Thinking DIY

After getting home with my new acquisition , and after my little-girl let me do it after playing on the guitar with two strings that she really liked, I took an in-depth look, with even more bad and even more ugly things found, but nothing earth-shattering: * the truss rod nut was rusty, and is not a standard one, but one needing a special tool to tighten/loosen. And I didn't have such a tool. It was a standard barrel, with two cuts, where a standard flat-head screwdriver would work, but all this hidden beneath the truss rod cover, in a fairly deep pocket, so that the flat-head screwdriver didn't work. I made one from an Allen key by grinding off the edges, and widening the routed part under the truss rod cover to be able to use the tool. Of course, widening only so that the truss rod cover still covers the whole thing * after checking that the truss rod works, no need to replace the truss rod, thus no need to remove the fretboard. That's definitely good news * the to...

While wandering around the local flea market I have found a dreadnought guitar. As I have recently (after building my electric) exchanged my acoustic guitar for a multi-effects pedal (BOSS ME-25) to have fun, I didn't have an acoustic anymore, this looked interesting. Even more so in the context of willing to build an acoustic from scratch (after building an ukulele from scratch, but that's subject of another series), the Russian dreadnought in rough conditions longing for a restoration looked like something fitting in the path of practicing guitar building, finishing, fixing. The price of the guitar was 7$. The ugly: * one tuning key missing out of the six * the head-stock is a rectangle, no design at all * the body was scratched here and there * the fingerboard looked like the inverse of the ones seen on guitars, concave, so the middle of the fretboard was lower than the edges. I initially thought it could be from wear, but as it is uniformly the same throughou...

So, after two attempts to build DIY guitars, having watched quite some hours of raw video materials on building guitars, sound tests, and other stuff, I have seen and found several good quality and several so-or-so materials, be it video or audio-only. This post is a quick summary of the best sources (which doesn't necessarily mean the best for you, I'm open to other suggestions on good videos on the topics). As a disclaimer, I am not affiliated with any of the below shops, channels, etc, I just recommend them as a simple viewer. They don't even know that I exist. Building guitars Ben Crowe @ Crimson Guitars - probably the most/best recommended European guitar building tools shop, custom guitar shop and luthery shares quite some tips, tools used, new ideas for guitar building, and carefully documents several custom guitar builds, so it's a fine source for information. I don't even dare to think how fun their guitar building courses could be (shortest being 3 da...

So, my guitar is complete. I've wired everything up, mounted everything inside the guitar, and done a full setup (well, actually several ones, as there are lots of sources, and when I wasn't satisfied I searched for another source). The setup was done using the following steps: with the neck set straight using a straight-edge cut at the frets with a dremel, gone over the frets with 600 grit sandpaper to level them, and fixing the curve of the 21th fret as that was the only one seriously sticking out setting neck relief to 0.004 (by using the strings as a straight-edge, E strings fretted at 1st and 14th frets, inserting a piece of xerox paper - theoretically 0.004 thick - below the 7th fret, checking that it doesn't lift up the strings at all, but it stays there without falling out in standard playing position) no change in the nut position. it's not the lowest, maybe filing a bit more would be doable, but I want a playable guitar already. set the bridge saddle he...

I've made a new wiring plate for testing the electronics, as the cardboard box didn't work well, and started desoldering/soldering the new electronics. The plan was to: * have a stereo jack wired up * jack ring signal being piezo output * jack tip signal being mix of piezo+electronic * volume for each pickup separately, with modern wiring, and dependent volume controls for the two magnetic pickups * toggle works as usual, bridge/bridge+neck/neck, and the piezo can be blended in any time with the piezo volume control First attempt went surprisingly well, after doing the complete wiring+soldering I only had one minor issue and one major: * the two volume push-pulls I have wired work inverse, rolling them down increases the volume and viceversa. Easy to fix, probably switching the stuff soldered to the outer lugs will solve it * the rolling up the master tone pot adds a background noise, which I don't want, not sure of the reason, some forums state that it might be ...

So, with almost all the parts being here already, I am getting close to the finish line (for this lap), and can foresee the next round already. I've done some polishing recently on the guitar, both the body and the neck, it turned out quite well, not the overly glossy look, not a mirror finish, but I like it. The guitar top somehow gained a lighter color, so it's an orange-ish color, and that's good, not too bright, not too dark. I have mounted the new black tulip keys, they look fantastic on the guitar neck. I saw another kit build on youtube with black keys being replaced with gold, and I am happy I didn't go with golden hardware. I love the contrast between orange-ish mahogany and black hardware. As for the piezo pickup bridge, I went on and painted it with a black permanent marker, as I didn't want it to pop out of the picture with its silver look. Even though if taking a close look at the bridge you can see that it's not defaulting to black from the f...

Testing box So, after having the piezo pickup the number of pickups grew to 3, and wiring them for testing which combinations I do like is not too easy if everything's mounted inside the guitar, I decided to build a wiring testing box for testing different wirings to find the one I like the most. All the electronics mounted inside a shoe-box, with speaker wire sockets on the side (4 sockets are just enough for 3 pickup live wires plus one ground, coming out from the guitar), plus the jack on the side. It's ugly, but and probably a bit noisier than the final installation should be, but it works for testing. I just realized that the 4 wires won't be enough for two coil split humbuckers plus the piezo pickup, but will think about that later. Guitar top sanded down for refinishing In the meantime, the parts still being on their way, I decided that I'm not ok with the finishing of the top, so I still have time to re-finish it. So I sanded off everything from the ...