Building the Ergonomic Guitar

With the electric guitar body finished, it was time to begin my guitar project’s final assembly. While I was at it, I loaded in the guitar’s switch, volume and output jack to see how the guitar will look in its final state. As you can see, I kept the guitar’s electronics simple. Gold Lace Sensor […]

With the final bit of routing complete on my guitar project, I turned to finishing the guitar. After researching the subject, I decided to go with a simple DIY solution – Watco Danish Oil. Before starting the finish, I had a few small dents in the guitar body that I wanted to address. I used […]

Continuing with my electric guitar project, I completed the pickup cavities and control cavity after deciding against the combination of rear routing and front routing that the original Klein guitar uses. I decided rear routing was preferable. I did a quick test fit of the controls and everything looked good. For the pickup cavities, I […]

The electric guitar build is proceeding well – the forearm cut and belly contour are complete. In addition, the angled lower strap button area is done. For the belly contour I used a combination of an 80 grit sanding disc on an electric drill to take away the bulk of the material followed by hand […]

Last night, I completed the bridge route, mounted the Steinberger bridge, reattached the neck and strung up the guitar for the first time. There are some minor cosmetic issues around the bridge route area but no functional issues whatsoever. String alignment looks good as well. I strummed it a bit last night but allowed the […]

The guitar neck pocket is done and tight enough that I was able to hold the guitar up by its neck depending solely on its fit. By comparison, the route on the Steinberger Spirit GU-Deluxe was quite loose. Here it is with the neck attached: Here is the setup I used to make the neck […]

I now have the guitar neck, bridge and headpiece courtesy of the Steinberger Spirit Guitar I purchased from Musicyo.com – seen here in its final moments. I had briefly contemplated building the neck but decided against it. The most important aspect of this guitar build is producing a playable ergonomic guitar. I decided that building […]

Here is the latest on my guitar build – the guitar body is flush trimmed and I’ve radiused all the edges with a 5/16″ round over bit. The body sits on my homemade router table with the DEWALT 2.25 hp Router under it. Here is a closeup of the guitar body: Tools Here is the […]

With a successful guitar template completed, I traced the template shape onto the body blank and prepared to cut out the guitar body. I was a bit concerned with this step. My first thought was that I would have to cut very close to the tracing. Not being particularly skillful with a jigsaw, I knew […]

As noted in Time for a New Guitar Template, there were some concerns with my first attempt at an electric guitar template. It was a good first attempt but time combined with an improved understanding of woodworking (I’m new to this), has given me a more critical eye. I’m glad I made this second attempt. […]