I’d always wanted to understand how an electric guitar works, and what better way than by building one?  Starting from an eBay kit, I stained and varnished the wood, put in shielding for the electronics using copper tape, and made sure all the joints were well soldered.  I used the laser cutter to engrave my signature into it.

While doing this, I repaired a favourite guitar for another Pangloss member, Daniel Baudry.  It was a broken internal connection that needed resoldering.

Thanks to Youtube, I worked out how to string the guitar and then how to tune it.

Finally, when it was complete, I plugged it into my macbook and ran up MainStage to be able to choose between different guitar amp sounds.

The first test.  Did it make a sound like a guitar?  Turning all the amp effects off I plucked a string.  No sound.  I turned the volume up to 11 and tried again.  It sounded like a guitar!  All six strings sounded like a guitar.

This needed testing to see if I’d actually made a guitar or just something that the strings could be plucked.  I handed it over to Daniel to test properly.  Did I mention I can’t play guitar (yet).  He put it through its paces, finally handing it back with a “congratulations, you’ve made a playable guitar”.

I’m already thinking about the next one, this time made on the CNC.  But I can’t dismantle my first guitar as I planned.  Too much of me went into it.