--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Stanley's Build Your Own Electric Guitar FAQ Response --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have two pretty good books about building your own guitar. Both are available mail-order from Stewart MacDonalds or Warmouth, though I have seen then in better music stores (Elderly in Lansing, MI, and Herb David's here in good old A^2, MI). FYI - StewMac and Carvin carry necks that are ready for you to construct a through-body electric guitar and rumor has it that Warmouth is capable of all sorts of custom work. When you say "build", I assume you mean from scratch, not from a kit or using prefab bodies and necks?... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Build Your Own Electric Guitar by Melvin Hiscock (exact title may be slightly different but the author's name is correct. Poor guy.) The best of the books I own. Real good info (even if the writing and editing is a bit amateurish as well as distinctly British) - from scratch, he builds 3 electrics in that book: 1. Lefty carved-top body with glued-on maple neck with rosewood finger board - painted. 2. Tele copy body with binding and veneer maple face, bolt-on one-piece maple neck - sunburst. 3. Neck-through-body 8 string bass, multiple wood body, maple neck with laminated accent stripes, I think ebony fingerboard - natural oiled finish. In other words, he covers a range of styles so you can get a feel for most options one might consider in the construction of a solid body. And he covers truss rods, neck and bridge angles and their interaction, fingerboards, wood, etc. very well. Plenty-o-pictures. He only lightly covers pickup wiring, you may need another reference (and there are many) to get expertise in that. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Build Your Own Electric Guitar by (Roger?) Siminoff. (again, title may be slightly different but the authors last name is at least phonetically correct... ;-) Decent book, IMHO, not as good as Hiscock's book in technical detail, or in breadth of issues mentioned/covered. Siminoff was the editor of Frets, methinks, for a while, and has a lengthy history in the field as a general luthier. He has several other books on building mandolins, etc. He builds and finishes one electric guitar in the book. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regards, T P.S. From reading these books, I am actually under the impression that I am capable of building a decent guitar on my own. The books are that dangerous... From: lhjr@alex.xs4all.nl (Lennart Hengstmengel Jr) Date: 29 Jan 95 14:48:48 Newsgroups: alt.guitar Subject: Freq. for 6 guitar strings Organization: Alexander BBS / HCC OS/2 gg - +31-10-4565600 & 2201454 In article , crabbe_dave@novell.burridgec.ns.ca <> wrote: > Any electronic buffs know the frequencies for the 6 guitar > strings. (I'm building a guitar tuner for a friend) E = 82.407 Hz A = 110 Hz D = 146.832 Hz G = 195.998 Hz B = 246.942 Hz e = 329.628 Hz +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | L.M. Hengstmengel Jr | E-Mail: lhjr@alex.xs4all.nl | | Rotterdam, the Netherlands | Fido: 2:500/285.16 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- | Via alex.xs4all.nl - Alexander BBS / HCC OS/2 gg Rotterdam [NL] | FidoNet 2:500/285 - PO Box 8134 - 3009 AC ROTTERDAM | +31-10-4565600 (VFC) - BBS open 08:00 - 00:45 UTC+1 | +31-10-2201454 (VFC) - BBS open 24h | Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own. Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.builders From: hawley@adobe.com (hawley) Subject: Tension, mass and frequency in strings Organization: adobe systems Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 20:49:55 GMT Someone posted a question about the relationship between tension mass and string length. Recall that the frequency for any harmonic on a string is f(n) = n(vt/2L) where n is the nth harmonic, vt is the velocity of transverse waves in the string (not in air) and L is the length of the string. For the fundamental, this is just f = vt/2L For strings, vt = sqrt(T/u) where T is the string tension (force) and u is the mass per unit length of the string. substituting in, you get: f = sqrt(T/u)/2L According to a text book I have here, a typical guitar D string has T ~ 150 N, u ~ .005 kg/m and vt ~ 170 m/s Steve Hawley hawley@adobe.com -- "Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'd lighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever." -Baron Munchausen Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.builders,rec.music.makers.guitar,alt.guitar Organization: NBNet.nb.ca From: evan@nbnet.nb.ca (Evan Smith) Subject: Re: How are Stew Mac necks? Date: Mon, 03 Mar 1997 22:50:32 GMT Hey, Edwin. It's Evan from TBL. I bought one of their fretless bass necks. It's real good, though the truss rod adjuster is at the body end, rather than the peghead. Nice wood, though. The ebony is lovely. I found the peg holes a little too small, but that probably won't apply to the guitar necks. The satin finish is very nice, and the peg head face is shiny (you can all just kiss my hieny ...) Sorry. Gig till 3:00 am last night. Need sleep.. The necks are made here in Canada by LaSiDo (Godin and Seagull guitars), I believe. So support your largest trading partner, and buy now! We are Cuba's largest trading partner too, come to think of it.... Regardos. On Mon, 3 Mar 1997 03:20:54 GMT, edwin@indra.com (Edwin) wrote: >I'm thinking of replacing the neck on my reissiue (62) Strat. It's way too >slim and simce I am primarily a bass player it's quite annoying. Right now >Stew-Mac is having a sale and the ebony fingerboarded neck is looking >mighty good. Anyone checked them out before? Please respond by email if >possible. > >TIA >Edwin > >-- >edwin@indra.com >http://www.indra.com/~edwin Newsgroups: alt.guitar,rec.music.makers.guitar,rec.music.makers.builders Organization: Unisys - Roseville, MN From: Andrew McWhirter To: ewestrom@csus.edu Subject: Re: Les Paul Plans/face carving Date: Thu, 06 Mar 1997 12:58:54 +1000 Eric Westrom wrote: > > I am looking for plans or templates for building a Les Paul Standard. > I already have the wood and I am looking to build soon. I believe Stewart-McDonalds publish a blueprint for a vintage Les Paul. > I would appreciate any hints/tips for doing the carved top as well. The traditional way, I guess, is to buy one or two of the tiny finger planes, and carve away. If you can, look at Melvyn Hiscock's "Make your own Electric Guitar". He does a carved top on of the guitars he builds in the book. He also explains how (and why) to angle the neck back, and there are a lot of pictures concentrating on the contouring around the neck area. Highly recommended. Also it would pay you to check out a few LP's at a shop. Now, I'll tell you how I did it, using a router. (All you seasoned luthiers out there can stop reading at this point....I hate it when you laugh at me!) Mark a line across the face where the fingerboard will end. Plane the angle (for the neck lay back) on the face, from the line representing the end of the fingerboard to the neck end of the body, around the neck pocket area. Once this angle is right you can determine the difference in height between the centre of the body and the edges. (For me it was about 5mm, from memory. In this example I will use this figure.) If you are intending to fit binding around the front edge, you should route the binding channel now. Assuming your binding will finish up 5mm wide, you need to route the binding rebate 10mm down, all the way around BUT DO NOT ROUTE INSIDE THE CUTAWAYS! Take a look at a LP, to see how they handle the binding inside the cutaway. (There are actually two methods that I've seen, but one method involves using binding that is about twice as wide as the finished size, just to handle the cutaways. You would need to scape away half the binding almost all the way around the guitar! So I'm describing the other method. Again, look at a few LP's to see the two methods.) You may be able to cut some of the rebate in this area with the router, but you will need to finish it by hand. Wait until the face is carved before you finish this task. Use a marking gauge to very lightly mark the final depth of contouring inside the binding rebate (5mm down from the face, in this example). Draw on the face of the guitar contour lines that represent steps of (say) 0.5 mm. You should end up with 10 concentric contour lines for a 5mm difference. It may be helpful to write on each contour line how deep that line shoudl be. The first one from the edge is 4.5, then 4, so on. The last one is 0! I left a fairly large area in the centre flat, covering the area that the pickups and bridge occupied. Draw some radial lines out from the centre of the guitar. The idea is that you won't remove the wood around these radial lines, as they're going to support the router. They must therefore be close enough together to actually support your router base at the outermost edges of the body. Now, set your router to cut 0.5 mm, and route everything away between the radial lines outside the 0.5mm contour. Leave about 2-3mm of wood either side of the radial lines. NEVER TOUCH THE AREA BEYOND THE FINGERBOARD END LINE. This is where the fretboard will rest. It should have been planed to *exactly* the right angle, and perfectly flat in the second step above. Any blending of the final face contours with this area should be done with sandpaper later (for example, you might want to contour the lower horn, and the upper bout will need work), but never touch the area where the fingerboard will cover. Besides, there is no support for the router beyond this line (you planed it away!) Redraw the 1.0 mm contour using the marks left on the radial 'ribs' as a guide. Set the router to 1.0 mm and route between the radial ribs outside the 1.0mm contour. Redraw the 1.5 mm contour using the marks left on the radial 'ribs' as a guide. Set the router to 1.5 mm and route between the radial ribs outside the 1.5mm contour. Repeat the last 2 steps at 2, 2.5, 3 etc. until you're down to 4.5mm. Carefully chisel away the radial ribs, and pare away the 'steps' as much as possible over the whole face of the guitar. Be careful and patient at this stage. Don't try to remove too much at a time. You should also be working toward bringing the edge of the guitar down to the final line marked earlier with the marking gauge. Finish the contouring with coarse sandpaper, working through the paper grades to the final finish sand grade (400 paper?). You still need to attend to the binding rebate in the cutaway(s), using small chisels. This all sounds more complicated than it really is! > Thanks in advance. > You're welcome. Hope it helps! Andrew Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.builders Organization: Primenet (602)416-7000 From: Mike Rejsa Subject: Book review: Build...Guitar Date: 16 Mar 1997 07:47:01 -0700 Review: "Make Your Own Electric Guitar", Melvyn Hiscock $16.95 from Stewart/MacDonalds 800-848-2273 I bought this book and was impressed enough I decided to review it for the net. Just for the record, I am not connected in any way with the author, publisher, or Stew/Macs. This book is a basic text in how to build your own solid-body electric guitar. (Hence the title...) He does a good job of it. Bolt-on, set-neck, and neck-thru construction are covered, as is top carving, binding, wiring, and finishing. Note: Only solid body guitars are discussed, *not* hollow or semi-solids. Chapters: Introduction First considerations - really more introduction Parts of the guitar - pretty basic Designing your own guitar - history, discussion of Leo Fender and the Tele, Les Paul and the Les Paul, scale, frets, body shape and balance, neck join, neck angle, body thickness, headstock design, wood, pickups and controls, truss rod, finishing Tools - discussion of tools needed Woods - types of wood, types of sawing, drying Truss rods explained - several different types including Rickenbacker double Fretboard theory and fretting - how to locate and install frets Safety - usual safety reminders Guitar number 1 - set-neck kinda like a '59 Les Paul Special double cutaway but with a carved top, tunamatic, and humbuckers Guitar number 2 - bolt-on like a bound Tele with humbuckers, mahogany with bookmatched maple top Guitar number 3 - vaguely Alembic-looking neck-thru-body 8 string bass Mixing the styles - discussion about design alternatives for the three guitars Finishing - sketchy chapter on finishes Wiring your guitar - above and beyond the call of duty, great chapter with good explanations and *many* schematic examples Setting up the guitar - basic common-sense setup procedures All in all, I definitely recommend this book. Despite having built Fender-style guitars for years, I learned more about that in addition to the set-neck stuff I bought the book for. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ miker@primenet.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.builders Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) From: crabenberg@aol.com (CRabenberg) Subject: Re: Warmoth vs. Stewart-MacDonals necks. Date: 1 Sep 1996 02:35:00 -0400 I wouldn't say unplayable, but Warmoth does send a note along with the neck saying a level and dressing should be done. My repairman said the hieght on the frets was uneven througout. (although he has been known to exagerate things a bit) Warmoth only press the frets in with gradual increments of radiused cauls. In general Warmoth necks are far better quality then the ones Stew Mac has in their catalog. Warmoths have that nice thick fingerboard! Also Adam have you decided on a fret size and nut width and so on? I might be a little picky when it comes to guitars, but when they told me "less then a 1/16 inch for action with no buzzing" I wanted it. Also your bridge should match the flat 16 inch radius Warmoths end at. And the nut should start at 10. Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.builders Organization: Netcom From: Pete Ryan Subject: Re: Warmoth vs. Stewart-MacDonals necks. Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 21:45:13 -0500 Adam Hammond wrote: > > Hello, > I'm considering buying a new neck, and the two main contenders are > Warmoth Standard necks with compound readius and the Stew-Mac 12" > finished neck. > > Does anyone have opinions on the quality of these two necks? Is the > Warmoth neck good enough to warrant $100 extra. > > Thanks, Adam Hi Adam I've used both before and I really prefer the Warmoth for a number of reasons 1) The Warmoth necks are always straight. Sometimes the Stew-Mac necks are not. 2) The Warmoth necks are never twist when the truss rod is tightened. Sometimes the Stew-Mac necks twist. 3) The Warmoth necks don't cost $100.00 more. The list price is roughly 50% of what a dealer will pay. I suggest going to a dealer and let him order it. 4) The Warmoth necks never have dead spots. Sometimes the Stew-Mac's do. I've worked with 6 Warmoth necks and 3 Stew-Mac necks and found this to be true. Pete Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar Organization: Washington Music Center From: "Brian Meader" Subject: Re: who sells replacement Strat necks? Date: 7 Aug 1996 11:40:15 GMT David J MacKenzie wrote in article ... > I've got an '81 Ibanez Blazer Series pseudo-strat which I love, except > that the neck is so skinny that my hand starts to hurt after awhile > from having so little wood to grip. It looks like a strat-style neck > would fit on there...I think. I'm having trouble finding a > replacement neck that I like, though. I want a strat-style headstock, > maple fretboard, vintage or medium frets, and the truss rod adjustment > at the headstock, not the body end (so the Stew-Mac necks are out). > > I tend to like fatter necks. The one on the Clapton Strat is quite > comfortable, but of course Fender doesn't sell those separately! > My style is more blues-rock than tapping metal stuff. > > Anyone have any leads? I know there are parts manufacturers out there > like Schecter and Mitey Mite, but who sells those parts--do they just > deal direct, or do they have distributors? > Hi All! We tend to have the most luck with Warmoth guitar necks and bodies. They offer vintage or modern styles, regular or Compound radius's. You can pick the headstock shape, type of fretwire used, neck wood, fingerboard wood, finished or unfinished, (and what kind of finish you want). They are superior (in my opinion) to all of the other aftermarket necks, and are better than lots of factory necks. Lots of manufacturers (Yamaha, Zion, Valley Arts, Tom Anderson) either use, or have used Warmoth necks on their high end custom guitars. Call Bill Dominick in our guitar repair shop (301)946-8808 extension 615, and he can give you the scoop on what's available, and the costs for each, as well as any other guitar parts you might need. -- Brian Meader Washington Music Center (301)946-8808 FAX attn: Brian (301)933-4438 E-Mail: Sales@wmcworld.com http://www.wmcworld.com