Dee's guitar-making/modding projects blog

Moving this to blogs...never written one but might be better this way, especially when I get photos.

I had this big log of maple in the basement, been drying there for at least 7-8 years now. It's about 3-4 inches thick and 1,5 foot wide, long as an electric guitar (over a yard). It's curved and twisted a little over the years as it's dried, and I'm hoping it won't 'live' no more.

I'm going to build me an electric guitar of _some_ sort, perhaps out of that block. It does 'ring' really well when hit wit an object, very resonant at least now that it's still uncut.

I also have a maple slab for fretboard, which I'm having my friend the luthier cut me the fret slots and the radius ready...but other than that, I'm dreaming of making the instrument out of either just one slab of maple, OR maybe sort of neck-thru design anyway.

I'm going for something very simple I think...but I haven't decided yet how exactly. I'm thinking I could make the entire thing like a big needle with a hole where the pickups come, and devise a system like rails on which I could quickly put different pickups in from the back, so I could test various ones with ease.

As you've probably gathered by now, it probably won't be built to be a daily player or such...more like an experiment and a basis for tests. I'm wondering for instance should I omit the truss rod for instance...but maybe it must be used. I could also use fiberglass/carbon fibre reinforcements under the fretboard to make it as stiff as possible.

BUt the first order of business is probably cut the maple more closely to size, and then heat it up well and see if it warps any more.

Then again, I have this idea of scoring a big rod of plastic, that black real hard stuff that they CNC machine parts out of, and then making the same project with that...