Completed Masterpiece

I think it's safe to say that not many people either my age, at the Bay, or anyone in general have not taken the time to build an electric guitar from the ground up. Now that it is all finished I have an extreme sense of accomplishment. When I plugged it in to my vintage amp for the first time, there was no sweeter sound than to hear the magnificent tone bursting into my ears. The experience was truly amazing and without a doubt something I will never forget. This is my most prized possession and I hope that everyone can one day have that same feeling.

Laying On the Strings

After much patience, time, and effort it is finally ready for the strings. I start out with a set of #9 strings which is one of the thinnest because the neck and the body have not had a chance to get used to any pressure yet so I needed to be as gentle as possible. This scared me at first because when you fully tune a guitar to E it's an insane amount of pressure on the neck that most people don't notice. If my guitar neck wasn't securely fashioned then there would be the possibility of it folding up and breaking the neck.

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Pickups and Knob Preparation

     To properly set up an electric guitar so its playable you need to do a set of activities with it to make sure everything works. I began by placing the gold translucent volume and tone knobs on their corresponding pots. I made sure that the numbers 1 through 10 are exactly on the same angle when I look at them while playing. I tightened them just snug enough so they can still slide to adjust the levels of sound or tone. Next are the pickups. For a standard Les Paul set up, the pickups must be on a certain angle and a specific distance away from the strings. The idea with this is you want it as close to the strings as possible without touching. That is why I positioned them 3mm away from the strings for the first pickup and 4mm away for the bottom pickup.

Assembling the Parts





     Now that the guitar is all wired and buffed, I can finally accessorize it with all its flashy parts. First the tuning machines will be screwed on to the head. These tuning machines are what the strings are wound tightly on. They have to be strong because if not the tension from the strings will pull them off. Then the bridge and tailpiece will be installed. The tailpiece is what holds the strings at the base of the guitar. It has to be exactly perpendicular to the neck for it to play well. The bridge is a different story. This part goes right in front of the bridge so the strings can rest on it. The bridge is a tiny chrome bar that must be placed on a 10 degree angle for the strings to properly stay in tune. These steps were very tedious because if one thing was off then the guitar would never truly be in tune.



The bridge and tailpiece are the bottom two bars



Wiring

 

     The next step and probably the most complicated is fully wiring the pickups, toggle switch, 2 volume pots, 2 tone pots, and the input jack. I have never dealt with any kind of free hand soldering of wires before so I spent days practicing and reading about different types of solder, the soldering iron, cleaning sponge, methods of soldering, and what not to do. I took this extra time to make sure I was descent at it because these parts were EXPENSIVE and I only had one shot to do it right. If I spent too much time on the wire then the part would burn up. On the other hand if I spent too little time on it, it would not be properly bonded. Just to give you an idea the pickups were $200 so it wasn't like I could just buy replacements.

     Again I used the trustworthy Stew Mac website to order a video that gave detailed steps on how to wire a Les Paul guitar. I'm not going to go into the details about how to wire it because it’s just too technical to explain each and every step. But I will say that in the picture you are looking at the back of the volume and tone knobs called Pots. These pots are what everything is wired to and then have a black connecting wire that runs to all the pots and to the input jack.

Installation

     The next step in making this guitar is to install the parts and accessories. First I installed the Nickel Plated Les Paul Golden Age Humbucker Pickups. To do this I ran the wires through the holes I drilled previously in order to meet at the bottom with the volume and tone knobs. Some sanding had to be done for the pickups to fit back into the routed holes. Then I fitted the nickel plated bridge on a 5 degree angle to the body and installed the rhythm/ treble toggle switch.

     These parts were installed first because they all contain wires that must be soldered to the volume and tone bases at the bottom right portion of the guitar. The other accessories will be installed after soldering is completed because in order to solder, the guitar must be stable and face down on a mat with no ambiguities. The heat from the melted metal can also damage the small and delicate parts.