Building a Guitar with SOLIDWORKS

I also have a story to share about building musical instruments!

A little while ago I decided to design and build my own telecaster electric guitar. I purchased most of the components off the shelf, but I decided to design and build the body of the guitar myself.

After creating the model in SOLIDWORKS, I took the files to the Fab Lab and started fabricating. I generated the toolpaths for the CNC router and did a test cut on a piece of foam. I used the foam guitar body to test the fit with the purchased components. After validating the fit, I moved on to the real version.
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I modified the toolpaths for cutting wood and then cutout the guitar body from a wood blank.



After fabricating the body, I attached the guitar neck with a neck mounting plate; lined the pockets with copper shielding tape; and installed the pickup, bridge, control plate, and output jack. I soldered the connections between the pickup, switch, knobs, and output jack. And then I was ready to start rocking!