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I am going to attempt a fret-less, semi hollow, electric guitar.

I would like to thank:
Christopher Verhoeven for posting a free e- book which is going to be the basis for this build. http://www.muxguitars.com/lutherie/freeebook.pdf
OLF for this challenge.
This is the first complete guitar I attempt to build, although I had already built a body and used a neck I had laying around.

Part 1; The body.
1.1 The design.
I drew it by hand on a piece of paper, followed Verhoevens suggestion and made two copies.



placed a copy on top of an MDF to cut out the template tomorrow.



regards!

...can't wait to hear some chords....

He he, well if one wants to be nerdy (when the frets are abandoned) it is possible to make chords on the Pythagorean tuning system (prior to the 16th century) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorea ... ........... or on the quarter-comma meantone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-comma_meantone .........
...............but truth be told I aint got a good enough ear to do that.
I just want to try something different where looong glissando's are possible without the need of a whammy bar. Chords will be very difficult.

Frank Zappa had a fretless Ampeg guitar once.... I think he actually figured out some chords for the thing.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I cut a template with MDF and made my first mistake; the drawing was crooked. I realized this when I cut the MDF, should’ve stopped and gone back to the drawing board. Oops.

Unfortunately I thought that I could “even out” the MDF template by scraping it, when I realized that I couldn’t it was already too late since the wood had been routed. I learned that it is important to check and recheck your design, use CAD or at least paper with squares and a good set of rulers!
Next time I will also check by folding the paper down the center line as can be seen here http://www.gretsch-talk.com/forum/techn ... chtop.html

I spliced two pieces of cedar, heavy stuff but this is the only wood I could get, it cost me about 300 pesos.




Placed the template with double stick tape and routed it out. Then took a Stanley wood plane and flattened out the top. The template on the background is for the top, the flattening was to make sure that I could glue the top well.

I'm not as crazy as Frank used to be! But I have some damned weird friends, one of them does this mad free improvisation thing where they actually un-tune their guitars. If I finish this guitar I'll ask him to fool around with it.

Frank was crazy?

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

No, thank you for the guide, it helps a lot. I'll do my best dude.

Cool shape. It's a lot like one of my favorite guitars, the Gibson L6S. What are you doing for the bridge and pickups? By the way, I'm jealous. No fretwork!

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Thanx, bridge I'm figuring Tunomatic. Pickups I got some for free, Duncan Designed, the previous owner wanted EMG's on his guitar and he exchanged the old DD's for my installing his new EMG's.
Yeah the no fretwork doesn't really make this count as my first guitar, just 90%, but I really want a fret-less to make violinistic wails!

Checking with the template for the top, also placed some knobs, pup rings, and tunomatic to get an idea.


Routed out some cavities, and goofed up with the router as you can see here.


Still, since that tear out is going beneath the top it shouldn't be a problem.

This will be interesting for sure.

Looks like your removing wood with a forstner type bit and then routing the cavities? Hopefully your not free handing the router.......take the time to make a template.

Ok I see he blew through the template

I helped a friend years ago with a fretless conversion, he is still at it. We used a glass fingerboard, sort of the inverse of a glass slide. He does fine with chords, but it is different of course. Looks good. http://www.nedevett.com/

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Yeh, I used a Template. Fortunately I left a wide range of error on the edge, as Chris suggests in his e-book.

Ned Evetts guitar looks really cool!

Today I glued up a pair of "palo escrito" for the top. I believe the English word is Cocobolo (Dalbergia Rutussa) but I aint sure.

Routed it with the template and evened it out by scraping.


Flattened it out with the Stanley

Glued it up, I need more clamps!

Don't we all....

Hi Raxz,

Palo Escrito and Cocobolo are two different woods. Their scientific names are Dalbergia Palo Escrito and Dalbergia Retusa, respectively.

Max

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

Thank you Max, the thing is that I get the wood from people who know a lot of trees and wood but only in their language. They haven't got a clue as to what their names are in English, or scientific names. I asked them for Cocobolo and they said "what?", I asked them for Dalbergia Retusa and they said "eh?". I saw the Palo Escrito and said that looks like it.

What is Dalbergia Palo Escrito called in the US?

Very little progress this week, but here are some pics of the body.


I placed some of the hardware on top to try and figure out which way of placing the volume knobs will look better.





Which would you do?

Cleaned up the wood a little with the trusty Stanley plane.

I'm a fan of the two on top two on bottom configuration. Looks better and easier to use. At least for me anyway.

Also, how are you going to anchor the strings? I notice you don't have anything laid on there. Got me curious

Reminds me of a Zemaitis.......

Yeah, me too. I hope that the electronics will fit this way because I also want to make a sustainer, a la Sustainiac's C model.



My Original idea is to send strings thru the body, kinda like a Gibson Flying V, I might change that because there seems to be too big a space on the body. Maybe a tunomatic tail-piece would look better.

I had lost the cable to down-load pics from the camera to the computer. but I have been working on the neck. Lots of pics, more than 30, but I still have to get them in order so I'll go peice by peice. This is cutting out the scarf joint.