Building an Electric Guitar from Scratch (with the pros)

all we have to do is press start whoa whoa whoa wow the most intimidating Dentistry equipment recently we made a video looking at every single step in making a classical guitar and that was an amazing experience and it only made sense to do the same for electrics so I reached out to Schechter who I work with to see if we could see what goes into making an electric guitar every single step and hopefully by the end of it me as well as everyone watching will have an even greater appreciation for these instruments that I know I've spent my whole life with so I'm here with Drew Larson from schecter's Custom Shop what's up guys production manager we're gonna go through every single step and how an electric guitar is made we'll go through it all all right what's the first step let's pick out some wood all right we're just picking all of our Woods yeah for this now and and what we're building is uh bolt on electrical our traditional it's one of our most common guitars we sell a ton of them where the body and neck are just bolted on together yeah this is our bulk area so wenge is one of our most popular very splintery so watch your watch your face yeah yeah I can tell it'd be fine if I get some injuries it's helps the video a little blood yeah yeah a little injuries most of this is just Maple neck blanks that's what we're going to be working with for the neck is maple like the most common neck yeah it's the most common it's more available than anything else it sounds good and it's pretty affordable so should I just grab one of these and what are we using for the body we're gonna work with Alder one of the most common why Alder it's pretty consistent it's readily available again in the United States it's stable it's lightweight here we go so here are all the prep board Woods it's just basically three Woods neck body in the from the fretboard yep whoa this is cool it's just already that's for uh Keith Merrill oh awesome yeah a big Keith Merrell fan why this particular type of ebony it's pretty consistent in color that people go for it's hard I mean it sounds good and with the fretboard wood you're looking for something that's just really really really hard right usually yeah the fretboard wood is harder than everything else yeah here we go is this what we're making something similar these are what we're making here's our guitar we're halfway there some work in progress let's start with the neck what we need to do is join to face and get it nice and flat bring it down to the thickness that we want before we get it on the CNC machine and that's a big part a lot of this goes through CNC machines it's very repeatable tells everything the same all the time it doesn't party too hard the night before you know it's always ready to go there's so much hand work that goes into everything after that a lot of a lot of times people think CNC machines just do everything it's like oh there's no Personal Touch we do a lot of tweaking along the way that you'll get to when you're in the sanding and stuff too to see see what what all goes into it what is this this is just a dust collection these are the filters that get a bunch of dust built up in there so we're just kind of breaking it Loose this could remove your fingers very easily if everything worked out it feels almost like it suctioned down into this this surface when you try to lift it up yeah yeah that tells you did a good job getting it flat can we get a shot at him just real quick yeah we look right there Adam needs a shot but that's different we're gonna take this over to the planer the planer was my least favorite part of doing the class goal why is that yeah just because it was a really small one this is a big machine planer oh that's nice and right now we're just under an inch we want to be at 870 so 0.87 and then Dust as well the dust collector again but we want to get it nice and close probably one more pass we can do we don't want to realize about a quarter yeah 8.96 so it's about 20 000 and we can do that for it on the standard so much nicer than the plane that takes a lot longer and it's easier to mess up okay so this is the sander this is our thickness sander it uses these just huge sandpaper the machines are just getting finer and finer as you go yeah yeah that's the basic idea we have different grits here this is 150 which is a little finer than what we need so I'm going to change this to 80 grit foreign that's pretty close one more here yeah look at that yeah so the next step I'm going to grab a template and we can drill some holes before they go on the machine so the the machine it only needs these two holes yes now I I can see even more clearly so you can choose what streak of the wood is where if we had to we could move it if we're trying to avoid something that's going to hit that or the headstock we can shift it that way a little bit this is a really nice looking piece of wood so we don't we don't have to hide any of it awesome not just a matter drill in these two holes yep how many of these do you make like a day here for the custom shock we do around 40 a month the stores order customers order our month is always kind of a mixed bag of guitars with those other factories be a similar process it's just at a bigger scale how much of the process is different they don't always have CNC machines so a lot of it's still done by hand oh really and that's faster when you have that many people to do it it can be they have a lot of pin routers which we have a couple in here too they'll use copy Carvers we use those in the classical video Yeah super popular in in Old School Guitar Building and how a lot of those Factories do things most of them still do it that way yeah I wouldn't think that it would be that would be the case yeah it's it's impressive to see how fast they do it and how their output is pretty crazy there you go all right just drop that guy in there you don't have to press it in just a little bit to keep it from moving around there we go you just need to try to get that template off of there be cranking it earlier it's coming back to haunt me up we might need to just go grab the screwdriver I'll be right back okay I got it I got it we're going to change this bit out and put a reamer in what is a reamer this guy it's got some real sharp blades get these holes bigger it cleans the holes up a little bit and opens it up just a tiny bit so that the screws don't get stuck yeah let's head to the CNC machine all right so we have two CNC machines they're both capable and set up to do the exact same things and at the absolute Basics what is a CNC Mission it's just a big router that changes and does everything on its own so we don't need templates we don't need anything it's all done on a computer program the measurements are always going to be the same you know as long as you get everything set up when you first do it every time after that it's fine everything gets converted into what's called G-Code in high school or whatever you did graph paper it's all done in the Cartesian coordinate system it's just coordinates this point to that point this point to that point tells it how fast to go it just reads the code it doesn't know what it's doing oh that's cool there's Keith marrow yeah there's Nick Johnson different models in here why is Michael Anthony in all caps more exciting I'm a bass player we're making a trend or traditional we're going to make a neck more vintage style two-point tremolo this neck will go on the machine four times each time it does something a little bit different kind of moving us along the process so far this is all just numbers and everything but if we want to see what it's going to do yeah our tuner holes our neck bolts there's a couple location pins this is a countersink just to make it a little easier for the bolts to go through it's going to take too much it's just yep major guitar surgery so the only thing we'd ever really looked at on here is if there's anything that you want as like the top or the back when you look at the back of the guitar do you want to see this or this obviously the only part on the top of it you're going to see is the headstock this would be the headstock personally I would put this somewhere else this part looks a little darker so maybe if we flip it around I think this should be the headstock it has a cool design here so this is all just based around this one router if you look at the other side you can see all the tools that are loaded in this this one whoa so it can change out the drill it's using yes this machine I think holds 25 26 tools close the doors up we want to press zero return all everything back yeah so if you watch it'll move the table all the way over to what the machine recognizes as its home I always double check to make sure that my measurements are what I want to be this number in particular if this is written with a negative could be very bad because it's just going to run right into the table the machine doesn't know the difference it's going to do whatever you tell it to do if you put in the wrong numbers it's gonna do it all we have to do is press start all right whoa whoa and then it's and then it switches whoa and if you watch up here there's notes along the way that tell you what it's doing so it's gonna drill for the tuner holes it's switching out the drill bits it's so cool oh then that's the small little screws for the tuners yeah that's amazing they can do some crazy things yeah we take this off it it comes out and then it goes right back on we're gonna do the top side now and then I have to change the program to The Next Step doesn't look like much but it's just routing for the truss rod and we route a pocket for the the fingerboard to fit in and then a little channel for the truss rod adjustment bad stuff and the truss rod is just a rod within the neck that gives it stability yeah we use two two-way truss rods um so we can adjust you know forward or backwards it's carving out the place for this restaurant yeah and we're gonna get the we got the fretboard going yeah cool we're gonna do same thing we did with the neck but with the fretboard our fingerboards come pretty flat already they don't usually take as much prep work to get going hey that's perfect it doesn't get much better than this so here's the top of it the fingerboard is going to be a little oversized so we need to cut that down and we'll use this as our guide doing good Adam yeah we got some good footage of Adam we got some good okay good we're gonna cut a little bit off the ends and the idea is to slot this right into here this is Miley's favorite yeah it should be everyone's least favorite if you've seen those saw stop videos I have dude they're incredible does this have one of those in here it does not it does not okay Safety First Okay so oh so it slides right in awesome so you got a first try it's like I've done it before smells nice too it does still got a little bit more to dig up perfect perfect here's our guitar neck now we need to install a truss rod this is our standard size for just about everything it's really weird seeing it not on a guitar yeah is the truss rod doing a lot if you don't use it is it just sitting in there or is it always giving it stability it's wedged into place from end to end but we don't glue it in we don't do anything to make it stay specifically in that spot we want it to be able to move freely until you need to use it it's not really doing anything right is that true yeah the reason I brought a couple of these is just to kind of cite them I looked down them and see does it look straight to begin with I'll pick whichever one I think looks the straightest we will test them to make sure that they actually do the job do the job and this you'll see a little more dramatically well wow what it does so that's what's going on under the fretboard yes to an extreme extent yeah we test both directions it shouldn't be tough to turn moves nice and it's really cool to see it working like that we just want to clean it up a little bit so this guy's got some sandpaper do a few passes like that until it kind of cleans up these edges we want to do the same thing to inside the truss rod slot just a little bit of foam helps to prevent a little bit of rattle especially if you're going to be putting it through a ton of distortion any rattle but like if you've ever had like a Floyd that isn't set up right and there's something rattling it then it becomes like the loudest thing in the signal once you distort it yes we always want to make sure that the end of the rod stops pretty much right there place this foam with this paper side up and the paper stays in there too yes it's loose we don't have to to stick it there and it gives the truss rod a little bit of room to move do you have a little pen want to sign it sure awesome set the rod in there fits right in there so this is what is pushing against the fretboard when you move the truck stop these little spacers this is what our pickup bobbins are made out of they're little cutoffs that they can't use we use for various other other things this goes on this end and pushes it and holds it in place we just kind of wedge it in there you don't have to be too gentle yep I like that that's part of the pickup grab a razor blade scrape away any looseness one more step and then we're ready to glue it in we put a little piece of tape over here to keep any glue from getting into the truss rod from getting into the truss rod this is just a little good measure keeps it all down but it also adds a little grit for the glue head to the next step and get it glued up all right get prepared because once you have glue on it you have to move and mistakes happen if you if you're if you're not ready and if you glue this in wrong you just gotta start over yeah pretty much we have some wood glue we need a little roller just in case we get messy with our glue we always have some water nearby you want to make sure that it's starting to absorb that you glue both sides I'll do the next side and then you can do the fingerboard side team work it cool covering up our autograph sure we don't have any dry spots you don't want it to be super super wet a little bit more glue into the roller back in yeah go for it I think we need a bit more or I would say if anything that might be a touch too too much but not not in like an extreme way work a little bit more of that glue out the real light touch the roller kind of sucks it all back out yeah I think we're in there everything looks good just enough to hold it in place right I think we haven't been Crank It Down cool about how much time do you need the glue to set in we leave it at least 24 hours and then it'll get clamped up in the lumber rack over here after that try to keep it together as long as you can before we machine the rest of it yeah so this is the actual programs before they go in the CNC machine and this is what we're making the top of what the neck's going to look like when we're done with all the Fret slots and inlays we do all the drawing and then it spits out that G-Code later that we put in put in the machines this just feeds all that information into CNC yep as long as I do everything correct in here and then we don't have any problems out there it's a 2D image could we see it everything in here for the most part is 2D these surfaces are 3D we're like oh okay the elbow oh interesting but we're getting ready to do is this guy how cool walk through this this whole process for your radius that's what it's doing right now on the fretboard and then it'll do inlays and fret slots it's like oh okay it's a neck now yeah yeah all right let's get it in there all right so what we just watched would take roughly like 45 minutes that one should take about 45 minutes I put it on the machine and we'll take this out this just takes a little bit more of the tension out of it and then sit again for another at least couple days before we put it on the machine this is about a week since it's been glued and we have not changed our clothes or showered or anything no it's just a week later back to the Joiner One Quick Pass just to make sure this is flat it's a pretty wild headstock as is like oh yeah it just gets a little plastic Delrin push in and you'll feel it stop yep double stick tape does this hold up on that you'll see when we pull it off how strong it actually is because it's a it's a pain to get it off now we just need to take all the tape off so the screws are where we need them give it a few Taps it kind of feels wrong but all right that is really on there this is a situation where I need to change some tools press this button oh and it let's go oh geez it's scary yeah the scarier part is putting it back in yeah where would you like me to put this this guy I can just go right back up here those things is that just air air just air compressor to get the dust off of there I also love the warning to not climb into this thing yeah we've never climbed into the machine [Music] that's amazing start working on the body cool [Music] it hurts just to touch almost that's pretty close 1.76 exactly that's pretty good we'll grab a template and that's super helpful just to kind of visualize anything that you're trying to avoid I mean you don't have that much real estate to fudge things but sometimes if you get to a certain point and there's something up in this horn well then maybe you switch to like the PT style where you have that horn you want to make sure we can get our Center Line this double stick tape again a true friend at every step of the problem yeah do you need to line up both sides yeah a little bit that way there we go it is key when putting it in the CNC machine because we want the center to always line up with the center of the table because that's what everything's based off of I did a video with my buddy Simon who's a woodworker but he's not a musician and doesn't make instruments we just had one day to make a guitar to the best of our ability oh well and yeah it was a disaster and I just I just free handed it that would be tough for somebody who does it every day yeah it's the worst guitar I've ever played by far nope whoa am I doing something wrong no it's an awful sound yeah is that ready for the scene ready for the CNC awesome so we'll see and see you later I hope you guys leave that in there well Jake's the editor so it's up to him now back to the neck I want to change to that little tiny tool whoa wow the most intimidating Dentistry equipment it really is it's really tiny and we want it to go as fast as we can so we have this what are you connecting to it an air hose so this one this is powered separately from the machine just by air because it can go so much faster whoa tops off at like 12 000 RPM this one I can't remember we have it set for but it's around 25. it's like double that because it's such a small tool the faster you go the better it gives us nice clean fret slots it's just like a little turbine in there exactly yeah we have a hidden fret Tang which is why we do it this way you know how if you look at a lot of necks you can see the straight part under your Fritz oh on the edges right unless you have binding or something well this just cuts on the inside so you don't see the end of that fret you don't really have to worry so much about fret Sprout I'm going to get an example so here's where we're drawing in where the fret's going to go and the Fret Tang is what actually goes into the board and it doesn't go to the end so that you don't see it at the end and it's not going to jut out and cut your fingers like my guitar did yeah they make machines that will cut all of your fret slots at once with like a little saw blade but you will always have that exposed and have to deal with that which is a very common thing and like really affordable guitars that'll happen a lot with the weather changed yes the wood will shrink but the metal does and then it shuts out exactly we'll get it started wow so it's doing it on an arch we're not doing a flat bottom yeah what would happen if you cut it with a saw blade removing the least amount of wood possible because it's so tiny it takes multiple passes to go to the depth we want it to be this is the same way we do like some complicated inlay the same tool same tool would do all that the more that we do at a time speeds it up little bits here and there if you ever have both of them going with that then yeah yeah so in two hours you would get eight yeah next I mean it's insanely precise yeah this is so much nicer than when we did it the classical guitar what just because we had to do it by hand there's a lot of skill behind that just something that happens to be on my mind right now is like imagining seeing this video and like going through this process and then you have a guitar and then you've got to learn how to play it there's still a lot to do before you're gonna make it sound good that's so cool how you power it not to relate everything to Jurassic Park but it sounds like when he opens yeah [Music] so cool so this is just the double-sided sticky tape oh man okay dude that tape is really on there truly can't get it off is this how you're supposed to take it off no no a little bit of acetone is definitely a guitar neck that's a really important thing just that subtle angle here's a yeah this is just a quick just to get rid of the like fringed edges yeah it's just so it's not dangerous to hold so we're gonna drill the side dots onto here and then both this and the body are going into two cnc's machines at once yes we have this little jig here line up or oh and you just drill through there yeah this one has drill bushings built in key to it is that you want to be it's 90 degrees into that as you can going up to our C sharp here foreign what goes in here like an acrylic Pearl we'll put those in after we shape it that's pretty good to me so now we're going to get this guy in this machine this is for the body we're going to shape the back of the neck in this machine okay because I see the plate for the body in this one that was a little before my time and unintentional that was unintentional this is a good example of the machine not knowing the difference so it can cut through aluminum and not know I thought that was intentional so the machine could go through the wood we won't say who did it as a machinist uh stuff like that's gonna happen but this guy will use a little fixture kind of nests in here and this is just going to round the neck then I love the Godzilla sticker too make sure we have the right tool in there that is so cool yeah this this version is a little more open so you can actually see it oh yeah so cool that's super cool yeah so these are all kind of like roughing passes where it's starting to form it into that final shape that we want the final heel sort of triangle and then the rear like the loot area of the headstock it looks like Godzilla is stomping on the neck it's just lumbering through destroying everything and it's bad cool yeah awesome at this point it's pretty rough still and then I'll kind of sight the neck and see how straight it is we talked about before we have that truss rod in there but we want to minimize how much we have to use it that feels nice so yeah we'll put it back in it'll come off as a real smooth pass that seems right to me do you want to double check or I believe in you all right long smooth lines that kind of blend it all together get the body going masking tape this time oh we need a lot of tape we use this as just like a spacer the tool will cut all the way through the body and it gives us a little tiny extra bit of leeway so we don't hit the table like we did yeah we're gonna put it in upside down you just want it to kind of rest on them and then we'll finger tighten and adjust you can see the center line yeah it's perfect tighten them down oh God hero return all bring everything back to zero the other thing too that this is definitely a point of Pride as a guitar player to have your name programmed into this machine let's do it so this will be probably the most aggressive thing you've seen yet will be this guy oh wow [Music] yeah you weren't kidding yeah oh I can see how that went right into the table yeah and this I think it may have been a tool it may have been this tool it's kind of frightening seeing it going around those screws yeah like what would happen if it ran into one of those screws it'll cut through it it'll mess up the tool for sure the tools are made out of carbide um and it's really hard but it's kind of brittle oh it's like oh it's loose yeah yeah it just came right off a lot of the times tetsu will use those he'll cut them up and use them for a lot of his little projects when he just pieces together guitars and stuff one person scrapped another man's treasure yeah the same goes it doesn't even cut through the tape just the tape yeah you can go ahead and Press Start it'll do the tummy cot and the the trim cavity so is is that angle like what am I looking at is just a little extra access [Music] oh cool just putting in the trim system yeah we are going to turn it over so we can do the top side and then there's where the tremolo is going to go clean off any tape residue didn't realize how much tape there was in Guitar Building wait till you get to paint yeah yeah oh because of this style the electronics are drilling the other side exactly yeah they'll be buried in the pickguard yeah yeah foreign yeah is this the final pass for the neck and the CNC yep it's done all right so yeah that's definitely a guitar neck how does it feel it's pretty smooth yeah it's really smooth the CNC can get it pretty close yeah incredible it is it still needs that Personal Touch at the end but it's it's pretty close we can start inlays all the inlays use the same material in this situation they are both the same we cut them all in-house on the laser what is it it's like an acrylic Pearl but it still has that visual effect of pearl without actually having to be pearls why did we start using Pearl inlays just because it was fancy probably the reflection you'd get from it and maybe it was more prevalent back then yeah jewelry and stuff like that it's got that shininess to it yeah it looks good texture and I'd rather have the acrylic anyway I I don't need the inlays to have been in a clam's mouth hurry like this yeah it doesn't need to have been in the ocean at any point you know yeah clean up the edges but I'm not trying to change anything these are the side dots they're real so small is that a bit of tape yes the side that has the tape on it the top oh yeah so the tape is just on it so that it stays pristine we have some super glue back here so we set it in there like that I'm just kind of tap her in there looks great beautiful oh geez did I get glue in there I can't even really tell oh God I dropped it it's all right we've got a lot more of them oh wow this is really hard getting the tape off yeah I mean every aspect of it probably yeah every every part of this okay I got the tape off oh man okay okay okay I always overdo everything like glue tightening screws oh geez yeah like look at look at these can you tell which one was done by the professional here it's all right it's just extra certain that your dots are stuck in there are you able to do it with your fingers just don't hold on to it for too long I mean oh yeah yeah or it's there permanently that's when I go in to get one oh no they really are stuck on there now yeah can you get them I'm sorry Drew whoa Super Glue is whoa okay this one is there we go now my fingers are stuck together let's see now you're signing this with your skin yeah all right I only have three more to go geez oh no oh geez you might want to take it off before it's permanently stuck again yeah I've ruined that one there's my skin all over it want to do these last three no problem I have a thick glue callus on these fingers but this is almost the same process fill the bottom fill in the shinier side you want it to be as perpendicular as possible is that it's just a tiny bit more glue than me but it's time they don't look as nice as the one that you did but that's all right definitely in there yeah we're gonna let it sit just to let the super glue dry anyways we need to do a couple more things to the body this is the place where the this is where the next gonna go yeah it'll sit in the neck pocket you put this where the neck's gonna go so they just don't tear yeah it gives it something to cut against instead of that all just being open so these fit really snug that's it oh cool pop it out a double sticky tape and we do a little bit of cleanup again the only thing left is to do this back radius and then the body's ready to go to Sandy having the edges rounded off really feels complete I mean I guess it should as it's the last thing we're doing awesome and that's it for CNC we're done we've made a lot of progress here's how far we got in six hours that's pretty incredible here we go we've still got to sand down the inlays starting to feel the end of the day Vibes we just need to sand these down now that the glue is dry you told me how much you like sanding so yeah we're going to start getting into that my least favorite part of building the guitar is just sanding we got to do the same thing to the side it's not the point where it just looks like one solid piece yeah there we go this is where some good Vision comes into play because we need to see what areas of this neck need a little work it came off the machine pretty straight a little bit of daylight yeah a light bulbs we're just kind of looking for that point which is right in here where it's pivoting this is a little silver pencil just to make this all really easy to see we'll recheck with the straight edge if you want to take a look dang good job it has to blend now we're getting a lot closer to what we want yeah so cool we'll flip it over and sand it on these radiused beams oh and that has that curve in it yeah some more double-sided tape all right we're gonna put these little wedges on the side we line this up with the first fret these will hold it in place and straight when we're sanding upside down these just have it so they can just lock in there and you can do it exactly very minimal movement pretty awesome it's like they're pretty fancy sticks because they're Bird's Eye Maple oh yeah I've just happened to be some leftovers we have just like sanding everything else start with something pretty aggressive it sits in there really nice and straight it's so interesting how many rigs are used throughout every part of the process like these machines that are just made to do one particular thing just take somebody who got tired of dealing with a problem to be like okay how do I make this a little easier and I think Jose is the one who came up with this method this is a Jose exclusive Jose exclusive he should patent it himself smooth passes periodically check to see how we are we got it pretty straight so far I'm missing some from there and here it's okay looking good you're looking good how many different times do you go through this with a different sandpaper so we started with 120 and we'll end with 320 we just step our way up and it's four different grits how long does this usually take half an hour if it comes in straight we're going to add a little Fall Away we'll take a little bit more off these higher Frets it's actually only like the last four Frets or so is that where a lot of fret buzz comes from I guess this is where the string is vibrating the most it's just like the tiniest little amount but it makes shigeki a little happier so let's just and just the back and that's just just at those threads even though it seems like it's hardly anything it's enough to make a sonic difference but you can't really see it yes we're ready for France whoa okay we've got our Frets lined up that's so cool every single fret is different they're pretty close but they're all different we want to cut off the least as possible but also the Tang's different yeah each one all the way through oh yeah because it does get bigger they just ever so slightly get a little bit bigger and so if we look at a fret is what you're used to seeing and then there's the Fret Tang but we'll do a couple drops of glue this is a little bit thicker glue because we don't want it to run everywhere like that other stuff does we'll do a couple drops line it up slide on down this is very cool lined up with the Fret and then it's just consistent medium pressure down you don't have to force it so you just do all these in bulk at some point we have a ton oh yeah here we go these are all Frets some stainless steel the ones that we're doing are nickel silver will go through and do the rest of them little baby drop of glue in there given the way to get it on just more tape number two pop that in there that does feel really satisfying getting getting it in there or press in we have like most of our major chords yeah we can't shred yet all right looks great look at this hey watch the sharp edges check that out this looks lovely just let it seep into that little it'll still catch you though yeah these will still cut you yeah we just need to file them down a little bit you can really hear it yeah we'll kind of add in a little bit of a bevel did you file the Frets when you did this before yeah is bad this is really bad I did a terrible job at some point in everyone's Guitar Building career they'll mess up and then you have to pull the Frets off and start over again and it makes for a pretty sad day it'll get cleaned up even more by Jose if it needs to shiger'll do the final fret work obviously so just kind of me getting it started for them yeah we're looking pretty good getting rid of any of that final sharpness just so when they go to sand it they don't curse at me for cutting somebody's fingers I've been cut by a lot of bread ends thing it's not very pleasant feels great feels great it looks so nice it does is that it is that the day yeah is that day one yeah one day look at this I guess that's kind of a slow day for you because you had to take the time to show us yeah I actually lost out on like eight or nine guitars today but true thank you so much it's such a pleasure you're welcome day one is done day two we're here with Jose Rosas what are we doing today today we're gonna work on the neck we're gonna do the wood sanding so how much sanding does it need to get before it can move on you roll your fingers you might find some imperfections we have to clean it up and make sure it fits into the body should I be wearing a mask here yes I've been doing sanding for a long time and I still get sick from this okay yeah yeah quick pass around the hairstyle there's more have you ever accidentally sanded one of your fingers no you don't put a lot of pressure you let the machine do the job oh yeah I could feel a really grab right usually you can tell it away because you can feel the bumps yeah yeah and that one you don't feel it so yeah maybe you can work with me yeah all right oh yep that's okay right yeah all right this part I like to push back a little bit more like a corner of an inch deeper just so it feels a little bit nicer yeah yeah yeah that's huge difference you're just doing the curves now yeah I kind of made a dip didn't I yeah and that's okay we can fix it yeah you make it look really easy and now you're doing the whole rest of the neck the whole back make sure you go over the whole thing yeah whoa we're really good my fingerboards are reference we don't want to pass the thing anymore yeah so we don't we don't want to go into the ebony at all yeah it feels really good yeah it's nice and smooth I could only imagine how much dust you would Breathe In if you didn't have a mask on every day yeah this is my office yeah right here yeah oh look at all that my toys yeah how many hours go into sanding for one Nick he's an hour hour and a half average depending on the woods like a roasted Maple it takes an extra step draw steps it gets softer it has to be much cleaner much smoother man that is from next it takes me like three or four hours wow wow yeah I started by sections you know because if you're trying to work just randomly you're never gonna get it yeah foreign when do you know when it's done is it once you get to a certain grit you know that's done next we'll be moving to sandpaper pick up my special tool yeah this is just a dowel it started with 150 to 20. I've heard that if guitar companies if something goes wrong with the neck or something they need to destroy it is that real yeah okay first thing we're gonna do is chop it off the Hester yeah okay I've heard that too so that's not a rumor no because that's the like identifying part of it so that's why I see so many loose headstocks around yeah okay so next thing will be sandpaper with sanding it's kind of hard to tell that I'm making a difference the more you do it the more you're gonna see the imperfections like I can see from here like all the bumpiness it seems like you would need a lot of patience to be able to do this well yeah I always want my headphones listen my own music like uh soccer games oh cool in the Box okay I like sanding get in there right yeah now this is awesome I would say this is done with the 150 grit from same process how many necks do you do in a day three for next and if I have time I do my special projects or these years yeah this is the same Masterworks stuff I love how the wood goes into the pickup it almost feels badly but a pickup in there Wing It Up see like that one yeah it looks really nice I'm sorry for your sake but I love the way the Wingate looks like no no no don't get me wrong I I love Wenger so have you ever gone to like a concert and be like oh I made that neck like is that something that happens yeah sometimes you see like uh TV shows and you can see people playing the guitar oh this one just doesn't feel good in your hand I mean it feels like a sandpaper [Laughter] we have to make sure it fits in the valley it's perfect beautiful check that out and we're only seven hours in eight hours in maybe you could almost put some strings on this and play it yeah I mean you can final step you have to clean up this part and on this guitar too there's no truss truck cover so gotta look nice yeah it looks like a Q-tip and a guitar Q-tip awesome it's your neck all right hey Rob yeah did you stick your neck out after so much sanding it doesn't seem like Wood anymore now under the body now we're gonna work on the body we have to drill the side yuck oh yeah yeah all the clothes yeah because it's gonna get a trim system in it yeah the person in charge of doing that is Victor since he doesn't speak English I'm gonna be with you guys but he's gonna do all the process this is Victor nice to meet you Victor what are these that's the special equipment yeah you cannot use a whole because he doesn't like how it feels yeah so that's why he likes that yeah that's the template we have all the positions where the toll is gonna be yeah this is just to help you know where to drill yeah that's our Center Line right so he's trying to line up with this to find that spot okay so that whole Temple was just to get that one line yes yeah on the traditional is let's call it that way I like how you guys all say traditional like there's so much well this is the traditional shape I mean could you saw this what this is not supposed to be there we're not supposed to yeah this is a traditional shape oh geez whoa we have to line up this line to this line This one is just the secure it's gonna be on this one goes really slow and then at some point I'm gonna pedal to the metal all the way go slow oh God [Laughter] it's really sensitive yeah yeah much better yeah all right all right I was excited yeah yeah so how does that connect I guess you just drill a hole in there and attack The Wire yeah that's what he's gonna do next oh we're putting in the trim system already it's just to find the right spot oh okay what is that one for that one is the ground wire the ground it gets connected to the floor when it's been installed and then of course everything to the ground yeah I've played a guitar plugged in without the ground like it got loose and it shocks you it actually yes electric guitars can give you an electric shot so this whole trip needs to go in okay then here is for The Floating Bridge it's been a long time just eyeballing yeah yeah you want to try one yeah sure hold it down here like a full kill yeah yeah yeah foreign is the hardest one let's just connecting is we want you to have the hole right there because if it's right here it's gonna be hard to find the wire so that's the best shot we switch it straight this way [Music] all right can I see this maybe yeah so pretty much we're doing what we did with the neck but now with the body with the body yeah I love this thing yeah is that it that's it nice and smooth ready to be painted maybe all right Jose thank you so much it's been a real pleasure thank you gracias is this thing on what is your full name so I can introduce you want to say chewy Chewie's fine he did some of Dimebag Darrell's guitars yeah plenty of them yeah friends of yours too Sarah Sarah Longfield yeah oh awesome have you ever sprayed anything no it's pretty easy yeah I can't say how easy it is that I'll get rid of me but easy right now we're gonna give it a wash coat when you go from raw wood to finish the Finish needs to adhere like it wouldn't just grab onto wood so we need a binder between the wood and the finish so that's what we call a wash coat so we've got this Rosewood sealer that we use we're gonna tape this fingerboard off because you don't want finish here going over each fret and just laying her down do you keep your thumbnail long for this yes specifically when I came in for the job interview they're like let me see that thumbnail really no you want to give that a whirl yes I think I could do that even without the thumbnail this also will work if your thumbnail ain't up to spec yeah yeah wow I'm already screwing this up yeah I was gonna point out you're you're way off here yeah let me show you something okay moving this like that to make sure you stay on the edge okay you want to try that again I'll give it a shot I'm already screwing it up apparently you don't have to know how to use tape to play a guitar I've seen you play guitar and I'm seeing it taste I can use the instrument when it's done you're going well yeah okay they're done yeah you make it look so easy I've probably taped 10 000 mechs in my life yeah this thing is good to go now we're gonna slap a hanger on there very similar to this okay cool [Music] look at that yeah we got a winner so of course you're going in and you're doing this too a ton of necks all at once yes there I'm not Hamming it up for the camera I really just can't do things that's awesome I love those types of tools I mean the screwdrivers that happen yeah yeah dude I just found out about Wheels it's great you can get some places so quick with them we normally do like batches again doing things in age who do bodies snacks so it really sucks the air through yeah this rose with sealer that we put on there it's a pretty Universal stuff works good on wingy Maple Alder mahogany gonna give us a five to one what is this this is the hardener and is this like a type of plastic what is it I didn't read the instructions they told me to use it and I said okay with a two-stage gun you got two states here air but nothing's coming out yet and then why would you need the two stages if you only had one stage it would get build up on the end and then when you're doing a paint job or anything it would spit at it when spraying correctly you've always got to have the air going and uh so it doesn't clog right everything that you spray you're gonna give it two angles if you come in from this side that you got coming from this eye every single pass you've got to come in for both sides you got the air going you're gonna come in and you're going to go across cross nice and even all the way down overlap about 50 percent yeah a little closer oh that's nice oh that's nice oh that's close uh-huh uh-huh now go the whole thing a flipper roof like that of course you got a little dry patch right there we got a little saggy friend over there that's when I went too close to it all in all I think that looks pretty good boom now you're gonna do the neck with the same exact procedure so when you figure out your own pattern how you want to spread okay got plenty there oh yeah and what we're looking at here is a wash coated neck all right job well done thanks man all right I love this thing how long would this take to settle like tomorrow tomorrow a b-town do you want to do a little first leveling on the neck so your name's D-Town yeah this is D-Town Brandon it's been a day I'm still wearing the same clothes haven't showered now you would be leveling it for logo intent it's pretty simple just sanding just yeah it's just more sand yeah yeah this job's a lot of Sandy yeah yeah when you're leveling you kind of want to bring all the high edges down all at once move around the whole headstock bringing these Bridges here and around the tuner holes all to the same level that's level yes here I would use this but if you want to give it a whirl all right that seems like the hardest part I could ruin this guitar If you I mean yeah yeah bring it in from this side something like that checking the light to make sure that I've sanded all the high edges away once it gets painted if it's not level here you'll be able to see that in the reflection it's kind of a feeling thing you want it to feel nice and flat you know so as an expert at all of this how hard would it be to level the playing field [Laughter] I wish I had a good answer now just being here for a quarter of the process it's kind of nuts that you can walk into a store and get like a nice guitar for 400 yeah it's kind of insane how's that looking that's pretty good it feels wrong to get rid of the shine yeah I'll be ready awesome we're being so good chewy let me get rid of this real quick I was just scraping The Binding on there take this blade adjust it out to how wide you want your binding now you're just shaving the paint off there and that is really just the binding like you're just taking paint off yeah that's all it is it will look then like a flame Maple binding and people think that you're actually binding with that it's just that you're revealing it and making it look like that so that's so yeah I've always thought that that was like a binding like a little piece of plastic that went all the way around and regular bound guitars yeah but when they say it's flame Maple all it is is the top and you're just taking the paint off it so that you could see it everybody loves it once color goes on the guitar everybody's in love everything about this is so cool yeah so you put on the logos now I'm gonna put a logo on one to show you how it's done you hold the straight edge right to the edge of the fingerboard this is really crucial part because as the string alignment is going to be strong no matter what if you just threw it on by eye and just put it there then once it comes on it's going to look totally crooked take your little logo here you want the S not hanging off you want the a not hanging off when I'm looking straight down at it it looks extremely straight to me give him just a little touch make sure he don't move go over each letter real nice and smooth there and slowly lift it up and then think awesome got a logo yeah ruler straight so like the S and the a are far enough away look straight to me this is fun it is fun isn't it cool that this is our job now we found something good yeah finally [Laughter] [Laughter] I'm trying this guy here I mean he should work ruler that looks pretty straight to me putting that down I can see this one sticking Moment of Truth here and there we go all right Beauty nice time to lay some colors check out that logo who made that logo foreign [Music] that's that's bad that's not good let me see if I can't help you out yeah thank you great I like what we got I'm going to be doing some Sonic blue you're going to be doing some white is it called vintage white because at some point things that were white a long time ago turn that color they turn this color because they were using Nitro finish back then that yellows out a lot so at the time they're painting the guitars white two three years on the line they're like what happened it's just the yellowing of the finish on there that's why they moved out of nitro finish in the higher quality finish but naturally in the way the world goes around we're back to people want nitro finish in order to do guitar finishes nowadays not only do you got to do the super gloss you've got to be able to do the cracked and fragile nitrile finish it's so funny to me how often we see that it comes up all the time where it's like this was a defect but it was on like so many recordings or in this case on so many Sonic after guitars that now people want it you're going to watch the way I apply it the Mastery that I do you're going to recreate that same Mastery notice my adjustments too if you get too close it's gonna run if you're too far it's going to be too dry so you want to try and keep that same distance wow looks great so after this you're going to do one more coat of blue and then cover Coke what is that called clear coat yeah clear coat yeah I didn't really think about it today but wearing white shoes on paint day was a pretty bold move [Music] errors there goes nothing thank you let it sit for a minute and you're gonna come back and put a second one by letting this one dry it won't sag or nothing and you will definitely notice when you're going to put your second one it's going to look much more even yeah cool you're doing okay your Technique is horrible but you're doing okay instead of laying color your kind of peppering it it's a lot harder than it looks it's just because two it's your first time I was a little worried over there but even look how it's dry and nice it's looking good you're ready to go for round number two try to pick some of my mistakes foreign if you would have done one more it would have started going so you stop right at a perfect time it's much more sophisticated on his third pass yeah yeah very much more professional yeah don't forget in the butt but then don't forget the butt [Music] yeah hey tell you what we got got ourselves a vintage way all right no runs first time painting not a run on there I'm I'm impressed looks great yeah hey any paint job behind the guitar always ends with the clear coat yes yeah foreign I'm gonna be honest with you too I thought for sure the one that you painted I would have to go back in and make correct and clear you're all right thanks your time to shine kind of like leveling I would start sanding with like a 320 grit we do 320 600 000 and then 1500 and back to standing laughs and buffing is pretty much just more sanding kind of kinda finer sanding yeah yeah compound is finer than the Sandpaper so basically just different grit Wheels that's the courses that's a medium one that one's the same it's just real skinny so we use it for getting in all these areas it's kind of like a carpet then that guy over there gives us the final shine and this is just really yeah is this to grab onto it what is this they're basically different grits like that's a little coarser than that so you just put it on the wheel then the compound will cut the Finish but the wheels are all the same just really depends on what compound is on there um kind of always want to keep moving to avoid burning it or throwing it on the floor yeah if you just let go it would shoot to the floor oh yeah yeah that's what happens sometimes the wheels will like catch it at a bad angle and just flip it out of your hands and it's a disaster yeah switch to different angles how much pressure do I put on it it could lean into it pretty good oh yeah yep yeah it happens quick what are you looking for in between wheels that one gets all of the sanding scratches out check it over and make sure you can't see any marks from the da or the Sandpaper each wheel from then on basically gets out the marks from the previous wheel until you get so fine you can't see anything wow jeez that looks really cool and this one is just super fine yeah and this is the compound for that buff it in what is this it's just finer buffing compound does that feel weird to do Rob yes it feels feels like last boy oh boy is it reflective yeah what's interesting too in this whole process is the further we get in the process the more familiar it is more so than the raw body coming off the CNC yeah yeah I have a greater appreciation for it it took a lot of work for it to feel like a piece of glass I know right I see a white guitar you think it's not that complicated but it certainly is a bunch of steps yeah thanks Dan no worries it's like a bunch of wigs clip that on this one goes up your butt and I'll go see if it works and this is Mike Master pickups what are pickups oh uh okay yeah no we're going yeah all the way back water pickups you're literally taking kinetic energy and converting it into an electric signal and we do that by wrapping a wire around a magnet and then interfering every time you hit this you're just you're disrupting the magnetic field around this it's translated into an electric signal and then that's what gets sent to the amplifier that's an electric guitar it's a really simple machine it's what type of magnet you're using what uh gauge of strings yes yeah yeah I opened up a Guitar when I was a really little kid I don't know what I was expecting but I opened it up and saw these wires just connected to these pickups and I was like how do guitars work yeah it's still magic yeah they do a thing and then it goes through all these little parts and and then loud yeah yeah this allows it to have like the characteristics of an acoustic instrument like it's a real string that you're really playing and all the Nuance if you're playing is there but then you can just put it into a wire and just plug it into a computer you know and just get that raw signal absolutely yeah big fan of electric guitars yeah yeah me too all right let's make a pickup what pickups are we like what kind of sound do you want because it's oh you can go super vintage you can go super modern I mean there's different grades of magnets yeah and each one's going to give you different tonal properties same thing with the wire because it's going to have different thickness of coating so like the spacing of each Wire yeah as it wraps is going to give you a different tone how tall is the bobbin I mean everything yeah it's going to give you something different it's going to be in vintage white okay so it would make sense that we would want something vintage and maybe we start with a single coil because that should be the easier one yeah and just see the inside of a pickup and build one see how it works sure these are the single coil the subatomics these newer ones very vintage so it's an alto 3 which is the weakest of the aliko magnets but then it's like it has an oil but it's it's way more Dynamic if you want to pick really soft to really hard like that would probably fit the style of the guitar more but I think for the song that I want to play at the end of it I would actually want a more modern one because I don't want that as big Dynamics gotcha especially doing like solo guitar where like that's just the one instrument you're hearing the Dynamics make it harder to play vs one then yeah and then we'll do that why in the shed well we absolutely want to try to protect it as best we can from dust because right outside there is all the sanding and everything once everything gets turned on and it's gonna get really loud in here so you just put a sheet of plastic in there we actually use Fiber boards so this will be the same size for everything so you got a computer hooked up to the laser yes and this is just the top and bottom of the two single one pickups yes go oh well yeah it's extremely fine in there oh yeah that's cool amazing how fast it works you can set how fast how slow this is like a very slow speed is it really oh yeah yeah uh but for the thickness of it you have like five years that works the best the qualities guys now kind of tell it's got like residue and it's kind of shiny and it's real sticky yeah I'm just gonna go through and punch out all the little bits we don't need anymore and then you just sand it off uh actually we use a product called Simple Green it's just a Degreaser just putting a little bath there a little bit of water dry it off and you're good to go all that stuff's gone from it yeah yeah first thing we do is little eyelets here so we just pop those guys in there foreign to denote which one is gonna go where again we would use this right with marker but I like I think this looks a lot classier okay so the next step these are the magnets each one of these is going to have its own little magnetic field yeah and then when you put that y around it it makes like a mass you'll have a North polarity on top and a South polarity on the bottom still have like kind of a bubble around here and a bubble around there so this one will be uh South polarity on top so it'll be the Opposites so you don't have any phase issues or whatever yeah because when you use them both at the same time otherwise there would be phases then you'll you'll get like a weird really thin tone yeah so are these magnets like how strong are these uh these are elnico five so these are the strongest of the alanco family some of the single coils will actually have these steel guys in it and then they'll have like some ceramic bars at the bottom ah okay um yeah yeah because that's what ceramic pickups mean yeah yeah so it's just it's just the type of magnet that you're using every possible Nuance with making these has a Sonic quality oh absolutely and it's any way you could do this there's someone out there that's using that for a certain type of a certain type of music yeah next we just want to put a little bit of glue in here just to make sure that these stay in place when we start winding because as we wind the wires can be pushing up against the top and the bottom so you want to make sure that it doesn't fall apart I've also seen some single coils that the poles will be at different heights if you want to get like certain strings a little bit more um so that's the way players are like customize what strings do they want in the mix right right yeah I want this one to cut a little more and everyone always has a problem with the B string doing the weird thing yeah so um I still don't really understand what the wire coils do maybe none of us do I can tell you what the effect will be yeah we could go over some math if you want to do math it's pretty dry yeah yeah so I mean we'll just talk about one thing here and I will just publicly state that I don't really understand how it works like I know how it changes the sound yeah so are you very particular about the pickups you use yeah I guess of course yeah we're gonna take it to the winder the copper is so thin yes looks like thinner than a human hair well this is cool holy cow so this is your test run yeah I do I do one forward one back so hyper fine yeah and this is just like all guitars have these yeah let it run the rest of the way there it pops out and I don't like the way the line Looks then cut it out we'll do it again yes how many wines it varies depending on what you're making and what's the difference with more wines to less wines tonally speaking the more wines you have the more mids you're gonna get I know it does change the output right yes you have the louder it's going to be it's gonna be drastically different yeah the EQ is going to be drastically different so this one is going the opposite direction this is extremely fine yes this is actually the thickest size that we use the higher the number the thinner it is so this is 42 that's 43 and that machine over there is 44. there's variations of the coding that we use in each one we push out about 1800 to 2200 a month because you guys sell a lot of pickups on their own yeah we're picking up picking up hey awesome I love it what connects this to the input we run these little wires through the eyelets and then we solder that together tape everything up again and then we'll run your wire leads the white and black wire that's what's going to connect to your pot winding my pickups no no yeah when someone first starts here we have them Wind It All by yeah I mean that would take forever yeah like this one's ten thousand one so get going and so that's how many times this does going on not this particular uh pickup but but yeah we have a few that are 10 000 Applause from here we run it over to the assembly desk we run this wire through these eyelets don't those break often so we do about three of those wow breaking off a little bit of glue so that when this goes in the wax the tape doesn't come off yeah I love the area cheat sheet yeah we're just gonna solder the wire to the eyelet here there's a coating around the wire itself this will melt the poly around it and allow for the solder to get a molecular bond to the actual wire it's pretty rare that I have a fail it would be like after I was in the shower with it or something yeah yeah but we filmed some silly videos sometimes I don't know if you can see it but just how thin that one there's where the signal goes if I just did that this would break your whole guitar signal goes through that little guy and then around 10 000 times I usually magnetize it after I wax it but that's usually because I'm doing it in batches yeah so we can just head over to this guy right now and do it here how do you magnetize it so this is an electrical this is an electromagnet there's coils inside of here and when you run current through it it will make a North Pole and a South Pole you put this right in between it so like right now there's nothing that doesn't yeah there's nothing there this guy in turn it on turn it off and it's magnetized oh really wow now you've got a North Pole and a South Pole and then you just do the opposite with this one yeah so this one you want the north on the bottom and the south on top it's not going to kill me or anything no no you don't have a pacemaker do you yeah no then you're fine Flip It Up count to one turn off one one thousand that's it that's it that's it yep that's a magnet now I'm not sticking yep there it goes wow I didn't know that you had to magnetize it the Ceramics come pre-magnetized so those are already there so the guitar we're gonna have is gonna have two single coils and one humbucker single coils are the simpler pickup yeah what is a humbucker uh ostensibly it's two of those put together wired in uh series and they get totally different sounds yes is it fair to say that like single coil and humbuckers are like the two core guitar sounds oh absolutely that's pretty yeah the big difference in the sound too single coil I associate with more vintagey sound like it's more Dynamic louds are higher the quiets are quieter but it also has noise and then a humbucker is just a thicker noise canceling you have two coils that are sometimes you have a little bit of offset if you want a little bit more noise gives you a little bit more dynamic range yeah but uh if the coils match resistance exactly it's going to be dead which is totally cancel it out yeah so any of that 60 cycle hum in the back that's why humbuckers were just how like noise canceling headphones work they're actually playing exactly what's outside back but right upside down so does that cancel out completely cancel yeah so that's essentially a humbuckers two single coils they're both getting the same noise from the environment but one's upside down so when they come out it's not good right and it also changes the sound a lot absolutely yeah huge way it gets stronger it gets rid of all the weakness and gives all the strength let's make one cool do we know which one do you want to make oh that's a good thing yeah yeah typically with these we'll do a passing in a plus it's like a 16k output Article 5 magnet so it matches the magnets here it's a really good accompaniment to this yeah okay let's do that let's wind it yeah so these we get pre-molded plastic change the wire all right different wire for the yeah different thickness and different coating is it thicker thinner thinner thinner the thicker the wire the darker it's going to be okay and the thinner the brighter and this is stupid thin this one breaks all the time all set dang I already lost count how long is the wire then like how many feet boy you know I've never done that so to go around the whole thing with the Curve about four inches per wind yeah times ten thousand how much is 40 000 inches almost a quarter mile almost a quarter mile for just one coil so half a mile almost for a humbucker your guitar signal has to walk a quarter mile travel a quarter walk is a weird one yeah yeah yeah sure so all we're really doing is wrapping this around that a few times it's the same thing as putting this wire on here but it's eventually going to go into a housing and connection this on there long enough to melt that coating again these can break very easily so you've got the tape on you did a good job at all a lot of tape and guitar making oh boy is there now ready for next step all right again these guys are not magnets these are just Steel foreign you can use a tool to get these guys down but I just I like to use my hands and your tongue Bridge you got your four conductor we want to make sure that the ground is grounded at the base plate so you've got base plate ready to go this is an article 5 bar magnet hit it once one one thousand and you're done magnet oh yeah yeah it was one of Mark the north side so we just put a little Mark so you don't forget this guy slides right in here so now you now you have a North coil and a South coil a couple of shims and this guy's gonna sit right down on top of that there that looks familiar and now you've got a humbucker there you go on the North coil white to white black to black red to White green to Black and we're following the signal chain here too though right your signal is literally going in here around there out here and then jumps over here to the opposite and then runs through the opposite direction and then comes out okay so this is about a half mile of traffic this is yeah absolutely let me get these little shrink to these to make sure that nothing grounds out where it's not supposed to it's a shrink tubing so it needs heat we could get a heat gun but this this seems to work just fine sweet huh I did not know that setting it on fire was part of the process one more round of tape glue to make sure it doesn't go anywhere so there's your output then yeah yeah it's the ohms yeah so 16.4 let's go see if the uh get the wax wax is open I like how it's cooking equipment yeah so is this literally cooking equipment filled with wax that you heat up yes why the wax uh so it's to eliminate vibration inside of it so that you don't get uh feedback because if you don't wax one then you'll get all kinds of squealing and stuff when you don't oh really yeah yeah so that squealing coming it's like when you turn on your your electric guitar and you have it plugged in if you don't touch the strings you'll start getting that yeah sound yep that's feedback so it'll happen all the time yeah you'll play a thing and everything in here will vibrate you're gonna get waxed in there around all little bits there so it holds it together so it doesn't move around these similar coils we do not vacuum seal them so we literally will have them sit in the wax for 20 30 minutes this one we're actually going to be vacuum sealing we let that sit in there for about five minutes to get up to temperature just like in an oven you'll be able to see an air it just pull air out of it and replace it with wax you'll see a ton of bubbles when it starts yeah right that's pulling air out and the wax is replacing it yeah usually when it stops bubbling a whole lot is when we'll we'll pull it out and drip you there it's so weird before coming here I wouldn't think that you would dip it in wax yeah and then vacuum seal it oh Pasadena plus sticker on it awesome Beauty I just need to do single coils they're done all right there you go that's it so it goes like that like that and there it is there are pickups hey great work shigeki yoshima is here in assembly and you're like a master builder too you're like yeah no you're like a big deal in luthier world right I hope so yeah yeah he is you have Prince's guitar here too right yeah we have a couple open yeah gold one is actually his we were just doing a repair installing White Rose the purple one is the replica of it oh okay because I remember seeing him with a purple one we made another one okay yeah yeah because you guys made all the princess guitars this thing's nuts yeah yeah it's crazy can I pick it up sure yeah what note is this does he just particularly love this one note is this like the last note of a solo for some reason it could be just design wise like yeah in the right spot let's laser that neck back to the shed [Music] this is a template it's supposed to be touching this is what kind of what you're doing oh yeah I'm just barely touching it it can't be touched I also really really like that this is basically just a little analog stick like I don't know it's like a game yeah joystick there we go just barely on there yeah it looks like a perfect is this where you put on a serial number yes can you just choose what the serial number is you could actually let's see three one two Chicago 666 because we're at Schecter oh man I could write anything here this one [Laughter] oh I know I got School internet ah there you go it's amazing owl yeah wow it almost feels bad having it look this good and it'd be such nonsense we need to place the neck plate what's your name for Cameroon Jonathan go ahead and close this guy just place the neck plate in the mirror I can hold that for you and Center it as much as possible all right I think that's as good as I can do it when we're doing a sheet of omelets will fit about 18. yeah yeah and that usually takes about 15 minutes for it to do a complete sheet yeah that looks incredible yeah it's definitely a one of a kind serial number super cool so we'll take that back uh this guy right here is yours yep we'll take the uh the body over to the bench the way that we ideally hold it in assembly we want to minimize the amount that we're touching the paint neck pocket is a great one right so you can hold it there through the back in the tremolo cavi and you're just checking the reflections to make sure that it's exactly just trying to get the reflections of it in the Finish just to make sure that we don't see any scratches or blemishes definitely looking good it's good to me we're going to remove the masking tape from the neck pocket right we're gonna sand that because we need to break the edge more sanding more sanding yeah that's inevitability when you're removing tape you always want to pull away from the edge because if we start pulling up there's a chance that we're going to catch that left again and chip out the paint and then what you just send it back to the paint department and say hey I made a mistake yeah it's so crazy to like look at the raw wood next to the rest of the body you never want to look like that now we have to prep all the holes for screws if you were to just start drawing a screw in there you're going to crack that it's going to explode and that's going to be a bad day we'll get our little countersinks going here you're always aiming to get it just larger than the diameter of the screw the same thing for the bridge clamps this trigger there yeah push down check it and see about how big you made it you could go a little bit lighter mode well I mean too much it doesn't need to be that big but it's not a problem okay okay like that yeah all right excellent all right we're going to Mark out where our Jack has to be yeah we have a template for that to make it as easy as possible it doesn't quite fit in some paint goes on a little bit thicker beautiful yep oh just like that and you're gonna try to line this up as square as possible take our little all right here and you're just going to Mark out the center of the holes and we'll check and see how close you got the shaky input track is so annoying and I've had a lot of them that looks just slightly off but let's double check here maybe just like a millimeter off now we have our holes marked out and so we're gonna drill and you just do this freehand hey yep I'm gonna have you do this one too I'm marked out with some tape here so bring it up to the tape there we go I felt like I was holding my breath there countersink that we're gonna move and do some stuff on the drill press now and I'm just gonna check that it's gonna go deeper than the pocket which it sure is [Music] great that is very satisfying this one you're gonna bring all the way down it's not going to hit this but you're going to feel it bottoming out okay there's the post it's threaded just give these a few Taps yeah do we want these to be as precise as possible so that branch has very few reasons to be at it soon ideally we want the top of the bushing to be flush with the top of the body as I'm pulling down I'm going to get lower and watch this guy come to be flat with the body right about that is very satisfying right it seems like it's going in straight to me yeah go right there this guy right there excellent all right nice for the people who might not know this is going to have a floating Bridge there's strings on this side that pull on it Springs on this side that pull on it so the bridge is like it can move which means if you don't do it just right it won't be in tune at all the next step that we're going to do is putting on some strap buttons If you look at a lot of the old sectors and what is kind of standard on our traditional is two strap buttons on the bottom they were thinking all right if somebody's playing this in the studio they might just throw their guitar down on the couch or lean it up against the wall stand's not always handy right so if you have two straps oh then it can it can have a little bit more balance you have the option obviously Some people prefer to stick with the classical one strap button or we can go full Schecter and do it the two hmm I don't know what do you prefer Jonathan I kind of like the old school luck let's do it you know I'm looking at the angle here and I'm trying to follow this curve then I'm going to turn it and I'm going to double check them to see okay in my Center I'm going to give myself like a little preliminary Mark and that is pretty much dead on Center that's what I like to see I always make sure countersink repeat on the other side exactly majority of the time these are the strap buttons that we use so you got the gold ones as well black chrome and we're doing chrome trim chrome trim on this yeah this is a Centerline stencil a little bit of a mark right here distance in between the two which is around 90 millimeters so that's pretty good right there make a mark there I've never seen the two trap buttons in it make sure that's nice and tight there you go wow you have your strap on you can see there I know I've said this so many times in this video so far but like wow now this really looks like a guitar yeah totally there you go all right nice [Music] I've never seen that before but it makes a lot of sense very balanced right yeah so now comes probably one of the coolest Parts one of the most nerve-wracking Parts okay this is gonna go in that neck pocket we're branding it yeah it's our bodies yeah we want people to know and it looks cool so make sure that I know where this is so I'm not tripping on it I'm going to come in from this side because you have more space than just trying to come in down on top and then you really put a lot of pressure into it put some weight into it but like don't put all of your weight into okay oh this thing is really hot okay hold on we're good to go trying my best yeah you're pretty good you can go down now and then just kind of find where it feels the flattest oh whoa yeah not too shabby you got a little bit over here but that is not too bad get some shielding pan cool final step the shielding paint what does that do but the shielding paint does is it creates what's known as a faraday cage essentially a metal box that prevents any of the frequencies from penetrating it we're using paint that has conductive material in it and we're gonna paint it all throughout here and it's actually going to connect to a shielded portion of our pickguard that's going to reduce some extra frequencies that get into the guitar basically where all the electronics are inside the guitar you just turn that into a metal box more or less yeah conductive shielding paint I think if I were to open this up and I didn't know the purpose for it I would just assume that it looks nice yeah I and I'm sure you do too I'm sure all guitar players do I really do not like 60 Cycle homes I can't stand us yeah just comes with using magnets and electronics remember recording my first few albums and spending an insane amount of time trying to optimize my little studio and my parents basement to get this little 60 cycle hum and I was never able to fully get rid of it because I was using a guitar with you know single coil pickups and a little bit of distortion on there sometimes and older houses are not great too with the grounding hair guys definitely have experienced a lot of people coming in with mysterious hum that's not at the shop but the second they take it home it's nice and Loud because their house isn't grounded properly we're gonna let it dry and then in the meantime I think shigeki's gonna prep the neck for you awesome you can feel there's a hanging novel yeah right now you can actually hook it in a ripple scraping though like juice just a little bit of pressure and I'm going yes left to the right oh I really should only done one direction right so the next step make sure the neck is straight and if it's not straight I'm gonna adjust it oh yeah back to the truss rod oh you did you put in it yeah yeah okay yeah we did we've done every single part of the process oh thanks I mean I I had less to do with that I'll take credit for it yeah yeah so we have a straight edge if you see from the side you can kind of see where the highest spot or neck is backbone or bowed most of the time there's some labeling needed and you're trying to get it perfectly straight yes this is a tricky thing too because it's so easy for a guitar to buzz right I don't know if this is perfectly level or if I just don't have the eye for it but it seems totally I mean maybe the ninth fret slightly yeah I can see that if you have a single coil pickup you probably cannot avoid having Buzz yeah single core usually pull strings oh because oh yeah yeah I've never thought about that so this neck is actually pretty good but I've seen couples spot so you just file down all the Frets a little bit spot grinding I do grind a little bit extra because the neck usually tend to get kind of Hump that makes sense because the truss rod as well doesn't go all the way here so I always sand it down a little bit extra the threads are straight we're gonna start doing the crowning because we kind of made it flat yeah so we're gonna put it nice oh okay round shape yeah back because you want it to just be one single point or else again it'll it'll buy and the intonation it's gonna be you know oh yeah because you're gonna have a flat spot oh this is a cool tool it's just the Fret shape in there fine detail where yeah this part of it you don't want to mess it up just like this feels like grinding metal with metal nail on the chalkboard type of feeling there's a little bit of a finish build up cut the corner clean yeah so it does not gonna stab your fingers that too I just like your practice motion with it yeah boom boom boom I had no idea prior to today that you had to reshape every fret yeah yeah this is every day just continues to be okay yeah someone let Rob run the laser foreign after crowning with the metal file this one actually I have a sanding paper I'm sanding a little bit kind of a clean up part of the process so after this we're gonna round the Frets that's pretty important part of it because you're going to feel it yeah totally totally that affect the playability part of it I was just listening to that song you can make the music out of it So It's tricky to make it symmetrical how long have you been doing it I've been doing this probably 30 years already yeah too long yeah too long and now we're really getting into the parts where like the camera can't really see the work you're doing but it makes a huge difference in how the guitar feels yeah could I give it a shot yes first couple stroke like a tiny one so digging into it okay that's a lot harder than it looks it looks good yeah well thanks well especially when you see an expert doing it yeah when it did become yeah this is what I'm actually doing pretty slow yeah when I Rush him through I kind of oh of course like dude yeah I definitely can't do that yeah I do like a six seven in a day this part of it is tricky too because you want to be symmetrical the shape of this but a diamo is completely different looks good okay this is the area you can also screw it now it could destroy neck and everybody looking at you as there's a little scratch so I'm gonna scrape it off a little bit oh you scrape right off the fingerboard right wow then we're going to kind of keep moving around and there's so much work you do after the Frets are on at least you have something after that of course we do no way did I imagine you yeah out of the edges of the fingerboard with a razor blade by hand yeah some people use file it's safer and easier this one maybe a little more difficult but you have a full control bit oh geez oh geez yeah he made it seem like I'm cutting into it yeah in like butter kind of a depression right pressure and a right angle I don't know this is it's difficult to explain it of course it it keeps getting caught it doesn't Glide I think the pressure is almost not there yeah it's like touching it okay that makes a lot more sense to me okay but it's so fine it's hard to tell it's getting pretty good that seems about right to me clean up with some paper oh same deal a little bit smoother start blending into the fingerboard that's when you start seeing kind of a round in the edge yeah yeah so then you do that for both sides yes then I put a masking tape protect in a little bit completely blending whether you do that for every single one every single one making guitars is a lot of work so you do two different sponges as well then yes that's about it it's almost close to be done we'll finish it up tomorrow yeah I haven't been sleeping super well in my hotel so I'm not at 100 so I'm just gonna wear this today day four all right what are we doing all right so we finish over the rounding part a bit like we're gonna bring it to the buffing room and yes okay I don't want to polish the fingerboard I like to be bare wood clean certain looking so we're gonna apply masking tape and then bring it over to the buffing room yeah if you want to yeah yeah it's kind of dangerous about a bit you might drop it man watching your hands move with yeah if it's really really insane it's so good yeah you can tell you've done this and then I mean I do this every single day it looks like a scratching a fingerboard but I'm not really touching I wonder how much tape goes into each guitar because it feels like we use like 20 yards the tape already everywhere it makes it look really fast it is super difficult to get it that fast every step of the way you need to go through four or five different sandpapers and then once you're done with the Sandpaper then you go to the buffing which is kind of like sanding but more fine and without sand all right now it's ready for the buff time to get buff oh we got a whole other buffing wheel yeah yeah there's a lot of rooms in there no no oh just cleaned up a little bit so I don't want to heat it up too much at the same time I want to be clean and shiny if you not holding right and if you get caught yeah it's gonna go right down to the ground The Edge is kind of a dangerous part of it because you can do this you might be you grip the headstock really strong also putting the finger on the bottom in case you're getting hot you still catch it thanks [Laughter] oh and it's hot too yeah oh God all right you can go a little bit faster so that's not gonna get hot like that oh that that's why it's getting all right because I'm going I'm going too slow [Laughter] I can be ready for it oh how much is the pull I mean a lot you gotta really grab onto it yes whoa whoa hey hey [Laughter] that's it all right oh wow gleaming that's how I'm used to seeing him yeah that's just brand new I guess I just always assumed you put in the Frets and knock them in and that's it that's yeah there's a lot of work that goes into them looking this nice beautiful yeah get a good shot of it now because I've had a lot of guitars for many years and then the Frets don't look like that anymore so the next step is installing a knot this one is a little bit oversized so I still have to shape what is that nut made out of graphic it's a Black Tusk not that we use just like a synthetic yeah I really like it I think sounds really good I have to kind of shape it oh geez another Sun more sanding why synthetic Tusk when you drop it it sounds really crisp and also consistency is every single one is exactly the same yeah rather than using real right animal bone so I'm gonna take it out okay beautiful round in the edge if you have a really sharp nut at the end of the guitar I can cut right on your finger and be uncomfortable so it's pretty good yeah it looks great we do use super glue as soon as you put it on it starts to be on they don't put too much on the edge because it's going to come out we have to still find adjust the height you can tell how much space to the top of the hole slowly it has a little bit those are much higher higher and the high is actually pretty good as it is that's up too because you do want a little bit of space there right you don't want to be on it but if you leave it too high then you're not gonna get perfect intonation because you have to press it so hard yeah and the difference is here between too high and just right are extremely tiny so this one is really easy clip like this and dentina Frets if you did the first fret we have to go back do everything and crowning so don't mess this up is really important uh not to mess around you just want to kind of dig it in a little bit like this maybe just couples like Strokes on the on the G string on the g strings and you want me to be on the Fret in here but very close to it really close but you don't want to touch it and then you can have a tiny bit of a hanger to it towards the headstone yeah looks good another one another one and that's probably not it's a bit nerve-wracking everything at this point of the process feels so high stakes yeah it's like there's so much that comes before it that you're responsible for keeping intact yeah it's stressful in no way so that's it I'm gonna take the edge off so that's it beautiful this is ready to put on the body I see the serial number yeah it's hard to miss that one test fit right now it's pretty tight so I'm gonna take all the paint around the neck bucket more sanding we did too aggressively you're gonna prep the Finish or tip to finish sometimes you can grind it this way yeah there's some friction to it when you put it in wow wow it's gotta be just right today is all right oh man look at that here's this backside plate coming together a little bit of a grease so it's not too tight to the halfway all right ooh beautiful yeah that's it check that out wow it's looking nearly done but it doesn't sound like anything yet let's pick out a pick guard oh yeah quite an assortment for you to pick through if you want to test them on the body we can see how they look I'm pretty sure I already know which one I want okay because I am basing the color and some of the look off of the Wayne's World guitar yes that looks pretty nice that does look pretty nice what is this that's our white pearl pick card lovely I like this one more though yep I'd love to see black oh yeah black too yeah go ahead whoa that's classy too what do you think Jake I like the white me too yeah this would be closer to what you'd get on something in the 60s era and the guitar that they're playing in Wayne's World so that's it we're going to load up the pick card with electronics a couple potentiometers here that was switch grab a tongue faster that's what makes the tone knob work this is what makes the tone knob work this is what makes your guitar sound Jazzy and dark somehow in here this takes all the high frequencies and rolls them off that lets the low frequencies pass while taking the treble frequencies and sending them to ground the same way that your volume pod takes your pickup signal and sends it to ground that's what makes it silent when you turn it all the way off yeah this is doing that with specific frequencies and that's what these two knobs do exactly so we have our tone knob here and then this is our push-pull split your humbucker yeah I have that on my guitars too humbucker single coil it's a handy feature this is the volume so it just clamps down on the signal exactly and that's all passive Electronics all they do is just get rid of stuff that's all they can do that's all you can do yep is this the guard dog hey bud this Bandit coming here a lot oh yes and it is always a better day yeah yeah yeah so we're gonna get these guys loaded up here and this is a lot easier for this type of guitar too because it just all goes on the pick card exactly oh and there's the shielding on the other side yeah that is the top portion of our fair day yeah exactly yep and that's just aluminum foil pretty much you know just a conductive material that's the toe knob oh yeah push-pull is such a great invention because it really allows for a lot of different wiring options yeah and it's fun it's fun to use because it's stealthy we just got to get our switch on here this is a selector you have little terminals for each one and then there's a common on each side so this is essentially always connected wherever the lever is so that's going to be our out yeah I've used this so much in my life but I've never actually seen it out of the guitar yeah so you can actually see how when we connect the three pickups to each one of the tabs either we'll select one or two of them here's just the bridge bridge and middle middle and neck neck exactly that's so fast yeah it's very easy to make all the cables nice and tight and clean have you have any soldering experience before this is the part of the guitar building where you Google how to solder yeah all right hey did it just stick I think we just ordered something all right the answer is a yes but not a resounding one yeah they're definitely a few key tricks to being able to do soldering cleanly any connection that you're making you want to Tin what is that so tinning is essentially just applying solder right so if I'm going to Tin the tip of the iron all I'm going to do is just add a little bit of solder to it and that's tinning we want to make sure that that's fresh if you want to like say tin this little terminal here just add a little bit of solder to it and that's tuning you'll do the same thing to the end of The Wire when you strip it the very first step to this is adding our capacitor this is what makes the tone dark that's what you're turning on when you move the tone up exactly so a lot of guitar players will never go through this uh a lot of guitar plays yeah we'll never touch this yeah I'm gonna pre-tin this middle lug the way this is going to work is we're going to have signal coming through it's going to be going in here the pot when you turn it down that's going to bleed some of the signal in to this side which is then going to be connected to ground and going through this and the more you turn it on the more the signal goes through there totally I use the tone knob sometimes an important part of the volume knob is we got to make sure that one side of it is grounded so the signal goes is actually going to go to the push pull first and then to the switch this is the control and then that's going to send it to your master volume and then from there that's going to go to the output Jackson so first thing I need to do is getting it's not touching with my hand yeah it's definitely and not putting on the table sorry going great okay look at the reason why we don't do it over the guitar too yeah oh yes put it on there go ahead and flow that does that seem right cool yeah so let's uh let me get in there you can throw that back the check actually because if you just tug on it then you know that you're pretty good we're just gonna add a tiny bit more solder just to the back just to make sure that that's all nice and sealed up tone and volume pot connected to each other now we just need to connect these to the switch flow it up here to our common which is this guy up here at the top and Mark out where that's going to end and we're going to trim it you're just going to connect it to this very last terminal here so right onto this guy huh it looks pretty good is it on there yeah all right excellent there are only two more wires to this it's a pretty simple circuit the two single coils are connected here and the humbucker is connected here so I'm going to Tin these terminals on one side of our push-pull these you definitely have to be quick with are they just thinner yeah they heat up really fast so boom just like that all right we're going to kind of match this same line that we have with the other wire and we just want to keep everything kind of neat and tidy looking in here too trim it let's do that and now probably the most crucial one because without this wire you're going to have a very very noisy circuit which I'm sure you've experienced at some point in time and that is a ground wire very important that we have everything metal connected to one another otherwise it just introduces crazy noise yeah and it can shock you if you're playing it like a really big stage with a HPA it can be actually there's a lot of high voltage so this one is the most important one without this one your guitar is not going to be safe and it's going to sound bad because if that ground isn't there then you are the ground it's all wired up so now we're just ready to add pickups to it this is what we made yesterday we also have a few knob options for you we have our standard traditional down knobs but we also have oh geez these make so much more sense with the guitar but they do come on these are skulls their skulls they're very cool but I'm not going to pressure you into playing skull knobs on your guitar because they are a very specific look maybe we do it just for the tone knob because it gets darker sure right yeah the serial number does have 666 and it doesn't yeah we have to use them right it's just another point of Distinction on this beautiful machine Jake really wants the skull I do I do I think it would look better without but it might be more fun to have them on it definitely would look better without it really doesn't work but I'm gonna put it on the tone sweet here's another thing I wanted to do because it's just white I would love to put a white guard on this and I know you don't have white but we could maybe get chewy to spray one yeah we don't have time to paint it and you can get a cover on it a lot of components yeah there are a lot of components what is that um these are just the switch tips you can just see which one you kind of like the color of a little bit better to my eye that one matches this I would agree with you yeah so let's just have to match a little bit better just like that easy enough just gotta test it make sure it's not rubbing on anything there we go there you go beautiful going into extreme mode we use surgical tube as sort of the cushion and surgical tube is for surgery it is for surgery no it's fine it's a little bit easier to start with the single coils this is a very important part we're going to make sure that we're actually putting the neck pick up in the neck position a little bit on one side a little bit on the other side those are meant to be adjustable you can have you install this metal position I can do that nice cool take a look at the pickups there I don't want to be pretty parallel those look pretty good to me I found the humbucker now the humbucker same deal same deal all right that's excellent give that a visual check on the side to see how well that's sitting we go a little bit less on it okay there we go yeah looking good cool now this is the fun part because this is really where it comes together and looks nice and neat and professional I'm going to start by gathering all of the wires together kind of in a neat way so we're going to start with the ground wires on the bottom and then run our hot wires from the pickups on the top zip tie these together took our ground wires soldered these onto the can this is going to make sure that our single coils are connected to everything else that's a metal that's on our wire now we'll do the pickups Bridge pickup is going to go here because the bridge is already going through the tone knob exactly going through the skull to make it darker and then you can exactly middle single coil here and that's just going to go right up here just following the line same as the other keeping it nice and neat beautiful look at this yeah look at this beautiful little Network the very final step is getting the humbucker yeah I hear all these again here's the cluster you have start and finish of each coil in the humbucker ground and the green are going to be connected to one another then we'll have the white and red those are connecting the two coils to each other and then the ground actually this is the live oh believe it or not black is the live oh it's confusing it is a little bit confusing just making sure that these exposed ground wires are covered up that way it doesn't accidentally hit anything that's carrying the signal because if anything that's connected to the ground touches anything that's going to the out that's going to immediately cut out your signal yeah and then fire now we're just going to hook up our humbucker here to our push-pull pot black wire is going to go to this top terminal finish it up by grounding the pickups of the pot boom very last step get one more zip tie and just make sure that these wires are all nice and secured boom a completed Pickard this is the side I'm a lot more familiar with we just have a few more things to add to it before we can go ahead and put the pick art on the claw and the input jacket what is the clock The Claw is what tremolo Springs attached to so it goes in this cavity back here and it's just going to sit right here and it's just the counterbalance to the strings pulling this way and we have the Springs here and that's going to pull up this way just do a quick explanation for what the tremolo bar is there's Springs on this side pulling the strings there's strings on this side pulling the bridge so it's floating exactly and then you can use a whammy bar to get nice and go up and have a lot of fun with it we're going to start with the output Jack if you look down in there there's actually a little hole that Victor's drilled that is going to connect it on yeah we did that earlier there we go just like that now we're going to move on to the claw the claw the ground goes out yeah we'll just feed that guy in this one takes quite a bit of pressure we can just blindly go ahead and put the bridge on and have it balanced roughly if it's around 12 or 13 millimeters so that looks pretty good we're just going to check to make sure that the neck pocket so you can see there how that's not just dropping on nice and easily so we're actually going to sand that a little bit to try to get it better we're just going to wind it up a little bit all right all right so that's going in that's nice and snug get these guys in there you can see the top of the threads there and then it's coming down and just until they disappear is roughly where we like to set it yeah and this is the Anchor Point of the bridge exactly these are these are the pivot Points oh hey hey nailed it hey all right excellent we're gonna set up some protection right because we really do not want to drop any solder obviously we like to have a lot of slack right that was well a common problem is the input jack will get loose and then it'll spin exactly it'll Spin and so the more slack it has the more chance we have for somebody to notice oh hey there's something wrong before it rips out before it rips out because that is probably one of the most common problems oh yes oh yeah like a repair Tech is going to deal with we're gonna drop it down here all right we're gonna put a couple screws in I want to make sure that I'm lining this up Square to the bridge so when I drill the holes I'm not going to have to shift it and have those be misaligned kind of rock it back and forth because there is play because it is The Floating Bridge exactly and we do want to find the middle that looks pretty good we're gonna Mark out our holes that I'll just have to do not perfect but pretty good that one is perfect so now let's drill these out and now you've got quite a bit of counter saving to do if you go a little bit deep that's not a problem we're going to cut a little rounding Tab and it's going to be connected to the screw also to the back of the shelving that we have on our pickguard right so this is all going to be connected I did not know you needed to do that yeah I'm just going to make sure our wires are good on the cavity there and then we're just going to drop our pick guard down the skull is so out of place I kind of I kind of like it for that reason all right and now we can move on to the tuners we are putting on some goto tuners go to six in line locking tuners nice I prefer locking tuners when you're doing with this kind of bridge they're just the way to go yeah you know it just makes your life so much easier the way our tuners work is they are staggered what does that mean if you look at a lot of guitars all the tuners will be the exact same height these will gradually get shorter and that just adds a little bit more brake angle behind the nut okay just makes the tuning stability a little bit better and make sure that there's good contact with the knot here 20 millimeter 19 millimeter and then 318 down here I'm just gonna go in like that and then you're just going to drop it in the hole all right we're just going to keep it steady because once you're at the top it'll want to pull up this direction right so you're going to want to have some good then you just make a nice and snug like that take a look at that we're just going to bring it back there yeah there you go nice excellent awesome to make them super even we're gonna use this right because this makes a nice straight edge this one's a little bit off too all right and that looks pretty good to me same foreign Titans kind of hold this so that it doesn't accidentally Spin and then just give that a tight until it's nice and snug now it's time for strings for Strings strings so you always put tens on it at first yeah yeah tanzer is pretty much our standard now we're going to load the bridge onto the guitar start just by dropping it in there holding it in place I'm going to take the springs and I'm gonna just grab them here undo all of the locks this is why I love locking tuners no lighting no winding yeah that's actually the reason that we can get these tuners to be so low because you can see it with the height that they are now if you were to put like the standard say oh yeah two to three wraps around the post you wouldn't be able to do it so that allows us to have a good brake angle there shall we get first note and now it's just a very similar process to what I'm used to just restringing a guitar normal restraining your guitar we're going to put some tension on these screws all right that's a guitar yes it is and it sounds beautiful and now it's just tuning with the trim system yep do you not stretch the strings is that just a myth um no stretching is super important okay I don't do it at this point that's actually okay he takes care of yeah the very final process I'm gonna add a little bit more tension all right now we're going to re-establish where the center of this tremble is going to sit just by depressing the bar and just there's a little bit of weather in there that's pretty even on the side right now that we have that set we know that our pickard's not going to move all right yeah just because as you can see these two are pretty high up so we're just pushing them down yep sand the bottom of it it's the very last time you'll need to sand on this one tomorrow even this string tree gets sanded yeah we're gonna line it up with this washer of our D string cool put a nice polish on it take all of our fingerprints off of it all right and that is a completed guitar ready to be set up hell yeah thank you Jonathan yeah my pleasure thank you I'm just double checking everything and tweaking intonations make sure it's dead on string action pickup height then you do this for everyone that goes out yes oh I also checked the straightness of the neck also the height of it or not I'm gonna lower a little bit just so tiny bit that looks pretty good stuff sometimes the Trussville stuck in it so I just give it a little bit yeah what's the evening dress that you're doing I'm using a string as a straight edge the string is really straight so I'm using the last fret in the first fret to see how much bow in the nail yeah when you do that you're wanting just a little bit of give just a little bit also you can check if the neck is twisted or not I think I'm gonna raise a little bit skull now looking good yeah actually this is this looks really good right Cole yeah when I'm changing those actions it does change the spring tension a little bit and if you raise him pick up too high it just cause the issue with the intonation because it's falling on the strings Yep looks like everything correct oh that's your nice super accurate just tiny bit of a difference it's gonna move to the right or to the left yeah that is so cool all right this is a really fine process in that you're kind of balancing string tension the spring tension and the intonation so this is cool that sounded awesome I know you're just testing but could you tell me is pretty good yeah check out this call [Music] [Music] s great [Music] yeah it feels perfect don't look nervous to play it [Music] wow that sounded good thank you sounds beautiful back plate and that's it it's completed all right this is it yes all right final screw there it is beautiful all right that's it thank you so much to Jackie who that'll bring it to Chicago and see what music I can make with it yeah [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Music] all right so that's building an electric guitar from scratch thanks so much for being here and being part of it and especially watching a video that is this long it's very cool to us that people are watching for that amount of time and I want to thank Schechter for creating this lovely guitar they're giving it to me as well which is very cool they also gave me the extra skull knobs if I wanted to go all full skull knobs or the regular ones if I wanted to do that and I chose this song because it's really really hard on the guitar there's a lot to ask of a guitar for this song to work it's an older song of mine I'm going between the humbucker in single coils because I need both tones for the low bass and those really chimey harmonics with those tapping Parts way up the fretboard the intonation needs to be perfect or else the song just doesn't work it's a really hard song to pull off both with the equipment and just with my fingers like it hurts I don't really like playing that song all that much honestly it hurts my fingers but it's a good way to test the guitar and we'll put this performance of the song Apple music and iTunes if you want to listen to it outside of a two and a half hour long video thanks again to Schechter thanks again to you for being here sure this isn't the last time we do something like this on the channel so you can subscribe if you would like and we'll see you soon yeah yeah nice another movie uploaded to YouTube

Channel: Rob Scallon

Views: 1,496,427

Keywords: Rob Scallon, music, musician, guitar, guitarist, building electric guitar, how to build an electric guitar, guitar cnc machine, building a guitar pickup, how to make an electric guitar, so much sanding, building a strat, building a six string electric, guitar factory, luthier, pro, building an electric guitar, guitar from scratch

Id: -u3eTSxH_6s

Length: 122min 45sec (7365 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 26 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/16note]

This was a great one, he also did a similar video a while back for a classical guitar.

[u/Carrot42]

Chewie the painter was great.

Rob: I love these types of tool.

Chewie: Thats called a screwdriver, they invented that a long time ago.