A guitar that works

What started as a testbed has turned into a nice, playable guitar.

For the first time, I've made a working guitar that I believe suits my position and style better than anything I could buy. This was the problem, that initially, some four years ago, got me interested in ergonomics and the possibility of building your own, very personal guitar.

That's something of a milestone, actually.

[Blogspot insists on rotating the image on the right. I have no idea why, and I can't fix it]

Things I like about the guitar:

It's comfortable to play. There's still much adjustment (and probably replacement of some wooden parts) to do, but it's more comfortable than any other guitar that I've played.

With the Seymour Duncan pickup, it sounds at least decent. My first impression is that it's a bit shrill, probably due to the steel body.

It's modular, meaning that I can replace components when I want without taking the whole guitar apart.

It's easily adjustable, making it possible to try different positions.

It's thin where it matters ...the area of the body around the bridge pickup hole is only 20 mm thick. And that's the place where it matters, because this is the area with which the guitar rests against my chest. This means that I can have it close to my body without having to reach my arms around it.


Everything on it works. Tuning, intonation, action, pickup adjustment, neck bow, etc. Some parts work really well (the bridge and wooden arm and thigh rest), while some could use improvement (the tuners and the strap horn).

The roughness and homemadeness are style elements, which are imposed by my lack of workshop skills (and the fact that I don't much like to spend money on having a professional doing it for me (because if you spend money, you have to work more, and I'm not particularly fond of that, either)). But I've come to like the roughness and the fact that you can see that the parts are made from stock metal. There's a certain honesty to it.

Things I'm doing these days:

• Playing the guitar
• Tuning the guitar (I'm dissatisfied with the tuner system, but it works well enough for now)
• Moving and adjusting the wooden pieces
• Adjusting action and intonation. That's pretty easy on the two part bridge, but I am going to make an improved version with the saddle piece at the rear, and fixing and adjustment screws towards the neck. That'll give more room for the new tuner.

Things I might do next:

• Add some copper tubing for the pickup wires. 
• Copper jack cover plus master volume and switch. I plan to use the principle of copper "cups" that Rick Toone made.
• New tuner system (see picture)
• New bridge
• Make a wide copper pickup cover that covers the bridge cavity.
• Shape and smooth the wooden pieces. They're quite rough and lack a common "theme" of shapes and curves.
• Blue the body
• Test my current transformer pickups on the guitar (after all, it's thought out as a testbed)

But first, I have to buy some more tools and some more metal.

Adding brass and wood

Got the steel box straightened and reinforced plus the arm rest, leg support and strap horn carved from scrap mahogany. It's all in a very rough state, but I expect it to be ready for neck, bridge, tuners and pickup in a week or so.

It's very easy to adjust or move the wooden pieces to allow for different playing positions. That can be useful when making other, less modular, bodies at a later time.

I'm considering a rustication process for certain areas of the wooden parts, but I have to get the guitar playable first.

Room for pickups

I decided to put one or two good pickups in the testbed guitar. My original idea was that it should be kept playable at all time. But I was too busy trying out my flat pickups to get a proper pickup mounted. I hoped that I would make a pickup that sounded great, but I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with their sound (more on that later).

I needed a good pickup for the guitar to sound decent, but also to have a sort of reference: something to compare with when trying out the various pickups. I decided to go for a couple of Seymour Duncan pickups, I bought for my first T-beam project, but later put in my strat.

The pickups are wider than the T-beam, so in order to fit them in, I had to cut through the sides of the steel box profile. That was easily done with an angle grinder (my favourite tool these days, with cutting disc as well as flapdisc for shaping wood).

So far, so good. Unfortunately, that put quite a bow in the box profile. I didn't count on that (only thought wood behaved that way), but I suppose that's part of learning.

That's put rather a halt to my progress. I'll make some brackets and beams to straighten and support the box profile in its weakened state. I was going to make pickup holders anyway, but now they're also going to add strength.

Btw, I'm condidering this oil bluing process for the box profile. And, I'm making some mahogany forearm and thight supports (and a strap horn), so I can ditch the acrylic body, that I've grown a bit tired of.

Truly headless

After postponing it a number of times, I cut off the strat headstock of my very fine Warmoth neck. That took a bit of self persuation, but I needed it headless. A brass angle bracket is holding the strings. I also made a new acrylic body. This time, I tried to make it really fit my torso. I tried too hard: Most of the curves and shapes are too pronounced and it's actually too tight on the body.

Bridge and tuners are the same as in last post. I plan to make an improved version of the tuner bracket (or perhaps abandon it in favour of one using my plunger type tuners).

The pickup is a P90 mounted above the strings. I plan on experimenting with a couple of experimental pickups using primary coils with few windings and a current transformer, but I haven't gotten around to that.

It still needs a strap to be really comfortable.

Things I might do next:

• Make a steam bent plywood body in the style of the acrylic ones.
• Make a new and more ergonomic acrylic body.
  
• Make a proper wooden body for the neck and ditch the rectangular steel tube for a while.
• Test and develop my pickups.
• Get back and properly finish the two-string bass. This involves adding a slidable pickup and a piezo-pickup with preamp.

Two piece brass bridge

The strat type hardtail bridge that's on the developing testbed guitar was in many ways a temporary solution. Tuning lacked smoothness and precision with the strings going through the holes in the bridge plate on their way to the tuners. Also, it looked out of place - being chrome plated as well as being wider than the rectangular steel tube it was mounted on.

The bridge that replaces it is made from a brass U profile. It's height adjustable. To achieve acceptable intonation of all strings, it is divided in two. This makes it possible to adjust the wound bass strings and the unwound treble strings in two separate banks of three.

It seems to work fine, but I haven't tested it enough yet to judge if the design is good enough to develop further.

Future project

Here's an instrument which I'd like to make some day:

• Three string blues slide guitar
• For playing seated
• Sliding nut
• No strap
• Spine: 30 X 12 mm aluminium rectangular beam - freely vibrating
  
• Piezo pickup on aluminium beam
• Sliding pickup under strings- probably an ultra flat one with few primary windings and a current transformer.
• Plunger tuners (this principle)
• Minimalistic ergonomic body - the first version would probably be made from heat-bent acrylic plate

New tuner design

In the previous post, I described my intention of creating a playable testbed for experiments with different pickups. It turned out to be nice to play, so I improved it with a strap horn and the acrylic body from my t-beam bass. As it turned out, it was quite neck heavy. And since I prefer a headless guitar in most circumstances, I began to consider a tuner system down behind the bridge plus removing the headstock.

The design - as many others - uses traditional tuners mounted at the end of the guitar. Most of the existing designs however, has the strings fan out from the bridge and onto the tuners. The tuners have a lot of distance between them in order to allow room for the fingers when tuning. One solution is a design using two rows of three tunes facing each other and sharing the same slot. For the latter, I bought a set of six twelve-string tuners (they have the pegs closer together than six string tuners, saving space).

I built a bracket for mounting them on the end of the testbed guitar. It is soldered together from rectangular brass profiles. The profiles carrying the tuners are at an angle so that there's a (reasonably) straight string pull.

The tuners are made from one side of the twelve string tuners, cut in half - i.e. 2 x 3 tuners. I found out that they had a nice copper coating beneath the crome, so I filed away some of the chrome. I hope, when the steel and copper oxidizes, that they will look more discreet. They seem to work decently, but I imagine that better quality tuners might improve the system somewhat.

The strings can be tuned easily and precisely. Mounting the strings is a bit troublesome, but will probably be easier when I've tried it a couple of times. Unfortunately, my soldering job was insufficient and the top plate broke off. When I re-soldered it (and bolted it too, to be on the safe side), I was too hasty, and the holes for the pegs didn't line up. I had to do a bit of filing, and now the arrangement works, but less smoothly than the first time. I'm not completely satisfied, so I will buy a machine vise for my drill press and make a better bracket. That will give me a chance also to try some better tuners. They could be these due to their good looks (though it might look too _deliberately aged_ for my taste) or these due to their high gear ratio

If they keep working well, I'll cut the headstock off the neck, but for now I am anchoring the ball end of the strings in the existing tuner pegs on the headstock. I plan to play it for some time and make sure that it's a keeper (the overall design, not this particular version). I've got to be certain this works before chopping away.