Learning how to build an electric guitar

[lumberjim]

Get it out of my head
Get it out of my thread
Get it on in a bed
Get your old buddy Fred
Get a grave and you're dead
Get it out of my head

That's what she said

[sexobon]

He sounded like an old nag in the Horse thread.

[lumberjim]

Yeah, well I would actually prefer if you guys would take it outside.

Glatt, if you're bored, would you exercise your mod powers and clean up the last couple days of this spill over in this thread?

[BigV]

hahahahah


boo hoo, hoist on your own petard.


glatt, if you are bored or not, please don't rewrite history

[lumberjim]

Yeah you're right. Fuck it.

I'll still be able to see my shit. Leave it be.

[lumberjim]

Plek. Dunno what it stands for, or if it's just a made up word. It's a CNC based scanner that optimizes the neck of a guitar. This is a pretty interesting look at that process. The steadiest hands and most powerful eyes.

[Undertoad]

One data point, I knew a session guy with 50 guitars, and I asked him if he ever had any of them PLEKd. He said yeah, one, but it was a decent guitar to begin with and he didn't feel like it made enough of a difference to get it done to more of 'em.

[Gravdigr]

I couldn't find that Plek stands for anything. May just be a bastardization of 'plectrum'.





I'm sorry to have shat in the thread.

[lumberjim]

It happens.

The company that invented it is called Plektron.

I looked it up too

PLEK machines are built and sold by A+D Gitarrentechnologie of Berlin, Germany. The machines were developed by musician and guitar instructor Gerd Anke with his partner Michael Dubach, who called their company PLEKTRON when it was founded in 1990. The goal of the PLEK process they created is to guarantee the best possible string action for each instrument. Simply put, a guitar with optimized playability sounds better. The strings do not strike the frets during playing and any intonation problems that may occur due to too-low string action are eliminated. Similarly, action that’s too high is also a thing of the past with PLEKing.

[lumberjim]

The SG guitar has a set neck. That means it gets glued into the body, not bolted on like the Strat. That means, I'd better get it right on the first try.

I needed a shim in the pocket of the strat, if you'll recall. I won't have that option on this guitar, so I'm following a build plan I found that shows a 2° grade in the neck pocket. Meaning, the neck end of the pocket is 2° lower than the bridge end. That will tilt the neck back just a bit. At 18.75", the end of a line will be 0.655" lower then the start. This will keep the strings aligned with the neck and body once they're laid over the bridge.

To get the angle in the pocket, we made a couple wedges to affix to the underside of the template, so when I rout the pocket, the angle will transfer. We used the cnc machine to cut a piece of 3/4 MDF (fancy particle board).

First a rough cut to take away material.



Then another path to cut the shape with a fine tip bit. This piece came out finish smooth.



I then ripped the 4" wedge into 1.5" and 2.5" slices. One for either side of the pocket.


I sealed them using a super glue wash. Like lacquer, but instant. They're hard like stone now. I'll be able to reuse them on future builds that require a 2° drop.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The next video that came up after your first one on roughing, was "How Car Dealerships Rip You Off".
Do the wedges extend all the way to the end of the templet?

[lumberjim]

They started at 18.75, same as the template, but I cut them down to 18.5 on the back edge, and then trimmed the front where it became paper thin. I'll attach the back edge of the wedges 1/4" in from the edge of the template.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You don't want shoe(base plate) of the router to bump the flat before the bit gets to the end of the pocket.

I ran across this guys instructions for building his ukulele. Wouldn't be very different from an acoustic guitar.
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-I-Made-My-Ukelele/

[lumberjim]

Oh, and to do the super glue finish: I sanded lightly to get the fur off the mdf, then dusted them.

{safety glasses and rubber gloves on!}

Then I poured some extra thin super glue in a spot, wiped it around with a little sponge dabber brush until the surface was wet with it, and let it set for 30 seconds, then sprayed accelerator on it. Sanded that back a bit and voila. Like a rock. It will make peeling masking tape off much cleaner, and they'll last for future builds.

[lumberjim]

Aw yisss....



This is a blend of the SG and Les Paul. The bottom of the SG always looked weird to me. Like it had put on weight in the form of saddle bags. So at the waist, I transitioned over to the Les Paul template and traced that bottom. Also incorporated the circle switch from the LP and modified the pick guard to accommodate that.

This. This is what I'm going to do. And I might do channel binding on the neck.


You see how the fret board is sunk into the neck, and there's that thin strip of maple?

Sexy as fuck.



Now I'm excited. I'm going to start over on the neck. Make the nut wider. And dad wants no inlay, which is awesome. I'll either use the bubinga piece I've already slotted and radiused, or cut a new one from my remaining cocobola, or get some ebony. I think a black channel bound finger board with no inlay would look sick. Especially with the gold Evo fret wire he wants.