Sex and Violins

I always thought it would be interesting to have a violin-shaped guitar. Not sure why, really. Like most of the crap that rattles around in my head, this was just one of those things that seemed like a good idea.

But then I was lucky (?) enough to start wanting a fretless guitar too.

Frets are the metal ‘rails’ that are on a guitars fretboard (duh):

They make it much easier to sound the correct pitch, because the fret is placed exactly in the right spot.

Violins, on the other hand, are fretless. If your finger isn’t in the exactly correct spot, you’re out of tune. It’s one of the reasons listening to children practice violin can be so painful.

The other reason is usually their lack of technique with the bow.

Guitars are usually fretted. But basses are much more widely available with fretless fingerboards.

This means that unless I want to pay someone an obscene amount of money, I’d have to make my own.

Especially if I wanted the body to be violin shaped.

So that’s what I did.

I didn’t take too many photos of the process, but I think I captured all the essential details.

I started by tracing a regular stratocaster body. I like strats, and the shape has become second nature to me.

But we need to add a waist or ‘C-bouts’; those are the distinctive cutouts in the middle of a violin that allow the bow to be brought closer to the body than would otherwise be possible.

I went online, found the best straight-on image I could find, and copied it. I blew it up until I got the right size, then transferred it onto/into the design.

Then I put the design onto 3/4 MDF, a kind of particle board that works really easily and makes good routing templates. The template sits on the body blank, allowing you to rout the shape cleanly and precisely.

I used Philippine mahogany for the body blank, gluing together a number of boards. They weren’t perfectly aligned, but considering what I had in mind it wouldn’t matter.

The C bouts turned out to be a big problem. The little pieces that protrude are fragile, and they break easily. I ended up fixing them as best I could, but I used super glue, which will turn out to be a problem.

Once I got the shape correct, I routed a binding channel. I decided to use binding since it would protect the edge and help define the body shape. I had some black and whie plastic binding that I had never used, so it got volunteered for the job.

Using a special router bit, I routed a ledge all around the outline. Then I glued the binding in with super glue. Which, it turns out, was going to be a problem.

Do we see a pattern here?

Well, never mind.

I wanted this guitar to look like a violin. Violins are hollow, so their tops are arched. A solid guitar has a carved top.

So I needed to carve the top.

Luckily, Philippine mahogany is very soft, especially compared to maple, so it wasn’t a problem.

But how do you do it, you ask?

It’s much simpler than it looks.

First, you rout a series of ledges or steps onto the top pf the guitar, with all of them close to where you want the eventual carve to be.

Then you scrape or sand the ledges down until the inside corners disappear.

You are left with a carved top.

This very bad illustration hopefully helps you understand:

In the photo below you can see how I did it. The ledges are still visible from where I was carving the bottom of the guitar:

In the next photo, you can see how I am working my way down to the binding. The lowest part of the carve actually is lower than the top of the binding and recurves back up. But its important to do this slooooowly.

Another view, with the pencil lines clearly visible. Notice that the carve follows the shape fairly closely.

Once I worked the carve all the way around, I decided to stain it pretty dark. Philippine mahogany takes stain well, and its frankly not always the prettiest wood, so I figured a nice dark stain would even out the color and give it a traditional violin look .

The tape is to keep the lacquer off of the wood where the neck will be glued in.

Unfortunately, you can’t dye over super glue (you can die from it, though; VENTILATE), which means that a lot of my repaired areas ended up with lighter colored  stain than the rest.

Live and learn. Or so they tell me.

This guitar has a ‘set neck;’ it is glued into place. There is no need for a neck angle, since I am using a very low bridge.

I carved the ‘heel’ of the neck to be very comfortable:

The neck has an angled headstock, something that requires cutting a board on a 13 degree angle the long way. It can be done with a miter box and a jig.

You just have to be very careful. And even more lucky.

Gluing the resulting two pieces together is no picnic either. But I managed.

I used a '3x3' arrangement because I had 3x3 tuners.I could have been a bit more stylish with the design of the headstock, but I didn't want to get too far into it.But that's not the interesting part about the neck. Like I said, I wanted it to be fretless. The easiest (and smartest, as we will see) thing was to buy a slotted fretboard.These boards are cut by a computer in the exact places frets will go. I've always used them on standard guitars, because honestly I can admit that a computer will do a much better job than I will in terms of measuring and cutting very precise slots.The other reason I wanted a slotted fretboard is that I could fill the slots with a contrasting color wood of equal hardness and have guide lines that showed me where to put my fingers. On a regular guitar, you put your fingertip between the frets, but with a fretless your finger  is the fret!I have a bunch of maple veneer that turned out to be a perfect fit in the .023" fret slots. So that's what I used.Once the glue was dry, I carefully cut away the excess and sanded it smooth. Then I coated the whole thing in super glue to strengthen the wood. This time, super glue worked in my favor!As you can no doubt see, this guitar is far from perfect. It was a learning experience, and I treated it as such.The guitar is solid, and looks okay. But like most of my projects, I see the mistakes very clearly.Still, its fun to play, and at least I can say that my ideas (mostly) worked.So now I have a violin shaped guitar that sounds like a violin.I don't even have a volume control, just a switch for the pickups. I use a volume pedal with this guitar anyway.I am now officially out of extra parts and money, so the next project will have to wait until I start making a heck of a lot more money!