The Bender Ghettocaster

[carbonpaper]

A few years ago, a disability forced me out of work, and being the sort of person who needs things to do, I've been teaching myself new skills that I never had time for before. There are only so many times you can renovate your kitchen

So, deciding to learn to play guitar I gave myself a nice DIY project of building the instrument itself. I've never done any carpentry beyond the building-a-deck level and I'm severely short of appropriate tools. In particular I don't have a router, never mind a shop. I cut the body with a reciprocating saw!

Inevitably, it will be kind of rough so I decided to incorporate that into the look, making it look more like a piece of folk art than a finely finished instrument.

Since I'm short of money, I will be reusing stuff I already have as much as possible. The body is made from scrap IKEA "Pronomen" birch countertop I used for the kitchen.

The bridge and tuners will probably be homebuilt, as will the pickups and preamp(s). I'm an electronics person and want to experiment with different kinds of pickups (piezo, optical and I've been thinking about electrostatic).

I have some titanium sheet which I'm planning to use on the faceplate.

That's all for now, pics soon!

[Dizi]

Clicked on this expecting to see a bender.

Nothing!? Just a plan?

I want my click back!

[carbonpaper]

Sorry, I'm afraid clicks are non-refundable.

[carbonpaper]

Template UHU-glued to the birch (I'm a lefty):



"Clamping" the maple while gluing with a heavy object, in this case a 200 lb computer:



Cutting rough outline with reciprocating saw:



Using a reciprocating saw is pretty crude, but it's the only thing I own that will cut that thickness. It took dozens of relief cuts around the horn, as you can imagine. The inside curves at the "waist" turned out sharper than they should have been due to the limited turning radius of the saw.

Rough cut complete:



After that followed much cleanup and sanding with the Dremel and filling some gouges. Hand sanding to 320 grit after that.

First coat of MinWax "Wild Berry" stain:



I put on a few coats of stain and then polyurethane, but the sides sucked up the stain much more than the top and looked out of place so I sprayed the sides and back with white Krylon Fusion spray (already had it) followed by more poly.

Sealed with polyurethane finish (already had some), sides and back painted white:



I've sanded it down to 2000 grit and the finish is very nice and satiny. I think I'll leave it like that because I like the feel.

That's where I am now. I have learned a lot from the experience so far, especially what not to do but the lessons were well learned and I'll avoid them on the next one (and you just know there's going to be more, this is addictive).

[Expatbrit]

That is going to be one gnarly guitar. Is that really the finished shape? Interesting.

[carbonpaper]

Yea, I don't have a spoke shave or even a plane or a rasp. So I cleaned up what the recip saw left and rounded the edges by hand. The slightly bumpy sides sit in my hands nicely though. That way I know it's mine :)

[gagidlof]

This looks like it could get interesting. I'm curious to see what you come up with for the hardware. You're ideas sound cool, Optical... hmmm.

[iansmitchell]

Look on ebay a few of those "LED theremins", for optical pups.

[carbonpaper]

Yea, optical is very simple in principle, I'm surprised it's not more widely used. Patent status, maybe. In any case, it will probably be less tedious than winding the coils for the magnetic. I want at least one of the pickups to be hexaphonic, for synth purposes.

A large part of the fun for me in doing this is figuring out how to fabricate the components from scratch. I have designs I'm happy with for the bridge and tuners, the bridge incorporating a piezo element salvaged from an old alarm clock. I'll probably give it a huge intonation range to make it as flexible as possible.

Total cost of the project so far: $25

[ddlooping]

Very interesting project, carbonpaper, please keep us updated. :)

[carbonpaper]

Okay, it's been a while. I've been trying to snag a neck on ebay that's some reasonable balance of cost and quality, but some dude ganked me.

So I've decided to tackle the neck myself, but I'm modifying the design to make it simpler. Flat fingerboard like a classical guitar, and (to start) fretless. I can play violin, so hopefully I'll adapt. I'll cut small notches on the left side of the neck where the frets would go. Could even make the "notchboard" interchangeable, to change scales easily. We'll see. If it doesn't work I'll fret it.

I'm using the same birch as the body, which won't be all that strong so I'm going to reinforce it with some carbon fibre rods from the hobby store.

For the tuners, I'm using a long bolt or threaded rod with a wingnut epoxied to the end, through an anchor and then a teeny tiny turnbuckle and a set screw for the string. They will stick out of the end of the headstock like fingers. The headstock will be shaped like a half-circle with a radius such that each tuner is separated adequately and all of them equidistant from the nut (which is at the centre of curvature). String trees will be necessary, obviously.

Strings are through-body, the bridge made out of some small diameter copper pipe and castings of lead-free solder. Intonation is adjusted by releasing the "sled" the bridge rides on via a bolt that goes through the body. Ferrules are small nuts epoxied flush with the body.

For the optical pickup, the infrared LEDs and photodiodes are coming from the mountain of obsolete things-with-remotes in my basement.

I'm going to do nylon strings first, and then work up the courage for the steel ones :)

[gagidlof]

Hey there Carbonpaper, just wondering how your build is coming along. I am still extremely curious on the optical pickup concept and would love to see what those are going to look and sound like.

[ha-milton]

Awesome... D.I.Y. at all costs. I have to say Ive never seen a guitar cut with a sawzall-I dig it

[jkingma]

Crude, but way cool.