Any Electric Guitar Luthiers Here? I Want to Build a Tele

[J_SAMa]

Well this project is probably not gonna be carried until next year, but I'd better start planning now 8)
Reason for building a tele myself is that I think it may be cheaper, and of course fun (don't forget the show-off factor when you play it in front of your friends :lol. So here's the questions:

1) How, and how much does the body of a electric guitar affect its tone? Would you say that it affects the tone more that the pickups? Most modern Teles, depending on the type are made of alder or ash AFAIK and I heard earlier ones were made of pine? Do they sound different or is it mainly the pickups
2) If I go with pine, are knots gonna be a problem?
3) Anyone tried building a guitar just with hand tools? I imagine the fretting can be a little tricky?

Sam

 

[marcros]

The fretting should be easy enough I would have thought- fret saw and a jig.

 

[Baldhead]

Sam

Check this out

http://m.youtube.com/user/CrimsonCustomGuitars

Also search YouTube for 'Fletcher handcrafted guitars'.

I have plans on a hard drive somewhere for a Tele, a Strat and a Les Paul, I can email them to you if you want.

I have a 1970 Tele not sure of the body material and a 2000 Strat, TBH I prefer playing the Tele as it has a nicer neck.

Baldhead

 

[Baldhead]

Sam

If your prepared to search through these there is a good video of the Gibson factory which discusses body material, I have also watched a tour of the Fender factory on YouTube which may be on the same site.

http://m.youtube.com/user/premierguitar

Baldhead

 

[bodge]

My take on this for what it is worth.
As a general "rule of thumb" the pickups have more of an effect on sound than the body material does, but both play their part. Generally, the harder the wood, the brighter the tone, so Pine for example would sound "mellower" than Rock Maple, or at least that is what the theory says. Swamp Ash and Alder are indeed the hot favourites these days, I suspect as much due to availability as anything else.
As long as knots are stable and not dropping out and are not on a structural area they shouldn't be a problem, although it would obviously be better if there weren't any.
I haven't done a guitar, but did an electric ukulele with mostly hand tools. The only power tools I used were a jigsaw to cut out the body shape, a cordless drill and a power sander to speed up the laborious finishing. All these tasks can be done by hand they just take longer. A lot longer!

 

[Kalimna]

A couple of quick thoughts.

1) If you only buy the cheapest hardware, wood, dont need to buy any tools specific for luthiery and arent too bothered about looks, then yes, it *might* be cheaper than buying an American Fender Tele.
2) It can be done with only handtools, but powered makes life so much easier (and accurate for the tolerances needed when building a guitar) - I would say a router is a must. Not *absolutely* necessary, but an analogy would be ploughing a field - it is possible to do it with one person and a spade, but why?
3) I would completely avoid pine - whilst it may produce a reasonable guitar, it is mostly too soft a timber to hold the neck joint with any reasonable rigidity. It will also dent like a sponge.
4) Whilst every single component of a guitar will affect the tone, dont get bogged down in which wood gives which sound. Especially for an electric, it makes very little difference indeed. The pickups, tone circuit (and again, dont waste money searching out for NOS capacitors/resistors etc, for a simillar reason), your amplifier, newness of strings will all make more of a difference than ash vs alder. When you have built several and can account and control for differeing factors, then you can worry about woods' tonal effect. For now, worry about using stable timber that is easily worked.
5) Fretting, without a jig, is indeed a royal pain. There are various jigs available, but unless you are competent with handtools, I would use a mitrebox/template combo to ensure accurate fret placement (verticality of cut, placement along length of fretboard).
6) Building guitars is a heck of a lot of fun, but not straightforward, not cheap, and tricksier than you might think. But worthwhile? Oh yes indeedy!

Good luck, and if ask away for any other help you might need....

Adam S

 

[Eric The Viking]

I'm a bass player (well, used to be :-( ). On a design point:

Active pickups make a huge difference to sustain, mainly because the magnets can be weaker, so they don't damp the strings as much. Same goes for hammer-on etc.

OK, not traditional, but hey...

 

[MIGNAL]

You can fret without a jig. In fact it's easy. Why would it be difficult? It's a saw slot in a board barely 2 mm's deep!
A Router might speed things up but then again it might slow things down. Routers usually require you to make templates.
You can do things as accurate as you will ever need using hand tools. Sorry to disagree with Kalimna but Pine will hold the Neck joint, no question about it.

 

[iNewbie]

Well this project is probably not gonna be carried until next year, but I'd better start planning now 8)
Reason for building a tele myself is that I think it may be cheaper, and of course fun (don't forget the show-off factor when you play it in front of your friends :lol. So here's the questions:

1) How, and how much does the body of a electric guitar affect its tone? Would you say that it affects the tone more that the pickups? Most modern Teles, depending on the type are made of alder or ash AFAIK and I heard earlier ones were made of pine? Do they sound different or is it mainly the pickups
2) If I go with pine, are knots gonna be a problem?
3) Anyone tried building a guitar just with hand tools? I imagine the fretting can be a little tricky?

Sam

Picton is a Hand-tool guy - on the TDPRI

Picton



Barnaby on MLP -

Tele Build


MLP - Thinline Tele build

 

[Kalimna]

Mignal - fair enough about the pine, my only experience is that from bnq. But I still think it's too soft to hold wear easily. Fretting is easy if you can accurately cut perpendicular to the midline and spot on for the position, otherwise intonation will be tricky to say the least. I accept that if you are opting for multiple scale lengths then it has to be done free hand, but thats a little advanced.
As I said, there's nothing you can't do with hand tools, but if you have never made a stringed instrument before then certain jigs and power tools will make the end result more predictable. I am well aware that your experience is considerably greater than mine, but that perhaps means I am more in tune with a beginner's pot holes.

Cheers,
Adam

 

[MIGNAL]

Countless thousands of Fenders were built with Alder. Alder is pretty lightweight stuff, with a density of around 530 kg/m. If you hunt around it's perfectly likely that you will be able to pick up Pine that isn't far off that density. Maybe not from B&Q, which tends to be from very quick grown stock. Salvage/SH timber yard is probably the best place to hunt. Pitch Pine is another possibility. The amount needed for an electric Guitar is probably less than a few quid.
A low tech way to fret is to knife mark using magnification. It's pretty easy to split 1 mm into quarters, that gives an accuracy of 0.25 mm's. 0.25 mm accuracy is good enough. It's just a matter of placing a tiny knife mark on the board, at each position. It's then easy to locate a knife in the mark, slide a square (sliding bevel) up against the knife. Replace the knife with a saw and use the square as the saw guide. Everything will be moved across by half the thickness of the saw kerf, which of course is irrelevant because every fret (including Nut position) has been moved by the exact same amount. It's this method that I still use, for some 'rare' scale lengths that don't warrant using a homemade mitre box. The only difference is that I've produced a number of wooden rules that have a zona saw cut as position markers. I no longer have to split the mm using a rule. I just locate my knife in the saw cut of my homemade rules. There's nearly always methods such as this that will give you the accuracy and the speed, even for pro makers. When I saw the U-tube clip for the LMI hand saw mitre box I just shook my head at how slow and tedious it was. It's a lot of money to pay for something that turns it into a much slower task!

 

[Myfordman]

Check out Philly ( Phil Edwards) over on the wood haven. He has written up the build and finishing of several electric guitars.

 

[bodge]

.... A low tech way to fret is to knife mark using magnification. It's pretty easy to split 1 mm into quarters, that gives an accuracy of 0.25 mm's. 0.25 mm accuracy is good enough. It's just a matter of placing a tiny knife mark on the board, at each position. It's then easy to locate a knife in the mark, slide a square (sliding bevel) up against the knife. Replace the knife with a saw and use the square as the saw guide....

That is the same method that I use. The most difficult part is getting the magnifying glasses in focus!

 

[J_SAMa]

I'm a bass player (well, used to be :-( ). On a design point:

Active pickups make a huge difference to sustain, mainly because the magnets can be weaker, so they don't damp the strings as much. Same goes for hammer-on etc.

OK, not traditional, but hey...

Actually I'm a bass player too...
Wanted to build a bass but then... Well I already have one and am happy with it So why not try a guitar.
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Anyone come across a "kit" for building a vintage tele replicaca? I guess I'm just to lazy to choose all the hardware myself (hammer).

About fretting... Aren't there, on the off chance, fingerboards sold with frets and the nut already installed or at least slotted ready to receive? I know Stewmac has them but the idea of buying from America just puts me off. If a European dealer had them it would make things so much easier for me without adding too much to the cost... It's probably even more expensive to source all that rosewood myself.

 

[Kalimna]

Of course, I completely forgot about pre-slotted boards. Here's one from uk :
http://www.touchstonetonewoods.co.uk/pr ... d-785.aspx

And here's a Tele kit from the same supplier (Touchstone Tonewoods) :
http://www.touchstonetonewoods.co.uk/pr ... -2008.aspx

Can't comment on the kit quality, and it seems that nearly all of the luthiery has already been completed, but it's a start.

Cheers,
Adam

 

[iNewbie]

Rail Guitar shop

Other euro suppliers

 

[J_SAMa]

Anyone tried building a guitar out of mahogany? I think that stuff is pretty stable and light, and of course good-looking. Speaking of which, I plan to put as little finish on the body as possible, so as to bring out the natural beauty of the wood. Can someone point me in the direction of a good tutorial/thread on natural finishing on guitars?

 

[marcros]

Gibson use mahogany, I seem to remember from how it's made. It would be a heavy guitar, as I seem to recall somebody telling me that gibsons are.

 

[Baldhead]

Gibson use mahogany, I seem to remember from how it's made. It would be a heavy guitar, as I seem to recall somebody telling me that gibsons are.

Gibson Les Paul's are I believe still made of Mahogany and very heavy.

Baldhead

 

[Kalimna]

I can state with a degree of certainty ( )hat Gibson Les Paul's are a combo of mahogany body with a maple top and either rosewood or ebony fingerboard. There are some 'special editions' utilising different timbers, but essentially maple and mahog.
SG's on the other hand tend to have a body of mahogany only, with some made from korina.

LPs' are quite heavy, but not so much as the padouk electric I finished last year, however....

Cheers,
Adam