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.

The developing guitar

I have begun preparing a testbed for my experiments. I want something that's playable. It should be a proper guitar. But it should also be a proper testbed for new pickups, forearm support, strap horn and leg rest.

It's built from a warmoth strat neck and a piece of 20 x 60 mm rectangular steel tube.

For now, it has a tele style six saddle bridge, but that might be replaced by one of my own designs. It also has traditional tuners in the headstock. I'd like it to become headless at some point, perhaps utilizing the bridge and coarse tuners of my SG experiments. But for now, I haven't developed a headless tuning system of sufficient quality. Plus, it's such a fine neck and I'd hate to cut it.

It's a Warmoth strat superwide wenge neck with a pau ferro fretboard and stainless steel frets. I bought the neck because I have very big hands and I'd like to try if a wider neck made better room for my fingertips at the fretboard (it did, but I think it's a bit _too_ wide). I'm not yet skilled (or courageous) enough to attempt building a playable, fretted neck, so I thought it wiser to buy one.

The design of the ultrawide neck with its overhanging fingerboard at the body end makes it fit the steel tube nicely.

The pickup is my own design. It is inspired by the Lace Alumitone and a thread on the guitar electronics forum. More on that and other pickups in a later post. The distance between the strings and the steel tube allows for easy swapping of pickups, as long as they're not too thick (which mine aren't).

I'm planning to make a strap horn, forearm support and leg rest from scrap mahogany. That'll make it a playable testbed, allowing me to try out new pickup designs, exploring their abilities while having fun playing. Other parts, such as bridges and other shapes of forearm support etc, can be easily replaced as well.

The interchangeable wooden body parts are inspired by Spalt Instruments.