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.