Building a guitar

[Wood_workur]

I have decided to build a guitar. It will look like this, and I have a few questions for those of us here that have built a guitar before.

How should I cut the slots for the frets? (I know how to calculate the spacing)

Where can I get the bridge, pickubs, switches, strap hooks, output jack, tuners, and strings for cheap? (besides ebay)

What radius it the fret board? back of the neck?

trussrod? (in general)

I want to just have 3 volume switches (or two if I use 2 humbuckers), one for each pickup, and a master volume. what kind of circuit should I use?

anything else you weant to share with me?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[mikel]

I just saw a ton of parts for guitars in the Grizzly tools catalogue.

Meat and jerky tools tool...

...mikel

[Knottscott]

Great project Alex!

Here's a few sites I found to be useful:
http://diyguitarist.com/
http://mimf.com/cgi-bin/WebX
http://stewmac.com/
http://seymourduncan.com/
http://dimarzio.com/

Ebay has lots of good deals on parts, and many of the sellers are legit dealers. Pickup selection will make a big difference in sound. The Duncan and Dimarzio websites have sound bytes of various pickups that they make...of course those at on the higher end of hte price spectrum! The Ibanez site should have lots of schematics.

I found buying a premade neck saved me lots of headaches...maybe not the purist route, but a good alternative for rookies.

Good luck and keep us posted!

[crokett]

Send a PM over to tundraman or look up his username and check out his site. He's built a couple guitars and I am sure can answer your questions.

[Tree Farmer]

An Ibanez Iceman....made famous by Paul Stanley of KISS....Interesting choice.

Most of your construction questions can be answered by Tundra Man or the books he's mentioned on his site.

Parts? Stew Mac for most anything.

Pickups? I prefer Seymour Duncan JB models for humbuckers, but I do have a hot-rod Fender Strat loaded with budget-priced Carvin pickups that sound fantastic. www.carvin.com

Control layout? It's your choice, but as a player for 20+ years, the master volume concept seems a somewhat redundant and a little goofy. Again, it's whatever you want. If you use two humbuckers, I'd suggest a volume pot and tone pot for each pickup. Use a three-way toggle switch and perhaps a coil-tap switch if you buy humbuckers with four-conductor wire.

Good luck...you're a brave soul!

[tedkitch]

I second the Carvin recommendation. I have a few guitars with Carvin pickups in them and I love them. If you are going for something heavy, get an M22SD or if you like the classic Les Paul type sound then just get the regular C22 pickups. They are great!

[Knottscott]

The sound you're looking for is very subjective, but I wanted to reiterate that it's worth taking some time pick the right pickups and schematic to suit you.

We used 3 different pickups on our guitar with a 5-way switch, 1 volume, 1 tone, and we get 5 distinct sounds from the combination....all are unique, and the two sounds from the combined mid/bridge, mid/neck have awesome classic character (think George T-Good and BB King at the flick of a switch...). The pickups were a heavy sounding Dimarzio DP-111 in the neck, a neutral Duncan SL-59 in the middle with excellent overtones, and a Petrucci signature humbucker in the bridge. My brother has an OLP guitar that uses two nice aftermarket Dimarzio humbuckers that are pretty much identical (a seemingly popular setup). He definitely gets a heavier metal sound, but he gets no where near the flexibility in sound we're getting from the guitar. Anyone know what the advantage to using two identical pickups is vs choosing ones with different sound?

[Wood_workur]

Thanks for the help. The sound bits should help.