How to Design Your Own Guitar

  Why design your own guitar? 

            Designing your own guitar is fun and working through the design process is a great way to gain a better understanding of the instrument. 

            If you like guitars, this is a really interesting way to spend a few hours, but also a great starting point if you want to get a custom guitar made, or build your own. 

            You could just follow a pre-made plan but it is much more rewarding to design completely from scratch. You can let your imagination run wild as guitars can be virtually any shape. 

            A working drawing is essential if you intend to build the guitar and an invaluable way to communicate your ideas to your guitar maker should you decide to have it made for you. 

  Overall Aim 

            To begin with a blank sheet of paper and work through the entire design process, making vital decisions as you go. You will finish with a custom guitar drawing of your very own. 

  Step by Step 

            The course will guide you step by step through the guitar design process from the perspective of a professional builder. 

            The design will be a real working drawing of a guitar and the course is intended to give you the best possible chance of success if you do go ahead and build. 

            The guitar designed in this course will be made in the next course - Build Your Own First Guitar. 

  Over and over again 

            You will need only a few inexpensive items to complete your drawing. These along with the course material can be used over and over again as many times as you want until you find the perfect design! 

  How long will it take? 

            Drawing a shape for your guitar is the easy bit. Making sure all the important bits are in the right place and that it will actually work as a musical instrument requires a little work. 

            It will take a couple of hours to go through the process the first time as there is a lot of information to cover but once you have completed the course and understand the process will become easier and quicker. 

  Whats included 

      The course contains full instructions and a library of templates to create your own original guitar design and working drawing. It covers all aspects of designing a solid body electric guitar, including vital information on construction styles, wood, hardware, bridges, tuners, pickups , electrics and much more! 

  Library of templates 

  (downloadable PDF’s) are included for tracing, to aid in your drawing. 

• Pickups: single coil, humbucker, P90

• Control Cavities and Layouts

• Standard and Floyd Rose Trem

• Headstocks and Tuner Locations

• Neck joints: Bolt on, set neck and neck thru

  Why I wrote it 

            There is much myth and confusion around the world of guitar design. This course aims to fix that and help to avoid many of the common mistakes made by the unwary. 

  Whats possible 

            These instructions cover only solid body electric guitars. Acoustic, semi-acoustic and archtop guitars have other aspects of the design like bracing which is beyond the scope of this book. 

  Left hand or right hand 

            Left handed designs can also be drawn using this method. Whenever you see this symbol LH read the note and it will tell you what to do, usually this will be simply turning the tracing over.