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I just finished a lap git,
with the EMG pickups you got.
I am very happy with them!
Coil splitters,
great variety of tone.

That's a very interesting shape you're going with. How'd you come up with it?

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http://www.tinyhouseandland.com

I'm excited for these pickups =D. Never had EMGs before!

The shape is the whole reason I'm doing this. I always wondered why people wouldn't want to customize their project like that! Anyways, I just wanted something unique and funny (inspired by a Homer Simpson head guitar I saw online), so I saw a duck cartoon picture and copied it. I can't find the exact one though . . . the one I copied it off of.

Anyways, more pictures tonight

DAY EIGHT:

Well, I guess I'm back sooner than I thought! Anyways, worked on the neck cavity. Since it sits in a 3 inch pocket, the longest side was 3 inches and the other side just went with the shape of the guitar. I placed it in a spot where I can comfortably play and have enough room since a big thing I was worried about was getting the cavities in the right spot, so that's how I did it (comfortable height up the body really then used the online specs for the pocket). Routed it out but the reason I'm back so soon is the Dremel ran out of battery. Haven't used it in forever so . . . you know. Charging it and will finish this cavity tomorrow since it won't take long.
I also learned that even when doing something like filing and sanding, where goggles. Accidentally blew a ton of sawdust into my eyes lol. Hurt for a minute but put goggles on afterwards (since I was just filing, not using a router or anything).

First, here's a picture of the cartoon I used:


Close up before "dremeling"


After:


Then so far with the neck inside (and not) and what not:

Cool!
For some reason I thought the beak would be at the other end.
I played my EMG guitar today,
YES!!!
Those be good pickups!!!!!!!
Highly recommended!!!!

Originally the neck was gonna come out of the beak, but I thought that might cause problems so I flipped it. But I think it looks better like this anyhow 'cause you can see the features better

Don't forget to draw your centerline, I do that before I ever rout the cavity, it will help to line up your bridge and pickups, remeber to measure nut to the 12th and then mark that measurement again from the 12th to the body and add 1/16th for the bridge.

Neck pickup roughly 1/4 to 1/2 from the end of the neck, bridge pickup roughly 3/4 in front of the bridge.

looks awesome, Michaels and Hobby Lobby have little half size cans of laquer in different colors if your gonna mask it off and paint the eyes/beak etc.

Just finished the neck today and layed out the pickups.

i don't know if you can see it well, but I drew out the guidelines after placing the neck where I wanted. The bridge at first was way too close and I was wondering why when it was half the scale length, and saw I was measuring from the wrong point on the twelfth fret (after measuring with some of my other guitars). So now I have the bridge layed out. I was reading up because I didn't want to misplace the pickups, and it was saying just closer to the neck and bridge will just create different sounds (more twangy, more bass, etc), so that part I just kinda said, "this seems about close enough" since it seems like it's just gonna slightly affect the sound (which doesn't need to be exact for me. Just some good hardware and I'm set). Though again, this is my very first build so I could be wrong . . .

Ya, you want the scale length to be dead on, I suggest measuring the scale on your neck your building with incase your other guitars are a different scale.

As far as where to measure, you wanna measure about the middle of the actual metal 12th fret

The scale length I got. It's just the pickups that were placed where it looked not too close but not too far away from their respective . . . places (neck and bridge)?

Yea, The neck pickup is set roughly 1/4" to 1/2" from the end of the neck, bridge pickup is set roughly 3/4" in front of the bridge.

DAY NINE:

More like day 10 but whatever. Anyways, I wanted to at least get one pickup cavity done, but this morning my dad and I had to move 16 tons of rock (which we did) so I didn't get a chance to do a whole lot. We had a little mess up but it's OK! I really hate the open cavities, so I was going to put a little cover around the pickup cavities and possibly the neck too, so it won't be seen, and since I don't plan on ever selling this, it doesn't bug me. It's a learning experience. Anyways . . . a little about how I measured the placements:

First routed the neck cavity. This allowed me to easily measure from the end of the neck (about 6 inches roughly) to where the bridge should be (again, another 6 inches roughly since it's a 25" scale length I believe. I had the exact when I measured out, but half of it was around twelve). I drew some guidelines so I could line it up, and in between I eyeballed where the pickups should go using the measurements given above by ledbthand since it really only effects your range, and I don't need to have another thing to worry about lol. It's not professional, but hey, it's just a personal guitar, so as long as I'm fine with it, I'll make my life a bit easier until I get to the point where my ability allows me to be more critical of myself.

In order to see the lines through the router lens, I made some very dark. That's why you can't really see the guidelines.

Anyways, pictures. First is the cavity and neck:


Here it is close up:


***IF ANYONE HAS TIPS ON GETTING THESE CAVITIES CUT OUT, I'D LOVE TO HEAR THEM*** I've been using the Dremel here to help shape.

Just some "so far" shots:



Personally, I think it's coming along good. I knew some mess ups would happen and things would go wrong, but it's a learning experience and so far it looks like a Duckitar so I'm pretty happy =D

When you do the bridge pickup cavity if you have a drill press hog out as much wood as you can with a 1/2" forstner bit then use a sharp 1" or so chisel and a mallet to shape the cavity (don't worry about using the forstner on the neck cavity now, just finish it out with a chisel), I would suggest mounting the neck and then the bridge and THEN making the bridge pickup cavity (something I learned the hard way lol).

pickup cavities should be about 3/4" - 1" deep

neck cavities vary on different brands, if I remember correctly its 20/32" deep, don't quote me.

you wanna come in about 1/2" from all sides of the neck pocket and drill 4 pilot holes first, (top of the guitar facing up) put a backing board to help prevent blowout.

make sure your neck is lined up with the center line,clamp it in place, and drill 1/16 guide hole through the back of the body into the neck then you can go back and drill out your screw holes 1/32" - 1/16" smaller than the diameter of the screws, careful not to go through the neck, (this is where good calipers come in handy)

for a 25.5" fender scale you should have 12.75" or 12 and 3/4" from the 12th fret to the bridge, don't forget to add 1/16" to that measurement for bridge intonation compensation.

Thanks. As soon as we get these cut out (and the back cavity for the electronics, but it's not like that has a specific shape and size ^_^) we can finally start painting =D

Sorry, are you doing top mounted electronics like a tele? or are you routing out from the back like a les paul?

I'm doing it from the back.

Well, I like to do that last myself so as not to take a chance of accidentally routing into the cavity area of the pickups/bridge. That said you should try keep 1.5" - 2" away from the center line and roughly 3/4" - 1" away from the pickup and bridge cavities, with the duck shape you may or may not have a little bit of trouble laying the cavity out but I usually just put some knobs down on top of the body and try to figure out where I want them. Once you figure out where you want your knobs to be, drill the holes for the pots then turn the guitar over to the back side and draw out your cavity then like I said earlier, use forstner bits to hog out as much wood as possible, remember to stop between 1/8" and 3/16" or as close to .187" as possible, its will be kinda hard to make the cavity without a router so be very careful and remember the forstner still has that little point on the bottom that goes an extra 1/8" or so deeper, if your pots have longer shafts you can kinda cheat a little and not go quite as shallow with the depth of the cavity.

1/8" from the top is the absolute closest you should get, 3/16" is really what you wanna shoot for. with a softer wood you wanna be careful also.

But if I remember correctly with long shaft pots you can be as far as 1/4" from the top, don't quote me tho.

Also with softer wood you can soak the inside of the cavity with super glue to sorta "toughen up" the wood and reinforce it just be careful you don't let it bleed through the holes for the pots/switches out to the top and stain it (paint sticks differently to glue than to wood).

Keep in mind that you still have to drill a hole for the pickup wires and bridge ground wire.

Next thing we do (well, the next major thing) is the back cavity so I'll probably read your post over like 10 times before I go and do it so I know I'm doing it at least kinda correctly lol. Also, we haven't had time to work a whole bunch on it so sorry, but anyways, I have pictures!

DAY TEN:

I think it's day 10 . . . anyways, got the first cavity done (it looks really awkward but it works, and it'll have a cover around the edges so it's fine) to where the pickup can sit nicely in it. I learned a few things too- Dremels can't hold a charge, and this is more complex then originally planned (and I did a bunch of research because I knew it would be expensive and didn't want that money to go to waste), though it's fun and I'm sure the end product will be worth it lol. OK, pictures!

Again, what I had:


Routing out the second pickup cavity:


We did better this time lol:


This is as far as we're gonna use the router for for this cavity. The rest is by hand and Dremel:


And just how it's gonna look (sorry for blurriness but I was hold the neck and camera phone when I took it)!



Obviously at this stage, I think it's fine. Of course, I'm sure it'll become a bit more difficult once we start having to fit in all the electronics and customizations (for sure gonna have a killswitch- love those things- and probably do something cool with LEDs 'cause the body is pretty big. And currently accepting ideas), but for now, I'm happy =D.

What still needs to be done:
Second pickup cavity
Bridge holes
Electronics cavity w/ knobs and such
Drill the neck so I can screw it on
Cut the head to my custom "talon" shape (no real purpose to it other than it was kinda cool looking)
Sand/paint/assembly/fine tune

As far as LED's your on your own hehe, never done anything with them.

If you use a 1/2" pattern cutting bit in your router you can cut the pickup cavities a lot easier with a humbucker template like this one.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Templ ... plate.html

It's how I do my pickup cavities.

I just line it up with the centerline and double stick tape it down.

I also DS tape scrap wood in the shape I want my control cavities and rout those out as well.

Remember, trees grow back, fingers don't!

I might have to get that template if we make another guitar (the piece of limba we got had enough wood for two). It's been kinda a pain routing these cavities lol, but that one is rounded so I'm gonna keep it uniform with the other.

Also, figured this was kinda cool to put in somewhere using some thin film to cover the hole, or some plastic or something (or even just putting the LEDs in little holes on the body or something):
http://www.instructables.com/id/A-weara ... Schematic/

DAY ELEVEN(?):

Just did some sanding to the cavity and drilled the volume knob hole. I'm only gonna use one knob- a volume- because I never use the other ones. I'm also putting it up above because when I played shows, I would always accidentally hit the knobs and pickup selector with my hand. And I want this guitar to be as unique as possible ^_^. I also laid out the cavity on the back. It's pretty long 'cause the body is thick and I want to take some weight off . . .

Here's some "so far" pics:



And here's the hole. I drilled all the way through. I don't know if that's something you'd recommend or if people always do it, but I figured that A) I'm going to rout it out anyways and will need that hole for the pot to stick through, and B) To get the router started in there (since we're gettin' good at it now), we need to drill a little hole anyways. And it helped lay out the back cavity.


Almost ready for painting! Just gotta do the back side (and I did make a template on some poster board so I can create my own cavity cover for the unique shape), drill the bridge holes, and sand it down!

If you don't have a drill press to hog out wood with a forstner bit before you use the router, just remember to cut small amounts of wood per pass, it's not only safer but will be easier and provide better results. (and its less stress on your router)

Yeah, we've been using the router (my dad has gotten really good at it, so next guitar I'll probably try it [don't want to screw up this guitar now]). I told him about using the drill and bit, but we have a hand held drill . . . and he likes how the depth is already set on the router lol. Hopefully today we'll have a back cavity done (but probably minus a lip for the cover).

Also, I just googled them, and we don't have any forstner bits (when I told my dad, I don't think he was paying attention to me and kinda shrugged) . . .

DAY TWELVE:

Did the back cavity. We got close to the edge (not on purpose) but it's OK. So I figure while we drill the holes next (pickups to back and bridge), I'm gonna have to make the walls of the pickup cavities straight since now there are like, these little layers that don't allow the pickup to go down the whole way. Anyways, pictures.

Widened the volume knob hole so it could fit through:


Back cavity. You can't see the lines (again) as I drew them lightly. The lines you see are the dark ones outlying the shape. That's so we can see them through the router lens:


Detail (so you can see how lazy we got. "Oh, it's just used for that? Oh, then I'm not gonna go the whole way around and just work right here". Lol):


So yeah. Next is drilling the holes and then we gotta drill out the pickup selector (I remember as I write this) and the cavity channels and what not and then we get to sand and paint!

Looks pretty good, you can make a lip either by getting a rabbiting bit or by just gluing some split dowel rods down inside.