PacmanCaster

PacmanCaster
Gestartet:	23.5.2018
Involvierte:	User:amir
Status:	in progress
Beschreibung:	Building a DIY e-guitar in PacMan style
Shutdownprozedur:
Zuletzt aktualisiert:	2018-11-25

WTF

This project page is about building a DIY electric guitar in PacMan style. Pickup-, control- and neck design are copied from a Telecaster guitar. We are going to use the CNC mill to create the body. This page is about the e-guitar i built. :)

Images Speak Louder Than Words

But videos are clearly louder

That is a video of the pacmancaster before adjusting neck, bridge and pickups. Let's see if i can get it right on my own. Stay tuned.

https://vimeo.com/301905261

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The following previews are out of date but i guess you get the idea. Check out the image and video above

Design Preview

CAM Preview

Checklist

1. Mill the guitar on the cnc.
2. Cut the remainders away.
3. Drill all holes
4. Sand the workpiece completely. 40, 80, 120, 180, 240.
5. Work edges with the template router
6. Carefully sand the edges
7. Hang the guitar by a thread
8. Prime the workpiece 3 times
9. Wet-sand with 400
10. Paint the workpiece 3 times
11. Wet-sand with 400
12. Apply lacquer 2 times
13. Wet-sand with 600
14. Apply lacquer 2 times
15. Wet-sand with 600
16. Apply lacquer 3 times
17. Wet-sand with 600, 1200, 2000
18. Polish the workpiece

Lessions learned

The following "lessions learned" reflect my current level of knowledge which might be not very high :)

• It seems like if the neck is good, the bridge in alignment and the body follows some simple rules - you get a good guitar.
• the body design has to adhere to following rules for a good sound:

1. If you do a solid body design avoid large cavities, especially under the pick guard.
2. Avoid destabilizing the body in the neck axis.
3. You can tune the guitars resonance frequency by removing material (but how much depends on where you remove material. Removing material inline with the neck has the greatest effect)
4. The neck pocket needs to be perfectly in alignment and fit. Sound waves need to pass freely between neck and body.

• Unless you are very skilled you should at least CNC the neck pocket.
• If you mill a very deep profile you run into risk of getting the milling head stuck. Instead make a circular pocket (following the profile) about 1.5x the mill size (and adjust your step over accordingly). That way you'll create a profile that will be milled by two circular operations (they should partially overlap) per step down. Also vacuum thoroughly all the time and try to find settings that avoid long chips.
• Certified mahogany is a real nice material for milling but hard to get the paint job right. Pretty homogeneous (nice for milling) on the one hand and on the other with large pores (not nice for the paint job). Ripper told me about a filler material you can use to smooth it out and apparently Gibson does it that way because they mention it in a YouTube video pk sent me.
• The following videos pk sent me are very interesting, not only because the reveal methodology but also because it pictures the industry.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu6wCqqPkew
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVU86GGV07A
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbU1R4KDymw

• The 2 first passes of sanding the wood right before painting are the most important ones. Yeah i know it's pretty common knowledge but I want to remind myself and maybe others to do it properly.
• Do the first pass in direction of the grain. Do the second pass orthogonal to the grain, and water the wood first.
• There are dedicated sanding liquids. I want to get some and compare it to using just water.
• There is a ton of dedicated tools for even the smallest things. Get some.
• Metalab doesn't have the space and tools for a real high quality finish.
• Pockets are hard to sand and paint. Rather us engravings for visual effects.
• Steep concavities on the profile of the body are a real challenge to sand and paint.
• Building a high quality neck is some next level stuff but building a high quality body is not that hard
• Banding e-guitars is only done for aesthetic reasons.
• Use sand paper to "cut" masking tape at edges of the workpiece
• High-end guitars use shielding tape in all the electronics hodling pockets.

Ideas

• Build a unibody guitar. neck and body out of one piece
• Enhance the guitar with electronics. e.g.:

1. Decorate with addressable LEDs
2. Add an equalizer and maybe other analog effects. Or maybe build and use external effects processors to tune the guitar to a specific sound and than integrate those effects with fixed settings hidden in the guitar
3. Use LEDs on the fretboard for learning (see: http://www.fretzealot.com. But do it better
4. Built-in recording to sdcard?

• Build an aluminum (or maybe steel?) guitar with a slight spring effect in neck axis. make that "spring" adjustable in hardness as well as resonance frequency.