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My family is having a bunch of furniture made by a woodcarver in Sri Lanka, and I thought it would be pretty awesome to have guitar made by them. Of course, they don't actually make guitars and its not something that you can just jump in and do, so my idea is to have them make a plate about 3 cm thick and about 1 cm smaller than an actual Les Paul top, then have a Luthier build a guitar for it to be dropped into when I have the cash (I might try it myself, but I really don't have any woodworking experience...)

I found the below diagram online and plan to send it to the woodworker so that they can use it to come up with designs. However, there are a couple of changes that I want to make and I need to know how to adjust the diagram:

A: Both of my current guitars are dual Humbucker, so I am thinking of going with an HSH, HSS or just SS configuration. Are there standard measurements for pickup placement?

B: I want to use a wraparound bridge instead of a standard Tune-omatic because I want to reduce the amount of hardware as much as possible (I know that going with 3 pickups is counter-productive here, but Its a trade-off I can accept?). Where should that go relative to the neck?

C: Also in the interest of reducing the amount of hardware, Does anybody know of a more efficient way to handle knob and switch placement? I can deal with going down to 1 volume knob, but any other space saving ideas would be great.

Beyond those things, is there anything that I might have missed? I'm sure that there must be a few factors that I hadn't even considered. Keep in mind that this is intended primarily as an art piece and I know that some compromises will be made in the actual sound of the guitar.

Thanks in advance

I'd definitely let the furniture maker stick to the furniture...people spend years to try to learn to build instruments correctly. I'd have my doubts as to how well the Sri Lankan furniture makers would be able to do...!

Good luck with your project, whatever course it takes,
Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I agree with the above post - your best bet would be to have them supply the wood for your project and you make the guitar out of the same wood that your furniture is made from. They can send you a preglued blank - a rectangle that then you would cut your LP body from.

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

I think I should clarify: The reason that I am having him do this is that they do extremely elaborate carvings. The idea is that the plate will have a design on it, which is going to have to be planned around the hardware of the full guitar that it is being attached to. I can see that I never actually said that in my OP.

My guess is that would be severly warped by the time it gets to Canada from Sri Lanka and be pretty much unusable by the time you're ready for it.
But, then again if it's cheap enough, why not take a risk.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Its possible, I have seen this happen with other instruments. However, as you said, this is cheap enough to be worth the risk.

if you used a wraparound bridge it will go in the exact same place as the current bridge, and you will just get rid of the tail peice in your design. i am not exactly an expert on electronics, so im not sure on this but i dont think a standard 3 way toggle will work if you have 3 pickups, i think you would need to have some other type of 4 or 5 way toggle (if they make one?), an additional switch somewher, or a fender style switch, but dont quote me on that i really dont know. but beyond that i would agree with the other guys.. i would be be very wary of buying a any wooden guitar part that i had never seen from someone who had never made an instrument, just seems like there are a lot of ways for that to go wrong, even if it looks awesome it may turn out to be unusable for some other reason, things just seem to work that way a lot of times.

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~shad peters

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