the exception of the
inside cutaways, using a marking guage.
The neck angle can then be planed, taking care to
keep the angle consistant across the face of the guitar.
The anfle is planed so that it meets the point at the end
of the guitar body that has just been marked; the sharp
angle that this leaves across the face of the guitar will
disappear when the top is carved. The slot in the body
that will take the neck tenon can noe be marked and

Guitar No 1

The body wood.

Band sawing the body shape.

cut. The tenon on this guitar is to be 40 mm wide and

70mm long, and so 20mm is marked either side of the
centre line.
The slot in the body could be cut by hand but this
would prove to be tricky. In order to keep construction
of the neck simple I am cutting the slot in the body at
the required angle and the tenon on the neck straight.
If the body slot was to be cut by hand, for example with
drills and chisels, it would be easier to cut the slot with
a flat bottom and the tenon angled. Since I am cheating and using the router it is just easy for me to use the
angled surface that has just been planed onto the guitar as a base for the router while it cuts a corresponding
angled shot into the front of the guitar.
For this job I must have made up a simple routing
jig that will sit on the front of the body being held in
place with double-sided tape. Plywood jigs will give a
little and so it is better to make the jig very slightly
undersize. Double-sided tape may not seem to be the
obvious choice for holding jigs down during the rigours
of routing but it does the job very well. Most doublesided tape is pressure-sensitive and so the harder it is
pressed the firmer it sticks. Providing that the surface
that the jig is fixed to is flat there is no reason why
avery firm join cannot be made. If, however, you have
any doubts about the safety of this method do not take
any chances and work out a way of fixing the jig to the
wood with small skrews.
With care the screw holes can be positioned so that
they are hidden, in this case by the guitar fingerboard,
when the guitar is complete.
The first few cuts with the router are made by leaving
about 1/8 in inside the jig until enough depth has been
reached for the shank of the router bit to run against
the jig, without digging into it. and so cutting the slot
flush. the slot is cut 30mm deep and, if necessary, the
sides are tidied with a 1 in chisel.
The tenon on the neck can now be cut. Firstly the
angle that enables the end of the neck to butt against
the end of the body is cut into the sides of the neck.

The body wuth pick-ups, bridge

and tail piece positions and the
start of the neck angle marked.

33

34

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Sanding the body sides.

The sides of the tenon can be tidied with the 1 in chisel,

and care must be taken to ensure that the centre line
of the neck and body line up correctly. If there is any
slight discrepency in this it may be necessary to pare
away one side of the tenon and build the other up with
small pieces of veneer. This is not the ideal way of doing things but since I have seen some very expensive
factory-produced guitars with veneer-shimmed necks I
see no reason why it cannot be done on the first homebuilt guitar. The neck is not fixed at this stage but is put
to one side while work on the body is finished.
The pick-up holes are now cut into the top of the
body. If using a router it is well worth making a jig up
for this as the pick-up surround is only slightly larger

Guitar No 1

than the cavity, leaving little room for error. It is better

to ruin a piece of plywood making a jig than to mess
up the top of the guitar. The jig can be made of 1/2
in plywood and can either be routed carefully or cut
out with a small electric jig saw. A little time taken to
make a good jig will be repaid with a much neater job.
If the pick-up holes are to be cut freehand with drills
and chisels, the drills must be fitted with some form
of depth stop. Some tape wrapped around the drill bit
will suffice if the job is to be done by hand but ideally
the drilling should be done using either a pillar drill or a
domestic electric drill in one of the drill stands that are
usually sold as accessories.
The corners of the cavity should be drilled first and
then as much of the scrap wood as possible is drilled
away. The drilled holes are then linked with a chisel,
taking care to keep the sides vertical.
When both pick-up cavities have been cut, the control cavity at the rear of the guitar is cut. This has to be
large enough to accept the two volume controls, the
two tone controls and the three-way selector switch.
It is possible to cut the cavity using drills and chisels
but cutting the recess for the cavity cover plate would
be difficult to do in this way. If using drills and chisels it
would probably be a good idea to leave the cover plate
proud of the guitar back, as this will look less untidy
than a bad attempt at a recess.
Once again I am taking the easiest way out and I am
using a set of jigs that make cutting the cavity, cover
and its recess mind-renchingly simple. Since the guitar is to be left-handed the jigs are used upside down
on the other half of the body to where they normally
would be. This is then double-checked to make sure
that they are not being cut in the wrong place, which
may sound stupid but has been known. The cavity could
be routed freehand. This is made easier by drilling some
of the excess wood away before starting.
The position of the controls are marked onto the rear
the guitar body in pencil and the proposed centres of
the potentiometers are centre-punched. The pots are 1

35

The neck tenon and slot as made.

Cutting the neck tenon.

The tenon and slot if the angle

was to be cut on the tenon.

in diameter, and so to give adequate clearance a drill

of in is used to cut down about 1/2 in into the body.
The position of the switch also receives this treatment,
but with a smaller diameter drill, 1 in being sufficient
for this, two holes are drilled for the selector switch to
allow for its length. This leaves six small holes in the
positions of the controls. The edges of these holes are
joined with a pencil line. This is slightly curved so that
an area is left for the cover plate to rest against without
having to make the cover and its recess vastly oversize.
These pencil lines are used as a guide when routing
to join the holes together. About 1/8 in is removed in
each pass and when the depth of the predrilled holes

is reached the cavity should be deep enough for the

router bit to be used against the edge of the cavity in
the way that it would be used with a jig.
Whichever way the cavity is cut it must be taken
down to about 3/16 below the level of the proposed
depth at the edge of the guitar. This will leave enough
wood at the front of the guitar to mount the controls in
the positions closest to the edge of the guitar, but the
positions nearest the centre of the body may need to
be routed a little deeper after the top of the guitar has
been carved.
When the cavity is finished the cover plate is made
and fitted. It is cut out of thin PVC sheet and is available from most guitar-makers suppliers. It can be cut
with either a fret saw or a small electric jig saw so that
it overlaps the cavity by just enough for the small fixing
screws to be fitted. I am cutting it using a small router
mounted on a drill stand that acts in the same way as a
pin router. It is not as accurate as the larger commercial
pin routers but it is several thousand pounds cheaper
and more than adequate for the job. The bit is suspended directly over over a pin of the same diameter. A

36

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Guitar No 1

Above: Making a pick-up routing jig, in

case for a Kent Armstrong bass pick-up,
from plywood using an electric jig saw.
Test fitting the neck into the finished body.

master shape of the coverplate is pushed past the pin

and the router bit is brought down to cut an identical
shape into the piece of PVC sheet that is held in place
on the jig by the ever-useful double-sided tape.
I am also cutting the recess with a small routing jig,
but this can be cut freehand with a little care. It would
be almost impossible to do a good job with drills and
chisels as the plastic sheet is not very thick, which
would make drilling and chiselling the recess difficult,
but it can be cut freehand with the router.
The cover is held in place over the cavity and is carefully scribed around. The router is then set to the depth
of the PVC sheet and the excess wood is carefully removed up to the scribed line. This must be done very
carefully so that the line is not crossed as the torque
from the router motor will cause it to want to wander.
The recess can then be tidied with careful use of a
sharp knife or chisel and, if necessary, the cover can be
trimmed to fit slightly.

The mounting holes for the controls are not drilled at

this stage as this is best done after the top has been carved.
The positions of the bridge and tailpiece mounting
studs can be measured and centre-punched, remembering to move the bass side of the bridge back by about
3/16 in to compensate for the differences in stretch of
the strings when they are fretted and so keep the guitar
in tune. These holes could be drilled before the top is
contoured but I have chosen to cut them afterwards, as
since the area around the bridge and tailpiece is not to
be contoured the centre-punched positions will not be lost.
The last job before carving the top is to drill the locating hole for the jack socket. This is best done before
the top is contoured as the body has to be held in the
vice. The hole is drilled midway between the bottom of
the body and the line that shows where the contouring
will end on the side. A 7/8 in bit is used and the hole
is drilled so that the bit reaches the control cavity but
does not fully emerge into it.

Below: Routing the control cavity.

The finished cover and its jig can be
seen as the line around the edge of the
body that will be the finished depth.

37

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Make Your Own Electric Guitar

The area either side of the neck slot that will be covered by the fingerboard is marked, as this is not to be
contoured, and the top of the body is gently carved
down to the line around the edge using surforms, spokeshaves and, if available, small violin-makers planes, taking care to keep all of the lines flowing. When the main
bulk of the work has been done the final shaping is
achieved with progressively finer grades of sandpaper.
The holes for the bridge and tailpiece mounting are
drilled on a pillar drill. These holes must be drilled accurately and so use of a pillar drill for these is essential.
The pick-up cavities are joined to the control cavity using extra long drills. These can be bought from
engineering suppliers, although they may have to be
ordered, and a 1/4 in drill is used to link the pick-up
cavities to the control. The hole linking the front pickup
starts in the neck slot so that the drill does not have to
go through the wood at an excessive angle, but great
care must be taken with both holes to ensure that the
drill bit does not wander and either miss the control cavity or emerge from the front or rear of the guitar. Each
hole should be centre-punched before drilling as this
helps the bit bite into the correct place on the wood.
A small hole is also drilled from the bridge mounting
hole to the control cavity to take the earth wire. A 1/8
in extra long drill is used for this.
The last job on the body is to drill the control mounting holes. The locating hole for the switch is drilled
to 1/2 in and the four potentiometers to 3/8 in. The
potentiometers and switch can then be test fitted and
if there is still too much wood on the face of the guitar
the body can be held firmly onto the workbench and
the cavity routed a little deeper where it is needed.
Attention can now return to the neck. Firstly the sides
are cut down to just outside the line that denotes the
edge of the fingerboard and the head is cut to shape.
If the intended head shape is wider than the existing
wood it will need to be built up with small strips of
wood which must be left to dry out thoroughly before
the head shape is cut. The head shape is cut using a

Guitar No 1

Routing the front pick-up cavity.

Above: Pin routing the cover plate.

coping saw and is cleaned up using sandpaper. The

sides of the neck are cut down using a coping or bow
saw. This is done very carefully, as neither saw was
designed to cut straight lines.
The fingerboard is next to be made and fitted. This is
made of ebony and is prepared in the way described in
Chapter 7, except that it is made 2 mm narrower than
needed as the binding will bring it up to the correct
width. The fret slots are cut and before the fingerboard
is cambered the block markers are fitted. These are
fitted in the same places as the dots would normally
be. The inlays are made of acetate and are bought
ready-cut from a guitar parts supplier. These are held
in their correct positions on the wood and are scribed
around. The scribed lines are then filled with chalk to
make them stand out from the dark background of the
ebony. A small router.is used with a 1/8 in bit to cut
away most of :he waste wood. This is done in two passes as the router is not powerful enough to deal with

Routing the control cavity. The finished cover and its jig can be seen as
the line around th edge of the body
that will be the finished depth.

39

40

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

The cavity, its cover and recess.

Guitar No 1

41

Carving the top using a small vilin-makers plane.

Tidying the cavities with a chisel.

Joining the pick-up and control cavities

with the bodyfixed firmly to the bench.

the full depth of the inlay recess. The fingerboard is a

little too narrow to support the router safely on its own
and so the fingerboard is fixed to a plywood base and
the router is supported on small pieces of plywood, either side of the fingerboard, which are the same height.
After the router has removed most of the waste the
recesses are tidied up using a small, and very sharp,
chisel. The inlays are then epoxied into place and any
small gaps around them can be filled with black filler.
If a commercial black filler is not available one can be
made up using glue and ebony dust.
When this has set thoroughly the board is cambered.
There should be enough thickness in the inlays to allow
far quite a lot of camber but it is worth proceeding with
caution so as not to make the edges of the inlays too thin.
There are two ways that binding is fitted to a guitar
fingerboard. Both ways are similar and both stop mois-

ture entering the fingerboard, which could cause die

fret to lift, as well as to be decorative.
The first way is to fret the board before the binding is
fitted. The frets are not filed off at an angle at the edge
of the board but are filed flush. The binding is then
glued on so that it is slightly higher than the board and
the frets. It is then filed and scraped down to the level
of the board between the fret positions and the shape
of the fret end. This is the method that Gibson use.
The other way is to fit the binding first and then to
install the frets. The tang of the fretwire has to be cut
back slightly so that the bead of the fret is carried over
the binding. This method has the advantage of giving
slightly more fret across the fingerboard allowing a
slightly wider spacing of the strings. This is also the
method that should be used when re-fretting a guitar
with binding but all too often I have seen guitars re-

42

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Guitar No 1

43

The bound and inlaid fretboard.

Using the small router with a 1/2

in bit to cut the inlay recesses.

The two different ways of binding the fretboard.

The control positions. It can be seen

that the top is still quite thick and the
cavity will have to be deepened.

fretted by supposedly professional repairers who have

cut through the binding to make fitting the fret easier.
The binding is fitted for a reason and cutting the binding ruins the effect and the looks.
The binding is glued to the board using cynoacrylate,
or super, glue, and when dry is cleaned up so that it
is level with the face of the fingerboard. I prefer this
method as it not only gives a little wider string spacing
but also means that the fingerboard does not have to
be fretted before it is glued to the neck.
Great care must be taken when the board is glued to
the neck to ensure that it does not slip about while the
clamps are being tightened, as if the board goes onto
the neck crooked it will have to be removed and a new
one fitted. Also ensure that the surface of the board
is not marked by the clamps. To stop this a clamping
caul is used to protect the fingerboard, which will also
help to even out the force of the clamps. To stop the
fingerboard sliding around small double-ended pins can
be used. These can be small panel pins knocked part
way into the face of the neck and cut off about 1/16 in
above the surface and filed to a point. The board can
then be positioned correctly and clamped before any
glue is applied so that the pins make their own locating
holes in the underside of the board. The glue is then applied, the board repositioned and the clamps tightened.
All being well the board should not have moved. One
word of warning if using this method is that if you use
the worlds best glue spreaders, which are known to

those in the business as fingers, remember that there

are pins sticking out of the board when you spread the
glue as otherwise some of the glue could go a little redder than it is meant to be.
It is important to remove any glue from the area of
the neck tenon before it sets so that when the time
comes to fit the neck the glue will not make life difficult; since the glue that I am using is water soluble it is
removed with the aid of a slightly damp cloth.
After the glue has set and the clamps have been removed the neck can be shaped. This is done before the
neck is fitted to the body as the carved top of the guitar
will make it difficult to fit into the vice while the neck
is carved. The neck shaping is done with surforms and
spoke-shaves, finishing off with sandpaper.
Firstly the shape at each end of the neck is carved
roughly with round and half-round surforms. At this
stage it is important not to remove too much wood as
it is always possible to remove more later but impossible to put any back. Using a surform or spokeshave
the corresponding points on the two curves are joined
along the neck in a series of straight lines. When this
has been done the neck has its rough shape and this
can be refined with careful use of spokeshaves and
surforms before finishing off with progressively finer
grades of sandpaper.
The choice of neck contour is a matter of personal
taste which on a first guitar can be difficult to judge.
Removing too much wood will result in a neck that is

44

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Guitar No 1

The neck marked ready for shaping.

Removing the excess glue

from the neck tenon.

Each end of the neck shaped.

The rough neck shaped.

Drilling the machine-head holes.

The finished neck.

45

too flexible and, therefore, difficult to keep straight, and

there is a danger when removing too much wood that
the truss rod can be exposed; although not removing
enough wood will result in a neck that is fat and difficult to play. The last job before fitting the neck to the
body is to drill the machine head holes. This is another
job that really needs to be done on a drill stand or pillar
drill if the machine-heads are to fit well.
When the neck has been sanded it can be glued to
the body. If the woodworking to this stage has been
perfect then the neck will line up perfectly with the
centre line of the body. If, however, the woodworking has been even the slightest bit relaxed and veneer
shims are needed, the utmost care must be taken to
ensure that the neck lines up correctly with the body
before the glue sets it will be impossible to change if
it is wrong except by removing the neck and making a
new one. It is well worth attempting a dry run of the
neck fit, including clamping and fitting of any veneers,
to iron out any problems that could occur before the
glue is applied. After the glueing has been successfully completed the excess glue can be removed and
any filling that may be needed around the neck joint
attended to.
The guitar is then ready to be fretted. The frets
have to be fitted between the binding, and so a small
amount if the tang has to be removed. The fret is fitted
in the normal way and the small length of bead that
overhangs the binding is sealed in place with a small
drop of superglue. This is to stop it rising up and catching any unsuspecting finger. When the glue has dried
the end of the fret can be shaped in the normal way.
The final job after fitting the frets is to install the nut.
This is made of a small piece of prepared bone that
is available from guitar-makers suppliers. Top nuts can
be made of a variety of materials. Ivory used to be the
standard but it does look much nicer if still attached
to the business end of an elephant. Bone is used as a
substitute and as this is a by-product of the food
industry it is nicer than ivory for which an elephant has

46

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Guitar No 1

The neck clamped into the body. The

clamping cauls can be clearly seen.

The fret showing how the tang can be removed to leave the bead over the binding.

to be killed especially. In recent years some manufacturers have used brass, plastic compounds and materials
such as graphite, and the use of these is a matter of
personal taste. Plain plastic nuts should not be used as
they are too soft and the strings stick in the grooves
making tuning difficult.
The nut is prepared with a junior hacksaw and files,
and is held in place by either superglue or epoxy. The
string positions are marked but not, at this stage, cut.
The guitar is now essentially finished and only needs
finish-sanding prior to being sprayed. All marks from
the tools used should be sanded away and the marks
from the coarser grades of sandpaper are removed with
finer grades, finishing with 320 grade. The finishing of
this guitar is covered in Chapter 13 and so I will not repeat it here, but after the lacquer has set and has been
buffed the guitar can be assembled.

The tone and volume controls are part-wired before

installation. This is easier than trying to do all of the wiring when the controls are in their positions inside the
cavity. I find it easier to drill a couple of small holes in
a block of wood that can hold the components steady
which helps avoid burnt fingers.
The pick-ups are fitted with their surrounds and
screwed to the guitar, taking care to keep them square
to the centre line of the guitar. It is worth fitting one
and wiring it into the circuit before fitting the other as
the connecting wires could get confused.
The machine-heads, in this case Schaller M6s, are fitted. The screws that Schaller provide are used to stop
the unit turning and not to hold it in place. They are
not very strong and should not be overtightened. The
machine-head is held more firmly with the nut that extends through the head to the casing of the unit. This
nut is tightened with a small box spanner.

Other parts, such as the strap buttons, jack-socket

mounting-plate and control cover are also fitted, but the
bridge and tail piece are left off until the strings are fitted as otherwise they can fall from their mounting studs
and damage the guitars finish. The truss rod cover is
not fitted until after the guitar is set up.
When all of the parts have been added to the guitar
the guitar can be set up ready for playing. This is covered in detail in Chapter 15.
There is a particular feeling that I get whenever I finish a guitar. It is a mixture of achievement and concern.
A lot of work goes into each guitar and it is the first
notes that are played on the guitar after it has been set
up that give the initial impression.
If there have been niggling problems during the making of the guitar, the moment that it is finished can be
one of great relief. On the other hand I always get a lingering doubt that I may have forgotten something im-

47

portant. This is probably quite a normal paranoia, the

same as you get when you arrive at your chosen holiday destination and cannot remember if you turned off
the gas stove before you left. However, all being well
the guitar will be wonderful and the sense of achievement that you feel should beat that which Sir Edmund
Hillary and Sherpa Tensing felt when they climbed that
little hill.
The guitar has only used some of the skills. There
may be others that you wish to use on your guitar,
and so rather than rest on my laurels I will attempt to
demonstrate these by making another guitar or two.

48

Make Your Own Electric Guitar

The nut before gluing.

Guitar No 1

Drilling the holes for the Schaller

heads fixing screws. The tape depth
stop can be seen on the bit.

Part-wired controls, in this case for

the eight-string bass, held in a block
of wood while being worked on.

49

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Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Appendix

Index

Action 10,154
Bigsby, Paul 15 Binding 35, 90
body 91
fingerboard 79
head 35 Body 10
construction 71-7, 85-92, 102-4
design 23, 29, 35 Bridge 10
Controls 34-5 capacitors 132 potentiometers 131-2 sockets 133 switches 130-1
Dan Electro Guitarlin 21
Feedback 13
Fender Broadcaster/Telecaster 16, 17, 85
Fender Jazz bass 32, 54, 56
Fender, Leo 15, 37
Fender Precision bass 20, 21
Fender Stratocaster 33, 36, 37, 47
Fingers, how to keep them 66-7
Finishing 120, 123
brush 119
buffing 123-4
lacquers 118-19
oil and wax 110
preparation 119-20
Fretboard/Fingerboard 10, 11
markers 35, 35, 64, 78-9, 97
preparation 60-4 Frets 10, 11, 21-3, 83
levelling 150-2
spacing 58-60
Gibson Firebird 22, 23
Gibson Flying V 14, 75, 27
Gibson Les Paul 18, 19, 28, 35, 44, 45
Gibson Les Paul Junior 30, 31, 44 Gibson
Les Paul Special 30, 30
Gibson S. G. 26, 44
Giffin bass 112, 115

Appendix: Addresses

Head 11 design 29
Intonation 154, 154-5
Les Paul 16
Machine-heads 10, 11, fitting 83-4
Neck 10, angle 25-9
construction 68-70, 69, 70, 92, 99, 101-2
depth 23 shaping 81, 81, 99, 107
Pick-up 10, 11, 126 Bartolini 128-9, 129
Charlie Christian 13, 15 Gibson humbiicker
127 Kent Armstrong 127, 128 Schaller 129,
129 Seymour Duncan 127-8, 128 winding
129
Rickenbacker Lap Steel 16
Scale length 10, 19-21, 58-60
Strings 10, 11
Top Nut 10, 11, 33, 34, 83, 83, 152-3
Travis Bigsby guitar 15
Truss rod 10, 34, 34, 51, 52, 153-4
Fender-style 93-6
history 51
installation 53-7, 102
Wiring schematics 134-48

Rokas
5 Denmark Street, London WC2, UK.
and at: 55 Fore Street, Bodmin, Cornwall, UK.
Cassmusic
29 South Street, Eastbourne, Sussex, UK.
Makintosh Craft Woods
Unit 7, Fort Fareham Industrial Estate,
Fareham, Hampshire, UK.
John Hornby Skewes
Salem House, Garforth, Leeds, UK.
Rose Morris
32/34 Gordon House Road, London NW5, UK.
Rosetti (EMI) Ltd
The House of Music, 138/140 Old Street,
London EC1, UK.
Rhino Music Spares
Burnham Road, Dartford, Kent, UK.
C. Summerfield Ltd
Saltmeadows Road, Gateshead, UK.
Carvin Pick-ups
1155 Industrial Avenue, Escondido,
California, 92025 USA.
Grover (Machine-Heads)
1278 West 9th Street, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

DiMarzio
1388 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island,
New York, 10310 USA.
E.M.G.
Box 4394, Santa Rosa, California, 95402 USA.
Schecter
2605 Andjon Street, Dallas,
Texas, 75220 USA.
Guitar Center
P.O. Box 15444, Tulsa, Okla. 74115 USA.
Vitali Import Co.
5944 Atlantic Blvd., Los Angeles, Ca. 90270 USA.
Guitars Unlimited Sales
P.O. Box 11449, Fort Worth, Texas 76109 USA.
Allied Traders
P.O. Box 603, Kendall Branch Miami, Fla.
33156 USA
Musicians Supply Inc.
P.O. Box 4507, San Diego, Ca. 92104 USA.

51

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Make Your Own Electric Guitar

Further Reading

Brosnac, Donald, The Electric

Guitar, Oat Publications 1978
Brosnac, Donald, Guitar
Electronics, Omnibus Press 1980
Evans, Tom and Mary Ann,
Guitars, Paddington Press 1977
Wheeler, Tom, American Guitars:
An Illustrated History, Harper &
Row 1982
Wheeler, Tom, The Guitar Book,
Macdonald & Jane's 1983
Legg, Adrian, Customizing Your
Electric Guitar, Kaye & Ward 1981

Further Reading

53

Designed by Amber Huff