Make Your Own I Pa daa aT hts | ee ching ® Pea ee Two hu as ae vs wad te wh By depth: 17% in at switch, tone and volume cont ige, 2 in at centre ok k socks mpletely revised and updated se bindingMake Your Own Electric Guitar Second Edition Melvyn Hiscock Foreword by Brian May© Melvyn Hiscock 1986, 1998 Foreword © Brian May 1998 First edition published by Blandford Press 1986 This edition published 1998 Reprinted 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 NBS PO Box 6292 Basingstoke Hampshire RG2I SYX United Kingdom All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmicted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0 9531049 07 Typeset by NBS Publications Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles LtdContents Foreword by Brian May Introduction First Steps What is a Guitar? Designing Your Own Guitar The Tools for the Job Woods Truss Rods Frets and Fretting Safety The First Guitar The Second Guitar The Third Guitar Mixing the Styles Finishing Electrickery Setting up the Guitar Tremolo Systems Assembling Component Parts Appendix { Fretting Tables ‘Appendix 2 Useful Addresses Appendix 3 Some Useful Templates Appendix 4 Guitar-making and the Internet Recommended Reading Acknowledgements Index 43 49 57 65 79 81 107 123 133 141 152, 180 186 189 206 210 214 215 216 217Foreword by Brian May My dad and I joyfully (for the most part!) laboured for two years to design and construct my ‘Red Special’ electric guitar. Ever since the day when I first realised that our home-made electric guitar actually worked, | have intended to write a book very much like the one which you hold in your hand. | never made it, up to now — there was always coo much in the in-tray, for which, I guess, I should be profoundly grateful Happily, however, Melvyn Hiscock has had the time, talent and infinite patience to produce this fine work, just the very thing I could have done with had it been available 30 years ago! Herein you will find a wealth of answers to questions which crop up at every stage in the design and creation of your own instrument, something which may eventually fit you more comfortably than your favourite slippers, or any commercially available guitar. So please feel well advised to buy (or borrow ~ shhh . ..) this excellene companion for your days of construction. Maybe you'll join Bo Diddley and myself as living proof of the fact that, just sometimes, it's better to do i yourself viIntroduction When I first started writing this book twenty years ago, I would not have believed that it would have been so popular or have lasted so long. The idea behind it came from someone asking me how to make a guitar. I simply told him to go to the library and get the zelevant book, He told me that there twas no such book, which took me by surprise since there had been nothing when I had started making guitars ten years before and I found it hard to believe there was still nothing suitable. At his suggestion I started writing and the end result was released in May 1986. Since that time a lot has changed. Many of the parts that were available then have been superseded, some of the companies referred to no longer exist and, as much as anything else, | have learned a lot more. The continued sales’ of the book have shown that many more people are building their own guitars now than ten years ago; over the years Thave met a number of them, which has been a real pleasure. It is also heartening to hear that many schools use the book and thar many students, have gone on to submit the instruments they have made for examinations. ‘Some of the methods [ used in making the guitars for the book have been altered but I still feel the mix of designs I made was a good grounding in most of the areas thar needed to be covered. For this edition I have added wherever necessary and included new photos and descriptions, but the message remains the same, The electric guitar as we know it today is over 50 years old and has changed little over the years. Apart from differing circuitry and some manufactur- ers’ excursions into metal, carbon fibre and graphite necks, the construction of these instruments is very similar to how it was originally, and mass production has not changed these methods drastically. Most goox-quality electric guitars are still made with a combination of hand and machine wood- work, and these methods are not too difficult to translate into a form that can be used in a home workshop. However, there is still a lot of mystique surrounding guitars and I am constantly surprised by the number of people I meet who would like to make their own guitar but are apprehensive as they do not fully understand the basic principles and are confused by some of the things that have been written about guitars in recent years The intention of this book is to examine, using words and pictures, the various methods that are used both by individual makers and by large manu- faccurers, and present them in such a way that the principles are easy co understand and the methods easy co follow. It is then up to you to design and build a guitar that is suited to your needs using the methods that you are most comfortable with. It is also my intention that if you are just interested in guitars, and have no intention of making one, you will find this book interesting and informative and that it will give you a hetter insight into the work- ing of your guitar, and the effort that went into its construction, Ie isnot dificult to make a guitar but itean be made so by lack of prior planning and preparation, ot by using the wrong tools or materials. When I started making guitars, che information that I needed was not readily available and, as a result, I made a lot of mistakes through ignorance and stupidity. 1 hope that by understanding where the pitfalls lie you will he able to avoid them and save yourself a lot of unnecessary effort. A BRIEF WORD ABOUT MEASURING THINGS Since most of the history of the electric guitar stems from the United States of America it is inevitable that guitars were made using imperial measurements, those ‘old-fashioned’ inches and2 Make Your Own Electric Guitar fractions of inches chat some of us (English people) remember from our youth. Since parts of this book describe those instruments in minute terms, the imperial measurements are used with their metric equivalents noted in brackets. Part of the genius of Leo Fender was his use of prepared timber in easy sizes, such as one inch. Of course you can build guitars entirely by metric measurement and there is a faint chance thar I might have done this in my past but Fam the sort of person who makes true engineers shudder ~ I have been known to use both imperial and metric measurements on, the same guitar, or even on the same piece of guitar! In some cases this is dawn to ease af application. For example, many Fender and Gibson guitars have a top nut chat is 1'%sin wide. If you want to divide this in two to find the centre you need 10 be able to think and come up with a figure of "% of an inch. If you are under 40 it is sometimes easier to use 42 mm and divide that by two to give 21 mm, There is no point in making it difficult for yourself — you get no extra points for showing off —so use whatever system you are more comfortable with. I will endeavour to convert where I can. COPYRIGHT, TRADENAMES AND COPYING Tmust make it very clear that this is a book about making your own electric guitar, not about making cone of Mr Gibson's, Mr Fender’, Mr Rickenbacker’, Me Charvel’s or even one of Mr Hiscock's. [n recent years the major manufacturers have been taking action against companies and individuals who infringe their copyright on designs and names. When the first edition of this book was written, many of the guitars that have prompted chese actions were not on the market. Huge amounts of, money are put into designing and marketing guitars and to have someone come along and rip off your design is guaranteed to make anyone a mite angry. If you want a Fender Stratocaster, or any other off- the-shelf guitar, go and buy one. You will probably get it cheaper than you would if you made it your- self and never, but never, put a company logo on the guitar to fool your friends. You are only fooling one person. Do yourself a favour and design some- thing of your own, 1 am very pleased and honoured shat Brian May has readily agreed to write a few words for this edition. This is partly because i¢ was an interview with Brian in a magazine published in 1973 that fired my imagination, but mostly because his guitar is a fine example of how to go about the task correctly. Despite the lack of information and available component parts ar that time, his guitar was his design and ir contained the features that he decided he wanted, If this meant that he had to design and build a roller bridge and a tremolo system then so be it. Brian May could have had a fine career as a guitar-maker but chose to play in a band Throughout this book various guitars from various well-known companies are referred t0. Most if not all of their easily-recognisable names are registered trademarks. They are used in this book to illustrate the various methods used in their manufacture and Fecause most of them can be considered bench- marks for all thar is good in guitar-making. 1 can, make guitars chat Lam happy to play but there is always room for a good Les Paul, Strat, Tele or Gretsch or . This book is dedicated to the memory of Leo Fender, who inspired at least three generations of guitarists, yet hardly played a note.