How to build an electric guitar (or at least my version of it)

This page describes how I built an electric guitar, it has a bunch of pictures and a fairly detailed explanation of the steps. If you have the usual power tools and some experience in woodworking, this page should get you up and running. This is the third guitar I've built, this is one is done in the style of a Fender Stratocaster - but with several enhancements I wanted. First, it is constructed as a neck thru body style guitar. That is, the neck is not bolted on or glued on, it is a solid piece of wood that goes all the way through the body. This guitar has a maple neck, and the wings are swamp ash. The fretboard is ebony which gives a very bright sound, and coupled with the maple neck and single coil pickups, this is a fairly bright guitar. The heavy swamp ash wings do help to darken the sound up a bit. I don't use tremelo bars so I put a fixed bridge on, this should also add to the sustain.


The guitar - click on picture to enlarge

This guitar is built nearly from scratch, but the neck is purchased from Carvin to ensure that I have a very playable guitar when it's all done. I like the necks from Carvin which are diamond ground to very high tolerances. The necks play super fast, and the frets are great. There are other places to get necks from including Warmoth and Stewart MacDonald.

While your are buying parts for your first guitar, you should get a copy of "Make Your Own Guitar Book" by Melvyn Hiscock. It's a good read, and has all the info you need.

Who has the time???

It can take several weeks of evenings to build a guitar this way. Here is how you find the time, wait until it looks like this outside:


Good guitar building conditions - click on picture to enlarge

If you live in California or Arizona, too bad, you'll just have to buy new guitars. If you live in Florida, do it in July, it's too hot to be out. Those of us in New Jersey get a good 3 months of this crap, so we have to do something - or we'll kill the children.

This guitar is modelled loosely after a Fender Strat guitar. The main difference is that I wanted a neck through body guitar. The guitar is a maple neck through body design, with swamp ash wings. Swamp ash is used because it has a nice grain, and it's similar to alder in sound. It is a very hard wood though, more so than I originally realized. Sanding it is difficult, but the results are worth it. If the guitar were to painted I think I would use something softer like alder, which is what Fender uses.

One final warning before we jump in: Don't expect to save much money building your own guitars, you can buy pretty good guitars for less. You can get Fenders, Hamers, G&L's, and a bunch of imported guitars for well under $1000. Most of the guitars I've built have cost around $500-$600 to build, though this one is cheaper thanks to ebay.com. The pickups run $70 each most of the time, and the neck is near $200. You also have to factor in the tools you will inevitably buy. Plus it's addicting, you'll probably want to do more. On the positive side; if you have a guitar that would be perfect if it just had "X", then you can actually build it. So now I own a strat with a neck through body neck, a Les Paul Jr with neck through design, and other odd ideas I've had.

Order the Parts

Following is the list of parts that I ordered, the list does not include supplies like sandpaper, you'll need a fair amount of that, as well as a belt sander, disk sander, router, drill (preferably drill press, though I don't have one). I really got lucky in one aspect, I was able to find a set of strat pickups and a pickguard on ebay.com as one piece for about $75.

I bought most of the other parts from Carvin, they have reasonable prices and good parts - their necks are the best (www.carvin.com). I like Stewart MacDonald for general building supplies and electronics, they even have guitar build kits, they are at www.stewmac.com. Finally, I purchased the sides from Exotic Woods mail order. They supply beautiful hardwoods and specialize in wood for guitars. They have always shipped me perfect wood, and they'll plane it for you if you ask (www.exoticwoods.com).


All the parts on the garage floor - click on picture to enlarge

List of parts

Pickups and pickguard - $80 from ebay

Swamp Ash Wings - $42.00 including shipping and handling from Exotic Woods

Wiring kit for strat - $25.50 from Stewmac.com (#0137)

3 knobs for strat - $6.75 from stewmac.com (#0507, #0509)

guitar tuners (6 inline) - $24.99 from carvin.com (#C6CL)

strap buttons - $2.99 from carvin.com (#E2C)

6 string strat style bridge - $34.99 from carvin.com (#FT6C)

Jack plate and jack - $6.99 from carvin.com (#JP6C)

neck from carvin.com - $179.99 from carvin.com (#NT6)

If you own a planer, it is really nice to plane all the sides of the wings, and get the thickness of the wings roughly equal to the neck. I don't have one, so this guitar was done the hard way - with a belt sander. The belt sander will leave some marks, which you'll have to sand out later.

Trace the outline and cut wings

I don't know a great way to do this, but you need to get an outline of a fender strat body onto you neck and wings. I clamped the neck and wings together and laid a strat guitar on top. Note: if there are smoother sides on the wings, use the smoothest side towards the neck so you can later get a good glue joint. I traced the outline with a pencil, and let the outline be larger than the actual strat since there will be a lot of sanding done later. Then you can unclamp the wings from the neck and use a saber saw (or a band saw if you have one) to cut out the wings. Be careful cutting with a saber side, they tend to bend some as you go around corners. I drilled holes every few inches so I could make sure the blade was straight.

Save the pieces that you cut away, you may want to use them later when gluing the sides to the neck - the should fit nicely into the hips.

Next, set the clamps on the sides that you will glue, and make sure the "hips" of the wings are fairly even in width. Get the old belt sander out and start smoothing out the sides. This will take a long time, and it's tough on your back, so take a break every now and then. After the hips seem even, take the sides apart and continue sanding the outsides of the wings until you get a good shape. I just did this by eye. I also bought a small drum sanding bit for my hand drill that helped a lot on the insides of the cutaways.

One odd thing, the one wing is going to be too tall compared to where it attaches to the neck. To avoid this problem, I took a saw and tried to cut a slice out of the side to match the bevel of the neck. To do this, while the sides are clamped onto the neck, draw a line along the bevel of the neck ONTO the side. Use this as a guide for cutting with your saw. I found I had to use a hand saw, there is no way to fit a power saw in at the right angle. As usual, once this cut is complete I fine tuned it with the belt sander.

You need to sand to well enough that are ready for finish sanding along the edges, especially where they will be glued to the neck. It will be hard to sand next to the neck after it is attached to the sides.

Attach the sides to the neck.

Finally it is time to glue the sides to the neck. You will want the front to be flush, so I turn the guitar upside down on my bench while lining things up. Make sure you have a good match between the sides and the neck (I fell a little short on this guitar, there is a small gap by the bridge in the seam nearest the volume control). Make a pencil mark while the sides are still clamped to the neck where you want things to line up.


Sides clamped - click on picture to enlarge

Use a good quality wood glue, like Tite Bond, and put a generous amount of glue onto the wings. Have a wet paper towel ready to wipe off any excess glue - especially if you are staining, as the stain will not stain sections that have glue on them. Clamp the guitar tightly and leave it somewhere to dry for at least 24 hours.

There is a nice trick you can do for clamping. When you originally cut away the hips of the guitar, make sure and set aside the pieces you cut out. They will fit well into the hips and you be able to clamp them. This helps not to make marks in wood, and lets you clamp at the center of the hips.


Back of clamped body - click on picture to enlarge

I prefer to use 3 clamps if I can, but sometimes only end up with 2 clamps that are big enough. I tighten the clamps very tightly, I'm not sure it is necessary, but I feel better that way.

Sand to thickness

If you have better equipment, you may have already done most of this step, but if not, get out the old belt sander and start sanding the sides down to the same thickness as the neck. You should probably sand the front some too just to ensure that it is flat, but the bulk of the time will be spent on the back. If you do not have a belt sander, you will have to buy one (or a planer).

Do not bother doing any hand sanding yet, as the next step is routing, which can leave marks on the body, so further sanding should be after this step.

Cut a slot under the neck

This guitar is a 25 inch scale guitar, but the pickguard I have from a Fender Strat is for a 25 1/2 inch guitar. In order for the pickguard to fit the guitar you either need to cut away part of the pickguard, or cut away part of the fingerboard. I chose to cut away the bottom two frets of the neckboard, and additionally cut a slot under the fingerboard for the pickguard to slide up under. If you look closely at a strat style guitar you can see that the pickguard does slide up under the fingerboard. I have owned a strat for years and never noticed until this project.

Do a first level of sanding before routing. This is mostly just to get the glue off and make sure the top is smooth enough that the router does not catch on anything


Just before routing and drilling - click on picture to enlarge

Routing & Drilling

Before routing, put the pickguard on top of the face of the guitar and slide it under the neck, try and get it set into place. You'll also need to put the bridge on and make sure it fits - in other words, make sure the slot up into the neck is deep enough. The Carvin neck is a 25 inch style neck, that is 25 inches from the inside of the nut to where the high E string hits the saddle. There is some slack as to where the bridge goes since the saddles are adjustable, I found that a distance of 24 5/8 inches from the inside of the nut to the top of the bridge looked like a good compromise.

Mark the 24 5/8 inch mark, and make sure it will fit with where the pickguard ended up. Trace the outline of the pickguard onto the face of the guitar, and mark where the screws will go. Make sure the pickguard and bridge are both centered - if the bridge is off center your strings will be to the side of the neck. Trace the outline of the pickguard, and trace where the pickups will go, the pots, and the switches. At this time, also figure where you are going to put the input jack, and trace the outline and screw holes of that. Use a pencil, ink may stain the wood.

Next draw a rough outline of where you want to route, you'll need at least a quarter inch larger than the pickups, and leave plenty of room for the pots and the wires. You'll also need to do a channel between the pickups for the wires to go through. I routed most of the areas at about 3/4 inches deep, but had to go just a bit more than 1 inch for where the switch goes.

Lesson learned...when I figured out how deep to route for the input jack, I did it without a cord plugged in, so I did not account for the extra depth from the cord being plugged in. I had to take the finished guitar apart and route a little deeper. So, check the depth of this after routing with the cord plugged in!


After routing - click on picture to enlarge

Here is what my routing looked like. It will be largely hidden by the pickguard, so there are no points for neatness, unless you are planning to sell your guitar later and someone might look.

Drill the back

The next step is a rough one unless you have a drill press. I do not, so I'll tell you how I got decent results. We need to make holes for the strings to go through. The holes need to be evenly spaced to look good when the string "ferules" are in place on the finished guitar. If you have a drill press, you just mark and drill the six holes that go through the body for the strings. If you are using a hand drill, and you try and drill from the front, the holes will be unevenly spaced and look bad. What I did instead is drill the hole all the way through for the high E string, but only drill about halfway for the other strings. Then go to back, put the bridge on the back of the guitar, and using the one string drilled all the way through to line things up, mark the other 5 holes by drawing pencil marks through the bridge. Then drill through from the bottom - first using a smaller drill, and working your way up to one that is big enough for the string ferules to go into the holes. Here is what that looked like after I was done. The back is neat, the front is messy, but will be covered by the bridge.


The back after drilling - click on picture to enlarge

More Sanding

Belt sanding is a very rough sanding, so the next step is to go to an orbital or random sander or a block of wood with a piece of sandpaper attached, and start sanding to smoothness. Begin with a fairly heavy 60 grit paper in order to remove the marks from the belt sander. This took about a half hour, and at least two pieces of sandpaper, just working on the front and back of the body (remember, the edges should already have been done to 60 grit earlier). Next I switch to a medium grit of around 120, and continue to sand the front, back, and now the sides too. I spent about a half hour on this step too. Next I switched to a higher quality 220 paper and sand everything down. This step took about an hour, because I was sanding everything, even parts of the neck, especially where they joined into the bevel I cut into the side.

I also found I had to spend a fair amount of time sanding inside the horns of the body. I had used a tool attached to my drill to sand out the horns, and it left deeper marks than I expected.

Fill in the holes by the tuners

This is a goofy thing, but there are small pilot holes drilled into the neck near the tuners on the back side. I guess they are for some set of tuners to fit into, but not the ones that I ordered. You need to fill in the holes with something because they actually show with these tuners. There are two options; gather up some of the sawdust from all that sanding, mix it will glue, and mash it in, or use wood filler. Either works okay, I used glue and saw dust this time just to see what it would look like.

Still More Sanding

Now take the guitar into the sunlight and look at it from different angles, if you can see scratch marks then you need to sand some more, because they will show up after finishing. This is especially true if you plan to stain the wood, as the scratches stain to a darker color than the rest of the wood.

Finishing

Now it starts to get fun. Pick the type of finish that you want to use, there are many books written about this subject, stewmac.com has some really good ones. I used a clear low gloss finish on this guitar, just using a simple wipe on polyurethane by MinWax. This finish is specifically intended to be wiped on with a pad or soft cloth (no lint allowed though). I prefer a low gloss for a natural finish guitar, so I used a semi gloss finish.


In between coats - click on picture to enlarge

Expect to put about 4 light coats of this finish on. I put on the finish, let it dry overnight, and sand between coats with a 600 grit sandpaper. Very little sanding is reqired between coats with this finish, it goes on thin, and there are no brush marks since it is rubbed in. After 3 coats, I switch to wet sanding, just get the sandpaper wet, and sand very lightly. Clean up the guitar and use your hands to feel the finish all over the guitar. Continue sanding if you feel any bumps or irregularities on the surface of the guitar, it is easier to feel them than see them at this point.

Apply one last thin coat of finish, and let it dry for several days. Once it is dry get a can of rubbing compond from an auto parts store or any hardware store. Get a wet rag and gently rub the guitar down with rubbing compound. This should remove any final finishing marks, and supply a light shine to the finish. Never rub hard during this step, the finish is very thin. Of course, if you use another type of finish that advice may not hold.

Next, put a light coat of caranuba wax on. I use pure caranuba wax from stewmac.com, it seems very different than auto waxes, but I'm not really sure. The wax I use is Behlen Blue Label Paste Wax. I also use a fretboard oil from stewmac.com which is a light oil that gives the fretboard a nice dark look. The type I get is Roche-Thomas Premium Fingerboard Oil.

Electronics

You can begin this step while the guitar is drying out, or nearly anytime during the finishing steps (but after tracing outlines). Start to attach the electronics to the pickguard, and then solder all the connections. Make sure everything is going to fit into the spaces that you routed. If you have not soldered before, practice first just soldering wires together - or find a book in the library on it.

Here is a schematic.


Schematic for strat wiring - click on picture to enlarge

Here it is done...


Expert soldering - click on picture to enlarge

Final hardware assembly

Now it's time to put the thing together, make sure you pre-drilled the holes for everything since you don't want to crack the finish. Here is something NOT to forget, you need to run a ground wire from under the bridge to the ground on the input jack (or anywhere that connects to). I drilled a small hole from the main routed out area to under the bridge and just ran a wire up with its insulation stripped off. Then I attached the bridge on top of it, and put the screws in. Next attach the pickguard, jack plate, and finally the tuners. Before you put on strings you can quickly check to make sure the thing is alive. Plug it into an amp and tap on the pickups. Move the switch around and check that it works correctly. The pickups wont make a lot of noise from tapping so you have to put the amp up fairly loud.

Next put the strings on, and again make sure the pickups work correctly. You can tune the guitar up now, but it wont stay in tune for long. I always insist on playing for awhile just to loosen up the strings, bend them hard just to seat them in. Then put the guitar away for the night after cleaning with a lemon type cleaner. I really like Martin Guitar Polish for this. I take the time to wipe down the strings too, and they last forever this way.

It's not worth doing the setup yet, because the neck is going to move now that it is under tension.

Guitar setup

At this point you should have two things to do: adjust the string height, and adjust the string compensation. If you neck is too flat, or too bowed you may also have to adjust the truss rod - but I have NEVER seen this happen with a Carvin neck. I start by first adjusting the saddle height, I want them as low as possible without any neck buzzing. Use the allen key supplied with the bridge to adjust these screws, make sure to keep the saddles level. Do this without an amplifier, as the buzz does not amplify. Also, make sure to keep the guitar in tune as you do this.

Next adjust the compensation by adjust the distance from the saddle to the nut using the phillips head screws at the base of the bridge. Use a digital tuner and again ALWAYS keep the guitar in tune while doing this. First tune a string open and look closely at where your tuning meter guage goes, then fret lightly at the 12th fret and check the guage again. If it is sharp you need to lengthen the string, if it is flat you need to shorten it. After each move, re-tune and check again. When done, if you have the patience, you may want to recheck the string height - certainly if you hear any buzzing you will want to readjust that.

Finished

Here is the finished guitar again, the grain really came out deep. The guitar looks even better in person than in these pictures. The swamp ash has a fairly open grain, you can actually feel it with this finish. If you don't like that feel, you can use a wood filler before finishing, but I prefer to feel the grain a little.

A few comments on this guitar; it plays super fast, much better than any Strat I've ever played, and it sustains quite well. In fact, it's a little noisy played loud with a lot of distortion, you have to be careful to damp the strings. I think this guitar is a little "brighter" than most Strats, but I also found that rolling of the treble just a bit makes it sound more Strat like. Also, the pickup position with the neck and middle pickup activated does not really sound the same as on most Strats. It does not have as much of a pluck sound to it. I suspect this is because of two things - with the 25 inch scale length the pickups don't fall in exactly the same spot, and the neck through makes the notes sustain a lot longer so the sound changes.

The up side of this guitar is that both the neck and bridge pickups alone sound great. For some reaon, I particularly like to play with just the neck pickup and a mild amount of distortion. Really sounds good to my ear.


The finished guitar - click on pictures to enlarge

Below is the first guitar I did, it came out great, but I learned a few lessons the hard way while building it. For one, I tried to use a stop bar tailpiece, but it stuck up to high because the neck is normally angled back on a Gibson style guitar. I did not discover this issue until final setup, I almost had a heart attack. I was able to route an area for the bridge to fit down into, and all ended well. This guitar is the best sounding guitar I own (and I own a bunch). The pickups on this guitar are from a mid-70's Gibson "The Paul" which was a Les Paul built completely from Walnut. The pickups were too dark sounding on the walnut, but on this maple through body with mahogony sides they sound amazing, and it sustains forever. The back really looks great in person, there is almost a depth to the mahogony. The sides are from exoticwoods.com.


Mahogany guitar with maple center - click on picture to enlarge

Here are all three guitars that I've made together


The three amigos - click on picture to enlarge