Taking a Great Kit Guitar and making it Awesome! - Episode 1

welcome to Chrome,

guitar

s, welcome to the EMF kit bill,

taking

a

great

guitar

kit. I know because we did it and we did it amazing. Hopefully there is always a 5% chance of complete and utter catastrophic failure and that's why you watch my videos. Dad, please enjoy the build, welcome to Crimson Guitars and welcome to a new build series. I'm going to take a KITT guitar and make it amazing, I have to try it and make it amazing. We did a series many, many many years ago called Taking a Cheap. children's guitar and make it

great

and many thousands of people have seen that series even though it is now very, very dated, but since then we started

making

our own children's guitars and they are really, very, very good.

I'm a little biased. I want you to buy it. them, of course, but they are and I've been wanting to make this video for a while and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. This is the simple MF children's guitar cut inspired by well you know what it's inspired by and despite the fact that I love the instruments of this design, well the goal of this video is to take this fairly traditional instrument and show how I'm crazy, no, it's showing what can be achieved using a basic kit and essentially the argument, honestly, was with this. idea that I have, whether I go and make a full custom shop or a master build instrument from scratch using all these ideas and you know, just do it, but it's more of a challenge, more fun and more interesting, I think doing this with a kit and I'm currently feeling a bit cyberpunk oh okay, first of all I'll show you the base instrument of the guitar kit with which I'm going to try to create something amazing and I need To stop saying that it sounds a bit arrogant, okay I'll try create something amazing and then we'll have a little design session.

This is how one of our children's guitars comes to you, at least The fretboard on this Emily model has a bit of flare, the mother of pearl inlays are about 2 mil thick, it's exactly as you'd expect it to be and although we have a F style collar pocket there and it comes, you could set the scene like that get some stains get some stains there let's focus and put our fish oil etc. and you have an instrument or you could be a little bit adventurous and use this as a base from which to just you know, have fun, okay, this is going to change, this is going to morph and move and adjust a little bit as the build goes on, but there are some things that don't, so we're talking about cyberpunk, we're talking about circuits, diagrams and lights. and you know interesting things, but something that really bothers me is when people make a tabletop steampunk guitar without any purpose and well, I feel the need for sound holes, the problem is that it frees up a little weight.

This isn't particularly heavy for a guitar of this type, but it is, it needs a little bit of weight relief, so I'm going to cut it in half now that I know exactly where my bridge is going to be, so we have a bridge. the brake angle and everything is already built in, we have two or three thousand to spare, which is ideal and I'm moving. I'm looking at the rope line and checking that it goes right where I really need it and that's pretty much right in the center as the line helps too yeah that will do so we're on the scale of six to eight with room for go back and forward a little.

This is at 630, which is a couple of THOUSAND longer. because obviously because the 632 offset scale bins are actually perfect, another bit that is the same size as the bridge holes that goes down and removes the position and that's where my bridge is going to go and now that I've made permanent holes at the top and that's my bridge in the pickup cavity. I'm going to double check for the fifth time, so our scale length is six to eight. I'm here from six to nine with a little bit of movement back and a lot of movement needed forward and then. a lot of movement towards the center of the saddle, which is where the string will align very well along the masts and nothing, nothing moved on the other side, in the center, at half past six, it is two thousand behind the nominal length of the scale and the center. of the saddle I'm not measuring this either, but it's a little bit in because I have it on, it's the center of the rope, so it's a thicker rope and yeah, that works and starts up pretty good, so here we go.

I'm happy with what's marked, it's good and in fact, now that I'm here, I'm going to drill four of these wild ones. The reason we don't have pre-drilled bridge holes in these kits is because well. People like you and me don't necessarily want two standard tires, in fact what is a standard geomatic? They all differ slightly, if not in spacing, then in hardware, Ferrell and so on, so we left it blank so you can mark it yourself. and do whatever you want if you want big speed, go for a big B if you want a tuna hoe and a piece of tail or a kinematic and a string through the body, which is what I'm going to do on this one, the option is there for you.

So take your pick, never assume I know what Fairless is. I've installed them before, but I just confirmed myself seven millimeters, so I'm going to go with six and a half million. Now drill presses are better and more stable, especially when doing this type of work, but it is absolutely essential to build this as much as possible. I'm going to avoid using larger machines if I can help, but I will be using hand drills and I'm not even sure I can do that. I need to use a router, actually, hand drills, chisels and the like, other than a path from where I cut the guitar in half because I'm going to need bands for that anyway, this is a relatively short or shallow hole. and I'm pretty good at drilling in a straight line, so again I'm either in the right place or not.

I triple checked it five times. I'm sure it's definitely deep enough. Quick dive stop. Put a drill bit in there. You put your finger on the bottom and that's how deep it is and I have room now when you start a cut, they are slow to prevent them from breaking, that's very deep. Oh, a little deeper, yeah, so I'm done. across the top now the reason I do that is obviously we have flat webs down we need to have enough room for all the thread and that's the little hand countersink that will probably be sanded at a later date. anyway but yeah it's all in the right place now what I need to do is work and draw where I want the three body stringing to go which will actually need a drill which I'm not doing with hand gauges in the center each.

One of these is also the position where the street should be and that is very good. I have a center line that's barely visible, so we'll look at it on the center line. This guitar has already been sanded to a fairly good, if not final, finish. pretty close, so I don't want to muffle it too much. I have to do the same thing later because I want this to be parallel to my center line and then very lightly join the modifications together, okay? I have that, I want the three-body roll to be longer on the bass side, shorter on the treble, and traditionally you also have the B on the e, kind of a back twist, which I think we're going to do too and basically I can. just look at this, so let's go back and go back ten thousand, so the string to string spacing is ten thousand, so let's go back ten thousand and then essentially we'll have Farrell's, they're going all the way.

Double check Triple check be absolutely sure you are happy with all things before you drill a hole or make a mark that will stay there forever so once I found the bridge I put it in place and then I notice everything looks good now. The edge of the ruler is intended to be a rope. I have approximately the correct position for the nut strike in the center of the saddle, there the bridges are in the right place and those two should line up and look beautiful before I do. any drilling here I'm going to continue marking the rest of the design very well.

I'm not entirely sure where I want to go now that we have this little knot here. I want to go right through the center. of that to get rid of it so that it's parallel to the center line we're going to have circuit diagram style angles angles look now this is the problem. I have marked it as if it were just a normal guitar. I could have set it up. so it was parallel to that, so it was a less extreme angle, but I would like a little more tension in the bass than I would have had otherwise.

However, now I want to draw an angle from here to here, that angle is 15 degrees or something that looks a little strange if it's next to a 45 degree angle, so I need to change that this is a computer and computers are accurate and it would be 45 degrees because it's easy, well, actually we'll do this first bridge. I'm going to use it as my center point to see what it looks like because the design is part of it, the design is definitely part of it, but the functionality is another, so that would go there and then and now you see why I didn't drill them.

I see the space there now looks completely wrong, it really needs to be back here, so you see, I did it. I noticed that she's not done she needs to be back there and that gives us a 45 here we go okay so if this was just a guitar that would look a little weird just a guitar if it was if that was it only thing we had there that would look a little strange but now it's okay, precision and all, let's get a sharp pencil, no, I want. to figure out where the midpoint is here, so that's it, it's halfway between those events, that's where I want that line to diverge.

Okay, now what's happening is that at a later date we will run a circuit diagram, so the switch, for example. it has a ground and then a bunch of wires going into it, those wires there will be a visual representation of those wires going down the front of the guitar to the potentiometers and the whole wiring diagram will be on the top of the guitar. Basically like it's a circuit board, so when I design this cutout I need to make sure that I have room for those wires to go where I want them to go, being in the middle point, here I do it. they're going to go awful, terrible, terrible, so I'm going to have cables on that side and yeah, everything will be nice and attractive, okay, I don't want that line to go through because I want my cables to go here.

I just want to end that there, yes, I think that was a bit much, okay sir, yes, we have a line there, okay, and then what I want to do is have a second line almost parallel, but going out to here widening as that we move forward. Come on, we'll make it 15k and then double it to 30k. Yes, I'm happy with that. I don't want the hard edges here. I want to put a bezel and I want to make that bezel light. I'm going to use that essentially to adjust the shape of the guitar. Now we could have sound holes here, this will be cut and then hollowed out and then I want to have hexagonal sound holes that go straight down and not in a square shape.

I want you to go. at an angle like pointing, yeah, so what am I going to do, yeah, yeah, I play with this, so I move my finger

making

it wider as I go and this is going to cut off trying to pick it up for a neck that wasn't . glued, okay, this is going to cut the mahogany and the maple in half and then I'm going to cut that. Now this line doesn't want to go all the way there because we have a cavity back there that I don't really want to go into two by two, that's 30 thousand, let's go to another 30 thousand, here we go, so the carving will be a physical carving and then we we'll stop at an angle there and maybe cut it in half again, make a quarter, like this.

It's a seven mile metal on the same kind of thing and we're doing well now. Something I'm also going to play with or change or modify are the pad surrounds or the pad covers, at least I'll probably do a custom pair of pickup covers and those are going to go, they're going to wrap around the end of the pickups. somehow. I think essentially this area is off limits. I can't let that car fit into your hexagonal dog biscuit. Look, we'll go. which for now yes, I could have done well, well, I'm looking, I like the look of this sofa.

I think this bevel I think this Bibble is too big because it's going to cut pretty deep into the mahogany, so let's go. get rid of that and make it a little bit smaller, yeah, that's a much more subtle car, okay, so these lines here are going to be physical, they're going to be a physical neon, some edge light, yeah, it's pretty close to being halfway on the way. I don't actually move that line where those points should be in the middle of the line, so we're going to move that move over a couple of milk.

This sort of thing is pretty subliminal to be frank, but together it works very well. what I don't know how I'm going to do is cut that band saw I'm not going to be able to turn the pencils cleanly enough I'm not going to be able to turn the band saw I'm not going to be able to do that this is almost enough to be To be honest, thank you to see the construction of this kit. I'm trying to pick up a pretty guitar kitgeneric, although well done, and I am trying to make it phenomenal and, at the same time, entertain you and elucidate the epistemological law of the guitar.

The building is gigantic and enormous and I want to share all of that with you as much as humanly possible through dance. Come back to this video soon. Please like, subscribe and support our patreon because we need some liquid refreshment. That is what I want. I need now see you later, goodbye