My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
Post Reply
User avatar
JohnSimonson
PAT PEND
PAT PEND
Posts: 15
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2019 5:17 am

My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by JohnSimonson » Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:02 pm

Hi Everyone,

Warning:
1. This is going to be a long one, although there are a bunch of pictures, including the finished guitar, so it shouldn't be too boring. You can skip the reading and just look at the pictures if you want.
2. I made a couple of pretty stupid/lazy decisions while building this guitar and a lot of mistakes could have been avoided. So, if you are easily annoyed by such things, continue at your own risk
3. English is not my first language, so consider this the "sorry for bad english" disclaimer.


Intro:

Like most people on here I've been toying with the idea of building my own guitar for a long time and after years of watching Ben Crowe's truly inspirational videos and saying again and again how much I'd love to build my own guitar my better half finally told me to "just f*cking do it already".
So I finally decided to go through with it. Despite not being good with my hands, having no prior experience in woodworking or soldering and having no tools to speak of.

That was in late 2018, so well over a year ago.


1. Planning and Parts

Despite knowing better, I decided early on that my guitar was going to have everything I could dream of: Carved (or at least bevelled) offset body, multiple pickups, trem system, complex switching system with more tonal possibilities than anyone could ever need...pretty much everything I love about the quirky guitars coming out of Japan and Europe in the 60s.

When it came to inspiration I knew where to look. Or rather I didn't have to llok because I allready had all my favorite features mashed up in my head, pulling from various sources:
- Teisco
- Burns
- Yamaha
- Höfner
- Eko
- Wandre
And so on...

Image
Image
Image

But before I started designing I had to set ground rules of what I wanted from my guitar, and what parts and materials I would have to source.

Bodywood:
I knew that I wanted a thin and light guitar that was still resonant. After some research and after playing the Brad Paisley Telecaster in a shop I decided to use paulownia for the body. Now, sourcing paulownia is still pretty difficult and expensive where I live. As my budget was rather limited I wanted to save my money where I could and spend money where it mattered: pickups and hardware. (I don't want to offend anyone, but even my plywood Teisco sounds pretty awesome since I put locking tuners and a Schaller roller bridge on it)

Image

Luckily I found out that a local hardware store (Bauhaus for all the Germans out there) sells 18 Millimetre Paulownia boards. As I wanted a thin body I decided to use two boards and glue them on top of each other..
That would also help solve another of my problems. Not owning a router. I'd just saw holes for the neck pocket, control cavity and pickup routs into the top plate before glueing the two boards together. 'Genius' I thought. Well...I was kinda right.

https://www.bauhaus.info/leimholzplatte ... p/14084259

Neck:
I knew I wouldn't be able to build my own neck from scratch. Not with my limited equipment. So I went looking for necks online.
I wanted something a bit flashy, block inlays, maybe binding. And of course a paddle headstock to create my own shape.
After some digging I found a company called Kmise. They make a really cheap neck, 25.5 inch scale with block inlays and a paddle headstock. No binding, but for the price, I could live with that. So I ordered it straight from China.

http://www.kmise.com/goods-18501.html

Hardware:
Hardware was the easiest. I wanted a trem, a roller bridge and, if possible, light locking tuners.
I had already put two Schaller STM roller bridges on different guitars and really liked them, so that was a no brainer.
I also had a Duesenberg Les Trem II on my Ibanez Darkstone and loved it. Smoother and softer than a Bigsby, more stable than any offset I 've tried. So I'd just put the stock tailpiece back on my Ibanez and use the Les Trem for my build.
Tuners also turned out to be easier than I thought. I was planning on doing a 4:2 configuration like the Teisco Spectrums and tuners in that configuration are hard to come by. But guess what...Sperzel tuners are reversible. Finally that little nugget of nerdy knowledge paid of. So I got some 6 in line Sperzels and reversed two of them. Pricey, but worth it.

Pickups:
I like single coils. I like offsets. I don't like pickup rings. Naturally I was looking at Jaguar single coils.
Now, my plan was to have three pickups, two of them grouped together as a kind of humbucker in the bridge position like in a Yamaha SG-3 (I have seen someone do that on a Jag somewher on this forum, and it looked awesome). I also wanted a lot of chrome and something a bit fatrter sounding than standard Jaguar pickups. And I found the answer to all my needs on the Creamery website. The Sonic 60. A Burns Tri-Sonic style pickup in a Jaguar format. Now, I know I said budget was tight. But rules are made to be broken. I ordered three.

Image
https://www.creamery-pickups.co.uk/soni ... p-set.html

2. Design
I knew from the start that I wanted an offset shape but less in the vein of Fender and more toward the old Yamaha SG-3. So a bit pointier and faster looking with more pronounced "horns" both top and bottom.

Image

I wanted the points to not be to sharp so - inspired by my Ibanez Darkstone - I wanted to go with Horns that were smoothly rounded on the outside and then went into the cutaway at a 90 degree angle. Hard to explain, I hope the picture helps.

Image

I drew the bodyshape straight onto the wood around a center line and the adjusted it a couple of times, to get the proportions right. All in all the body turned out rather long and narrow, but I like the sleek look that creates and also I was hoping, that the long upper horn and the big lower end would help with making it balanced. Especially because the body was going to be so light and locking tuners tend to be heavy.

Image

The Headstock shape was one I had designed years before this project because I wanted to know whether I could come up with an asthetically pleasing 4:2 headstock design. Something less clunky than Teisco and not as incomplete looking as a Music Man. I ended up scaling the Headstock up by 10 percent later in the process, just to make it look right in proportion to the body.

Image

I decided to bevel the edges of the body both on the front and back. The bevel was supposed to go around the entire outline and (to make it easier) stay at a consistent widht of 2 centimetres. That way I wouldnt need comfort carves as all right angle edges were gone. After drawing the bevel line I also designed the pickguard straight onto the wood, just to be sure it would fit the body style. (I later made paper and cardboard templates)

Inspired by Warmoth's split Jazzmaster pickguard design, I also went with a split design. The Jaguar style pickups would eliminate the need for pickup rings and would look really neat in all ther chromed glory bridging the gap between the two pickguard halves. I kept the top half simple, following the curve of the upper horn and with a straight lower edge, parallel to the center line. The lower half was mainly inspired by my old Teisco warehouse guitar (a Hertiecaster, as we call them in Germany). It has that really cool shape at the rear section where the knobs are. Kind of Batwing like. I thought that would look really great, especially because the center point of the wing would be pointing at the Les Trem. Also it would give me more room for all the switches I wanted.

Image

3. Electronics and Switching
Technically most of what youre about to read is still planning and design, but the switching system was such a huge part of this whole process, it should get its own chapter.

I've been obsessed with vintage (and vintage inspired) guitars covered in knobs and switches and all the crazy possibilities and tones they give you for a long time now. Some of the ones I always come back to are:

Höfner 176: Varitone, separate tone controls, rhythm/solo switch
Image

Goya Rangemaster: 2 split coil pickups (4 independent coils) that can be combined in various ways
Image

Italia Imola: 6 split coil pickups (6 independent coils) with two separate 5 way switches, one for the 3 top strings, one for the 3 bottom strings
Image

Brian May Red Special: Pickups wired in series with one on/off switch and phase switch per pickup
Image

Fender Pawn Shop Mustang: Two humbuckers with a three position coil selector each
Image

My goal was, to get as many different combinations of the pickups as possible, while keeping it practical for live use. Therefore I wanted a toggle switch instead of just slide switches and also a master volume, to always be able to turn down.

I devided the Pickups into two sections: Neck section (consisting of one Single coil) and bridge section (consistingof two single coils which I will refer to as a humbucker from now on, as that's basically how I use them).

Like Brian May I went for one phase switch per coil so three in total.
While phase was pretty much all I could change about the neck pickup, the bridge humbucker held more potential.
First I aaded a parallel/series switch, to get either a fatter, more humbuckery tone, or a more strat like, thinner and more articulate tone.
I also added a three way coil selector, like on the Pawn Shop Mustang. That way I could get two different flavours of single coil on top of the double coil sounds. To make sure there was actually a noticable difference between the to single coil variants, I used one specced as a bride pickup for the rear coil and one specced as a neck pickup for the middle coil. The difference in output on top of the difference in position should get me two destinct tones, I thought.
After all those switches, the neck and bridge sections would meet at the toggle switch, where they would be connected in parallel.

With the pickup switching done, I moved on to knobs. I like the concept of a Starcaster with a master volume and separate volume and tone knobs for neck and bridge pickups, but I didnt want as many knobs and also didn't want to use stacked pots. I decided to add just one volume and one tone knob in addition to the master, and make them assignable. I wanted to add a Mustang style three way slide switch to each pot, to determine whether it would work only for the bridge section, neck section, or both.

All that left me with one toggle switch, three knobs and seven slide switches. That's almost Fender Marauder level.

I had no experience with guitar electronics. None. So...I went oldschool and bought a book, recommended by Ben Crowe. I also looked up diagrams and forums and YouTube tutorials and started to design my circuit. First on paper, then in DYILC. I even asked for help here on the forum and got some great advice from Futuron, hpr_hpr and timtam.

http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/vie ... p?t=111625

Here are the various stages of my diagram.
Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

I went through it several times with a friend of mine, who has a lot of soldering and electronics experience and ended up doing the soldering for me. We wired it up, tested it, had to do a lot of troubleshooting, went back to the drawing board (aka a sticky table at our favourite pub) tweaked it and repeated that process three times. In the end we managed to work out almost all the issues. The only thing we just couldn't figure out was a way to get the middle coil on its own while the series/parallel switch was set to series. The signal just ends up going to ground and we couldn't find a way to change that. Now it's really no big deal because the series/parallel switch wouldn't make a tonal difference in single coil mode and I can still get the middle coil on its own by switching to parallel, but it's still annoying to hve a switch position where the guitar is just dead...


4. Building It

Then it got to actually building it. As I said above I used to boards of paulovnia, glued on top of each other. To circumvent routing, I started by drilling and sawing the holes for the neck pocket, control cavities and pickup routs into the top board. That was also the board I had drawn all my designs onto so I didnt use templates. So I just went at it with a jigsaw, a drill and a bunch of rasps always checking the fit of the Neck heel and the pickups along the way.

Image
Image
Image

I the glued the two boards on top of each other and jigsawed the ruff bodyshape out and did the same with my headstockshape.

Image
Image

After the ruff shaping I used rasps and files to finalise the shape (which took ages) and to then bevel the edges of the body. It turned out allright but also pretty uneven. I also realised, that the 18 millimetre depth of the control cavities would not be deep enough. I don't know how I got it in my head, that it would work. So I used a drill to deepen it. If you want to do any of this, buy a router. It's worth it. Do as I say not as I do :fp:

Image
Image
Image

I then went about making the split pickguard. I had bought a sheet of three ply black-white-black material and borrowed a Dremel from a friend. Before cutting it out, I decided on the final layout for the electronics.

Image
Image

And then cut it all out, beveled the edges and countersunk the screws. Once again, a template and router would have made life infinitely easier!

Image

The wiring was done by a friend of mine who has a lot of soldering experience and he did a really good job as far as I'm concerned. As soon as we had the final schematic, everithing worked exactly as expected, except the toggle beng wired backwards (which apparently was my mistake, having it wrong in the diagram. But that's an easy fix, even I could manage.

Image
Image

Then I had to think about the finish. I had always had a metallic finish in mind, because I love old sherwood green Jags. I wanted to go more in the direction of blue or maybe a blueish grey. But when I actually looked into the rattle can stuff I could get, I found this awesome dark teal greenish blue metallic and fell in love. I prpped the body by sanding a whole lot and then emtying a can of filler and a can of primer on it (sanding in between) before putting the colour on. I then put two coats of 2 component lacquer over it. All in all I did an OKish job. Despite all the sanding and filler, you can still see some woodgrain on the back and a lot of unevenness in the wood.
Also, I haven't had a chance to sand and polish/buff the lacquer yet, because of the Corona lockdown.

Image
Image
Image
Image

So I put it together as is. It weighs 2.86 kilos (6.3 lbs) and is my lightest guitar. It is also my most balanced guitar, so the design with a long upper horn and big lower bout really payed off. And it resonates beautifully!

And here it is in all its flawed glory:

Image
Image
Image
Image
Image

Here's two short clips I used it in. Not the best quality, but they show that the guitar actually works:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Rp7OsindA ... _copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-hC2F0Ce1W ... _copy_link

I'll make a better demo of the various tones sometime.
Until then, here's a list of all the pickup combinations.
Blue and Red show the phase relationship, when multiple pickups are on. P and S stand for Parallel and Series and I have put the two coils of the "humbucker" in brackets when they are wired together. I have excluded redundant combinations, so these are all tonally unique:

1. Neck
2. Middle
3. Bridge
4. Neck + Middle
5. Neck + Middle
6. Neck + Bridge
7. Neck + Bridge
8. (Middle P Bridge)
9. (Middle P Bridge)
10. (Middle S Bridge)
11. (Middle S Bridge)
12. Neck + (Middle P Bridge)
13. Neck + (Middle P Bridge)
14. Neck + (Middle P Bridge)
15. Neck + (Middle P Bridge)
16. Neck + (Middle S Bridge)
17. Neck + (Middle S Bridge)
18. Neck + (Middle S Bridge)
19. Neck + (Middle S Bridge)


5. The Aftermath

Building this guitar was a great experience, despite all my mistakes and stupid decisions along the way. I'm really happy with the design, and sound. The playability is also better than I expected, I still have tu file down the nut a bit and I'm thinking about maybe putting a buzzstop on it, for a steeper break angle over the bridge. But heavier strings would solve that as well (I currently have it set up with .10s)

I'm already planning the next project which will be a shortscale bass for my girlfriend.

Also I am seriously toying with the idea of actually trying to manufacture and sell this design. I'm currently learning to use Fusion 360 and have already made some CAD drawings of the guitar. As soon as the Corona crisis is over (we can only hope that it's soon) I will try and get a CNCed prototype done.

Until then I'm having fun getting to know my creation and I am incredibly thankfull to all the people who helped me along the way.

Thanks to everyone who went through the effort of reading all this. I hope it was somewhat interesting.
Any feedback or questions are very welcome, I'd like to know what you think.

User avatar
antisymmetric
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 3601
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 11:32 pm
Location: New Zealand

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by antisymmetric » Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:23 pm

:-* Nothing wrong with "flawed glory"! If I didn't settle for that, I'd have never finished anything. I love it, you've done a great job of channeling your influences into this build. Must admit I skipped through to the final pics, I will go back through more thoroughly.
Watching the corners turn corners

User avatar
JohnSimonson
PAT PEND
PAT PEND
Posts: 15
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2019 5:17 am

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by JohnSimonson » Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:40 pm

Thanks so much!

As I wrote above, skipping is both OK and understandable.

User avatar
jvin248
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 660
Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2016 5:34 pm

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by jvin248 » Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:49 pm

.

A lot of fun switching!

Models you may want to search for:

Robbie Robertson Strat (SSS with HS layout like yours, push/pull series and a normal 5-way)
It's one I've thought about several times.

Brent Mason silver telecaster (the one he started with), three different pickups with a middle pickup blender.
He's had a PRS and a Fender signature model, at least.

Steve Morse's original Tele and the two Music Man signature models.

Dan Armstrong two wiring schemes: the Armstrong Blender (I use it all the time on my Strat SSS blends to HSH) and the other three-switch dozen tone option version he has out there.

Ibanez RG series HH and HSS wiring.

The guitarnuts2 forum and their 'truly nutzoid' wiring sub-forum. They may like to see a post of your guitar in there too.

.

User avatar
jthomas
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 1210
Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2013 12:44 pm
Location: Downeast Maine

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by jthomas » Fri Apr 03, 2020 2:01 pm

Really impressive.

User avatar
Scout
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 962
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 3:26 pm
Location: Phillyish

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by Scout » Fri Apr 03, 2020 2:30 pm

You did really well with mostly hand tools and spray paint. Pat yourself on the back, you have a one of a kind that you designed and built, most people can’t say that.

User avatar
epizootics
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 719
Joined: Wed Jun 28, 2017 10:29 pm
Location: Lyon, France

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by epizootics » Fri Apr 03, 2020 10:01 pm

I'm with Antisymmetric on this one - flawed glory is what one should aim for. There's an American guitar tech/luthier that lives in my city. I showed him my early attempts at making guitar-ish objects and his response was "Yeah sure, they're not perfect, but if you proceed fearlessly...you'll be fine". That and hilarious strings of profanity delivered in a thick Brooklyn Italian-American accent.

So...Keep on proceeding fearlessly and you'll be fine :) It's fairly obvious you had a strong concept of where you wanted to go and that makes the guitar really cool and unique. I love the shape, color and arrangement of the whole thing. This is possibly the first 4/2 headstock that I ever found attractiveµ. Really, really cool stuff :)

User avatar
PorkyPrimeCut
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 24464
Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:46 am
Location: Leipzig
Contact:

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by PorkyPrimeCut » Fri Apr 03, 2020 10:15 pm

I'm with others here. This is great!!

The carve looks fantastic, even if it is a tiny bit uneven. Great colour & arrangement of components too. I'm feeling the Burns! ;D
You think you can't, you wish you could, I know you can, I wish you would. Slip inside this house as you pass by.

User avatar
UlricvonCatalyst
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 7193
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 4:05 am
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Sat Apr 04, 2020 1:07 am

Quite an accomplishment, and nice to see an original design. Rocker switches would have sent this soaring into the stratosphere, but whatever works works. Nice tremolo!

User avatar
JohnSimonson
PAT PEND
PAT PEND
Posts: 15
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2019 5:17 am

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by JohnSimonson » Sat Apr 04, 2020 2:22 am

Thanks so much everyone! I'm glad you like it and I definitely won't stop building. I have a lot of ideas in my head. Among others a shortscale bass version of this design. We'll see

User avatar
Tweedledee
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 1149
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:41 am
Location: Evanston, IL

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by Tweedledee » Sat Apr 04, 2020 9:42 am

That looks amazing! It takes a lot of patience to get something like that right without creating templates first or a using a router. Quite impressive.

User avatar
blimpage
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 312
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2017 3:43 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by blimpage » Sat Apr 04, 2020 9:09 pm

Awesome guitar, awesome writeup! I'm super impressed, especially considering the limited tools you used. Very nice work, thanks for sharing!

User avatar
JohnSimonson
PAT PEND
PAT PEND
Posts: 15
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2019 5:17 am

Re: My fist build (complete) - Teisco meets Burns meets Yamaha meets Höfner

Post by JohnSimonson » Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:59 am

Thanks. I'm still kicking myself a bit that I didn't just get a router. Or borrow one :fp:
But there's always next time. And as I said, I already have loads of ideas. Next one will have cheaper components though. Maybe artec pickups. Otherwise I won't be able to afford this hobby for long ;D

Post Reply