Building your Guitar Frame

The first step towards building your guitar frame is designing the guitar body. You should start with a basic
frame, a piece of wood at least 16 inches long; the width can be whatever you want. Then, cut this frame
into whatever shape you want, but leave a 2 inches column down the center of the piece of plywood:

Cutout diagram of guitar body.

The next step is to glue on the neck. We used a prefabricated neck; we glued it on so that it went 8 inches
down from the top of the guitar body that we cut out:

Guitar body with neck measurements shown.

It should be centered on the 2 inches column that you left earlier.

As you can see, there are two other pieces glued onto the front of the guitar. One is the pickup; you will
build this in the next section of the lab. The other is the tailpiece; it is where you anchor the strings, and
where you will eventually plug in the audio cable for your guitar. This is how you will build the tailpiece:

Tailpiece of guitar with string spacing measurements.

Screw in brass screws 2 inches in from the bottom of the tailpiece, a 5 x 2 inches piece of wood, in the
pattern described in the picture above. Flip the tailpiece over, and drill a hole for the guitar plug (which you
will have to go out and buy somewhere; it's a generic inches jack plug) 1 inch from the bottom of the
tailpiece.
While you're drilling, you may want to drill a hole in the bottom of your guitar for your volume knob. The
volume knob can be anywhere on your guitar, but make sure that it won't be in your way while you're
playing the guitar. The volume knob is a standard potentiometer, of a size big enough that you can
comfortably turn it; knobs for these potentiometers are often sold separately.

Close-up of the volume knob.

Back to the inches jack: To finish it off, solder wires onto both the ground lead and the mono audio lead
on the jack, and cut slots in the tailpiece so that the wires can run straight out of the bottom of the guitar.
Then, take the washer and nut off of the jack, put the remainder of the jack into its hole, and screw the
washer and nut back into place (and tighten the screw down really well; it's almost impossible to tighten it
after gluing). Run the wires out of their slots and glue the tailpiece into place, and you're done with the
tailpiece.

Close-up of tailpiece and bottom of guitar.

Guitar body with neck and body measurements shown.

Now that you've glued all the pieces in place, there's one last step: Attaching the tuning knobs:

Close-up of guitar tuning knobs.

First, hammer in the bearing pieces, into the top side of your guitar. Then, slide the tuning knobs through
the bearings from the back, so that the string, running across the top of the guitar, can slide into the holes
in each of them, and screw them in place. Make sure that you can rotate the knobs entirely around; if they
hit the neck, move them so they can be twisted fully, or else they won't be able to tighten the string, and
thus won't be able to function.
Now you have finished with the body of your guitar; feel free to paint or decorate it however you want, as
long as you don't interfere with the path of the strings, which will eventually rest roughly a third of a
centimeter up off of the surface of the neck. You may choose to glue a thin strip of wood over the neck of
the guitar so that the "action", the distance that you have to push the strings down until they reach the
neck, is smaller; do this after the nut blank section.

Building the Pickup

The pickup of an electric guitar "picks up" the oscillations of the guitar strings, converting them to electrical
signals. These signals are later amplified and converted into sound waves by an amplifier speaker system.
This is a description of how a pickup works, and how to build one.
A pickup contains a permanent magnet and magnetic coils. The magnet is placed underneath the metal
guitar strings so that when the strings vibrate, they move through the magnetic field.

Drawing of magnetic field around a permanent magnet.

When the metal wire moves through the magnetic field, a current is generated in the wire. This current, in
turn, creates a magnetic field surrounding the wire. The flow of the current, and thus the resulting magnetic
field, depends on the direction that the string is moving in the magnetic field generated by the magnet.
Because the string moves back and forth (just as does a rubber band if you stretch it and pluck it), the
magnetic field created by the wire constantly changes direction.

Left image: Drawing of string moving rightward through a magnetic field. Right image: Drawing of string moving leftward through a magnetic field.

Changing magnetic fields induce currents in wires; the changing magnetic field created by the metal guitar
string, therefore, creates a current in the magnetic coils that compose the other part of the pickup.

Changing magnetic fields around the guitars pickup.

The current (and voltage) that is produced in the wire coils is transmitted to a speaker system through the
circuitry of the guitar; this circuitry is described later in the lab. So now that we know how an electric guitar
pickup works, it is time to describe how to build one.
For materials, you need:

A 4.5 x 2 cm bar magnet

Two 8 x 11 cm pieces of cardboard

A large spool of coiling wire; 175 to 200 meters

Glue (I used wood glue, although the exact type probably doesn't matter too much)

Packing tape

A small piece of sand paper

First, glue the magnet into the center of one of the two pieces of cardboard, and glue the other piece of
cardboard onto the other side of the magnet so that you have a magnet sandwich.

Left image: Overhead view of the magnet on the cardboard. Right image: Side view of the magnet sandwich.

The magnet need not be perfectly in the center, but it should be fairly close; it's safe to eyeball the location,
though. After the magnet has been glued in place and the glue has dried, cut a short slit about 1cm in from
a corner, to hold the wire temporarily. Measure out 60 cm or so of wire from the spool, and leave it hanging
out of the cardboard piece; put the 60 cm mark in the slot that you just cut and start wrapping the wire
around the magnet, between the two pieces of cardboard. If the wire gets tangled in the cardboard, just
untangle it and wrap over any entanglements made by excess wire. Keep wrapping until the wire starts to
bulge out the side of the cardboard; this should take several hundred loops. When you are done, run the
wire back out through the slit, and leave another trailing 60cm.
At this point, feel free to artistically trim the corners of the cardboard; just be very careful not to cut the
wire. The wire coil must be continuous; otherwise, it will not work. Also, run packing tape over the wire
coiling for protection. If you cut off the slit that you made earlier, make sure to take the wire out of it; you
can just tape the wires in place afterward. Your final pickup should look something like this:

Photograph of home-built pickup.

The next step is to test your pickup. First, you must clean off one or two cm of wire insulation off of the two
wire ends that lead out of your pickup. You can do this by sanding the insulation off until the wire has a
copper color, or burning the insulation off and sanding off the resultant carbon until the wire has a copper
color. Either way, the next step is to connect the pickup to a testing system.

Testing the Pickup

To test the pickup, you need the following:

A guitar amp, with guitar connector cable

A metal tuning fork (works just like a metal wire)

Optional: A microphone and an oscilloscope

Plug the guitar connector cable into the amp, and bring the other end of the cable to your pickup. Attach
the wires to the plug as follows:

Attaching wires to plug.

It does not matter which wire goes to which end of the plug; they are interchangeable. Make sure the wires
are firmly attached; tape them in place, if necesary. After this, turn on the amp. Hit the tuning fork on
something and hold it near your ear; you should hear a pure tone. Then, hit it again if it has stopped
ringing, and hold it over your pickup:

Testing the pickup using a tuning fork.

If you have a working coil, you will hear the same tone coming from the amp's speaker. If not, make sure
you have a good connection between the pickup and the amp, and that the amp is working; if all of these
are the case, you probably broke a wire somewhere; there's not much to do but start over from scratch and
hope that you get one continuous wire this time.
If you have a microphone and an oscilliscope, connect the oscilliscope to the microphone and put the
microphone in front of the amp's speaker. You can see this setup in the background of the previous picture.
Then, turn on your oscilliscope and hold a vibrating tuning fork near the pickup again. You will see a
perfect sine wave on the oscilliscope:

Sine wave on the oscilliscope.

This wave is a graph of voltage versus time; the microphone converts pressure changes to voltage; thus, it
represents the graph of pressure vs. time at the speaker. This clearly illustrates that sound is transmitted
by waves. Incidently, try picking up other sounds with the microphone and looking at them on the
oscilliscope; you'll find that few sounds look exactly like the tuning fork. The frequency of the wave that you
see on the oscilliscope represents the pitch of the note being picked up; the shape of the wave represents
the texture and the tone of the note.
Once you have finished with testing your pickup, drill a small hole in your guitar body around the section
where your pickup should be glued (see Building Frame section), so that the wires can run through to the
back of your guitar. After that, run the lead wires through the hole and glue the pickup in place, so that the
bar magnet inside the pickup runs underneath, and perpendicular to, all four strings:

Wiring your Guitar

At this point, you should have all of your wires running to the back of your guitar. Here is the circuit
diagram that you want to mirror with the wiring of your guitar:

Guitar circuit diagram.

The middle plug on the potentiometer corresponds to the plug with the arrow. That plug should connect to
the non-ground wire on the inches jack. If you measure the resistance across the center lead and either
of the other two leads of the potentiometer, the lead that corresponds to the left wire in the diagram is the

one whose resistance starts high when you switch on the potentiometer and slowly decreases towards
zero ohms as you continue to turn the knob. Here is a picture of the wiring of my guitar:

Photograph of guitar circuitry.

If you wired your guitar correctly, you can now connect it to a standard guitar amp, turn its volume all the
way up, and hold a tuning fork over the pickup to hear a tone from the amp. If not, check your wiring, and
make sure your connections are solid. You probably want to solder them, to make sure that they stay in
place; I chose not to solder them because I like to mess around with circuitry, and once they're soldered
you can't change them.

Stringing Your Guitar

Now that you have your guitar essentially built, it is time to string it. First, however, you must put the
micarta nut blanks in place. One nut blank should go on the tail piece, parallel to the row of brass screws
and about one inch above it. The other nut blank should go on the neck of the guitar, just before where it
curves down for the tightening knobs.

Four guitar strings stretched over tailpiece nut blank.

Four guitar strings stretched over neck nut blank.

You want to create four slots, one for each string, each angled so that the lower side is aiming down
towards where the string will be anchored. Be very careful when making these cuts; if you mess them up,
the string will not stay alligned, or it will rattle around in the slot when you play it, causing a significant
decrease in sound quality.
Angle the slots as follows:

Side view diagram on strings and nut blank.

Cut the four slots in the following pattern (it is the same for the other nut blank):

Four guitar strings stretched over tailpiece nut blank, with measurements.

Now it is time to string your guitar. This guitar will actually use mandolin strings; get a set of four mandolin
strings, and attach the largest string so that it is the closest string to your head when you are playing, and
attach smaller strings in order beneath this string. To attach a string, start by hooking the loop on one end
of the string around the brass screw that corresponds to that string's position. Then, put the other end of
the string through the small hole in its corresponding tuning knob. Wrap the string around the tuning knob
in the manner illustrated in the picture below (click to enlarge), and turn the tuning knob until the string is
just a little tight. Slide the string into its corresponding slots in the nut blanks; you may need to do a little
extra cutting work to get it to stay in, but be careful not to overdo it. After this, you're done; you can start
playing your electric guitar!

Tuning Your Guitar

So you've finished your guitar. All the strings are in place; all the electronic parts are wired together. The
only thing is, when you play the strings, you hear not a nice chord but a muddle of wrong, out-of-tune
notes. Clearly, you're not quite done, you still need to tune your guitar.
If you're already a musician, here's the quick guide to tuning: Tightening a string makes its pitch go up;
loosening it makes the pitch go down. It only takes a tiny fraction of a rotation of the tuning knobs (you did
realize that they are how you tighten the strings, didn't you?) to change the pitch significantly, so go slowly.
We're tuning the strings to low G, D, G (an octave up), and B; you can tune them to whatever you want, as
long as you know that tightening the strings too much can snap either them or your guitar.
If you're not a musician, or you aren't great at tuning by ear effectively, here is a more detailed explanation
of tuning. As you no doubt know if you have read the rest of this website, guitar strings make sound by
vibrating. In an acoustic string instrument, this vibration causes a resonating effect in a large wooden
pocket, thus amplifying the sound; in an electric guitar, a magnetic pickup "picks up" these vibrations and
transfers them to an electric circuit, where they are amplified and played back through a speaker. The
amplitude of the pressure wave formed is directly related to how loud we perceive the sound as being (see
the Sound section); the frequency of the wave determines the "pitch" of the note, how "high" or "low" the
note sounds.
As mentioned before, the tightness (and the length and composition, but we use tightness for tuning on
guitars) of a string determines its frequency, and thus the pitch of the note it produces. Also, as mentioned

above, we're tuning the strings to a low G, D, G (an octave up), and B. So what does this mean?
Musicians developed a system of letters to denote assorted pitches long before sound was fully
understood. They arranged notes into "octaves", a note that is an octave above another note sounds a
great deal like that other note, but not exactly the same. In an octave, the main frequency of the lower note
is exactly half of the frequency of the higher note; in the case of the two Gs on this guitar, the lower one's
frequency, when in tune, is 96 Hertz, or cycles per second; the upper one, therefore, is 192 Hz.
On a typical instrument, the note, when graphed (incidentally, these oscilloscope graphs represent voltage
versus time, and the voltage varies directly with the pressure of the sound wave), isn't a single sine wave;
it is in fact the sum of a number of different sine waves. Each instrument has a signature pattern of sine
waves that add up to make a note on that instrument; that is how we can tell different instruments apart.
One of the sine waves that is added to the base frequency of the note by many instruments is a wave with
twice the frequency of the base note, the same frequency as the octave note. This is why octaves sound
similar.

Complex sinusoidal waves on an oscilloscope.

Now, on to the tuning. The goal of tuning is to get the string to be exactly the right tightness, so that it
vibrates exactly at the intended frequency. There are two ways to do this: One is to use an electronic tuner.
Put the tuner right next to the guitar in a quiet room, or plug the guitar into the tuner if the tuner has this
ability. Then, pluck one of the strings; if the tuner indicates that the note is too low (or "flat"), tighten the
string, and if it indicates that the note is to high (or "sharp"), loosen the string. The other method for tuning
is to tune "by ear": Simply play the note that you want to tune one string of the guitar to on an instrument
that you know to be in tune, such as a piano or an electronic keyboard, and then play the string that you
are tuning. If the string sounds sharp, loosen it, and if it sounds flat, tighten it. Be wary of tuning by ear to a
non-string instrument; I personally find it much easier to tune within an instrument class, and in any case,
some wind instruments are based on a shifted scale. A Bb on a trumpet, for example, is the same as a C
on a piano, is the same as an Eb on an alto saxophone, etc. Hey, it's tradition...
For more detailed information on how sound works, see the section devoted to that topic. The section on
sound also contains a few tips that may help fine-tune your tuning skills.
Incidentally, if you want to mark off the IV and V positions on your guitar, click here.