Uhlig Mk. I Guitar

Well 2 some odd months later, and I finally Finished it. Designed, fabricated, sanded, re-worked, put-together, disassembled, reassembled, lacquered, sanded, re-lacquered....and it is finally done.



Little video to listen for the first real guitar sound.




It was fun. This will definitely NOT be the LAST. I have already started designing the next incarnation to make it better, bigger, and more grandiose and closer to what I really want in a custom guitar.


But here is the very last steps I took to finally push me past the finish line:

Lacquering the body on my back porch.








I layered it on real thick because I was going for a real glossy shine. You can see how wet and slick it look, and all I used was just Cabot Lacquer from a spray can. $5.





Now I have shown you the last step of my process. Here are some full angle pictures of the finished product:

It is built, Not Finished

I accomplished what I aimed out to do. Build A Guitar. From Scratch. It is built, but not finished. It is playable, it makes noise; but it is not painted, nor is it set up to my specifics (action, string height, humbucker height, basically the over specific playability of my personal liking)

The main part of today was wiring up the Humbucker to the pots to the output jack. Seymourduncan.com has some easy and straight forward schematics on how to wire up any guitar set up.



This is a Potentiometer. It controls the volume. We needed to solder the humbucker to this pot. the pot needed to be grounded. then this pot needed to be soldered to the output jack, which is a couple pictures down.







This is the main wiring that was needed. That white wire is coming from the Humbucker. That metal output jack is where you plug in to get sound.








These two pictures above are of holes that needed to be drilled from the output jack whole to the control cavity to the humbucker cavity. (there was a picture of the super long drill bit I used, but it was mistakenly deleted it on the camera)







We had no extra wire laying around so we just used the extra wire from the humbucker and wired up the output jack to the pot.



Here is the Soldering machine, it looks old but it worked just fine.



This is the finished product of the soldering and wiring job with a Plexiglas plate fabricated by myself out of spare glass that I took from work (with the managers permission.) The cavity was also milled out.



This the guitar being played by Thomas, it is playable but not quite finished. Some lacquer and polish will really make it pop. Some setting up with make it play just fine.



This is the guitars first noises. It was really exciting. We tested if it just could pick up on something. Then we wanted to see if it could pick up on string noise. Then we wanted to see if it could actually play like a real guitar. Hazaaaaaa!

The Day of the Mill

Today I installed a lot. The neck, the bridge, the tuners on the neck and boy did it take a lot of effort and time to install! I was actually hoping to get everything put in and wired up for me to play it, but I planned on more then had actually got done.



These are all the parts I purchased from online vendors. I purchased the neck mainly because it is a pretty complicated piece of the guitar and I found one online for only $34! (Guitarfetish.com and Guitarpartsonline.com were the main sites I used) The bridge is a Les Paul JR wrap around. For the pick up, it is just a single Humbucker with 1 volume and no tone control. This is my first guitar build, so I tried to keep it as simple as possible, keep my mistakes and overzealous creativity in check.

I chose a tele neck because I like how it feels and plays. The Humbucker because of how it sounds and its lack of 60 cycle hum, which you mainly get from single coil pickups, and the wrap around bridge because of its ease of install (or so i thought, which you will find out about later)



This is Thomas, cleaning the mill that he owns. In his giant warehouse full of big boy toys, everything from band saw, mill, planers, cars, boats, etc. If you need to work on something, he most likely has it, and if he doesnt know he has it, well, look at it is probably there. the pace is a builders dream!









Here is a couple shots of myself working with the mill. What needs to be milled out where the pocket for the neck to be placed, a hole milled out for the Humbucker to sit in, and some holes for the bridge to be anchored in.



Then it was on to installing the neck. First we need to clamp the neck in place so we could make an exact hole for the screws to drill right on through. My buddy Tom also mention to drill first with a larger bit through the body and then with a smaller bit through the neck, because this will allow the screws to slide through the body and catch in the neck pressing the the neck and the body together tightly! Smart guy.







And here is the neck and body connected as one! stiff as a rock!



Next step was installing the tuners to the neck, but the problems was since i had purchased the neck from one sight and the tuners from another (because of price) the holes in the neck for the tuners were smaller then tuners i had purchased, only by .5mm thick. So just did a little drilling out and got them to fit snugly!









You can see that I had also purchased a screw and neck plate set. I did this just to make it feel and look a little nicer then just through some screws in there.



And this is where I had to stop for the day. I had also milled out the pocket for the Humbucker. I was tired and ran into some complications with the bridge being installed (drilling hole that were much to close together, so it didnt quite fit right) but it was fun and will attempt some more construction next week.

The Dirty Details!

Here are some details, since my "UnkyTom" asked:

The Glue: Titebond 3




The Wood: Pine (I believe). I used pine because it was cheap (about 8 bucks) and I knew the owner of the local lumber store. I would really like/prefer to use tone woods next time around; like Alder, Ash, Mahogany but it is expensive and I dont know anyone who can get it to me cheap. Online sites sell guitar body blanks of these desired woods from around $75-$300.

The Body Blank: Its dimensions are 2 inches thick, 16 inches wide, and 25 inches long. Planing the wood makes for a clean joint between the two pieces I glued together. Also it makes for a flatter and a nice even plain to work with when installing the hardware (bridge, pickups, etc)


Any other questions, ask away! and I will fill you in!

Body cutting

Today was an exciting day, cutting out the body of the guitar. This part is most exciting because you actually get to see, feel, and hold what your guitar is going to be!

here is my finished blank:




Sanding it down to make it feel better, not so rough and make the wood grain pop!





Now drawing out the body, I didnt decided what I wanted until just right before I cut it out. Just started drawing and let my hands decide what it was going to look like.


First on paper:


Then straight to wood:


Then the fun bit! Using a band saw to cut out the body. Was tricking getting into the curves and tight spots, but just went slow and concentrated:





And there it is, the body design crafted in a second all on a whim. I am very proud and happy with how it came out, although it does look and feel a little small: