Swisher Guitars

Luthier Michael Swisher / Handcrafted quality instruments / San Tan Valley AZ USA / https://swisherguitars.com

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Assembly

This is the assembly stage of the build, where all the pieces finally start coming together. This is the first one of this model I’m calling a Desert Banshee, so it’s pretty exciting to see the design go from an idea to an actual finished instrument.

As usual I’m using Hipshot tuners and bridge on this one, and there are just a couple of things left to do before it’s ready to go, mainly making the nut and doing the final setup.

Once it’s completely finished, though, it will be available for sale on my website. More to come as this one gets closer to the finish line.

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Wax Potting Pickups

Wax potting is the process of dunking guitar pickups in wax, to eliminate or reduce unwanted microphonic squealing and feedback. It also protects the coils, magnets, and other parts.

I’m giving this single coil and humbucker pickup set a wax bath in a solution of 70/30 mix of paraffin and beeswax. The wax is kept in a canning jar and heated using an old crockpot on the low setting. Once the wax is melted I’ll dip them in for 10 minutes each to make sure the wax coats all the coils. The low setting keeps the wax at around 150 degrees.

After 10 minutes or when the bubbles stop forming in the wax, I pull them out and wipe them off.

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Attaching Leads – Assembling Pickups

Once the bobbins are wound, it’s time to assemble the pickups. The single coil is easy, I just have to attach two leads, and make sure I get a reading in ohms.

The humbucker has more parts, and in this video I’m attaching leads, adding the slugs needed for one bobbin and the screws for the other side. I tap the screw side with a 5-40 tap to make it easier to thread those screws in the bobbin. I also use a 4 conductor wire on this one and solder the ground to the frame. The wood spacer as added underneath the slug side and it’s attached to the frame. Then the keeper bar is added to the screw side bobbin and it’s attached to the frame. I slide the magnet in the area between the two bobbins (and ALNICO 5 in this case) making sure the south side is towards the screw side.

Then the leads are attached to the 4 conductor wire and the ends are pushed in the small area under the bobbins and in front of the magnet. I run a layer of tape over the sides to keep everything in place and provide further protection for the coils.

Finally I take a reading on the multi-meter, I was going for about 13.5k so close enough.

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Buffing Around the Horns

As I’ve mentioned many times, I don’t polish the inside horn areas of a guitar using my buffing wheels. I don’t like the close proximity of the longer horns to the moving arbor shaft when buffing this area, so I use these foam buffing cones and some polish to tackle this area.

Mush like my process with the buffing wheels, I have a 2 pass approach to this with a cutting compound and a polishing compound. I use Griot’s Garage complete compound as a cutting paste to take care of any of the deeper scratches first. After letting the body cool for a few minutes I wipe it down and then go over it with Griot’s Garage best of show wax. This is the final polish that gets this area shining close to the rest of the guitar.

The cones are available on Amazon. Search “Conical Buffing Cones”. The polish and cutting compound are also available on Amazon, but you can also pick them up at your local auto parts store as well.

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Buffing/Polishing a Guitar Body

Took me a while to get this body finished and prepped, it’s been very hot here lately and I’ve been inundated with repairs. So this body is finished in Huron Green and I’ve sanded and prepped it with Eagle Abrasives Super Assilex and Bufflex sheets.

I always take a buffing rake to the wheels before and after to keep the wheels clean. I also stand there with a pair of scissors and trim the long ends as best I can, but the strands easily shake loose during the buffing.

My buffing machine has two wheels and I use one side for cutting/pre polish to get any of the deeper scratches before moving on to the polishing wheel. I use Menzerna P204 medium cut paste on this wheel and I go over this wheel twice with the body making sure to let the body rest for about 30 minutes in between passes.

On the polishing wheel I use Menzerna P175 super fine compound and I only need one pass on this wheel. Again I’ll let it rest for about 30 minutes to cool down before wiping it down and getting all the compound dust off. I’d like to thank my neighbor for parking their car in the right spot to capture the shine.

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Winding Pickup Bobbins

Today I’m winding a couple of humbucker bobbins and one single coil bobbin. I’m putting 6500 winds of AWG43 wire on the humbuckers and 6800 winds on the single coil bobbin.

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Polishing Frets

With all the leveling crowing and dressing of the frets done, It’s now time to polish them up and give them some shine. I do this with a Dremel using a small polishing wheel and some general purpose brown polish. I get both the wheels and polish tube from Harbor Freight.

I charge the wheel by adding a little polish to it, and I find that I have to do this about every 2 frets. I go over each fret back and forth keeping things moving making sure not to heat the frets up too much.

Once I go over each fret, I can remove the tape and show off the shine.

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Leveling, Crowning and Dressing

All of this is tedious work, but the key to great fretwork is putting in the prep-work and time to get it right. I tape off everything leaving the frets exposed, making sure to protect the fretboard. Then I mark all the tops of the frets with a sharpie and level the frets with a flat block. The flat block has 400 grit sandpaper attached to it and I run it over the frets till all of the sharpie marks are gone.

At this point I re-mark the tops of the frets with the sharpie, and grab my Z-File crowning file and go over each fret to give it the thin crowned edge on top. Once I’ve completed the file work, I begin sanding each fret to smooth out the file marks. I’ll go over these three times, using 220, 320 and 800 grit sandpaper. I check the frets with a fret rocker throughout this process making sure I still have everything level.

Finally I knock any burrs off the edges with a fine fret end file. These frets are now ready for polishing.

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Decal Time

I make my own decals, I just design them in Inkscape and print them off on waterslide decal paper that you can get on Amazon. I will print these off on a whole sheet, and I’m usually able to get about 30 or so at one time. I’ll cut them out as needed. Since I have an inkjet printer it’s necessary to give them a few coats of polyurethane before I use them, to keep the ink from running. If you can print them on a laser printer, you’re good to go without a coating.

I’ve got a few coats of water based polyurethane on this new, and I’ve sanded the surface flat. After this decal dries overnight, I’ll add a few more coats to bury it and I’ll sand the finish flat.

Before you ask, No I do not provide the service of making other folks decals.

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Slamming in Some Frets

As with most things, the key to a good fret job is good prep work. After adding a radius to the fret wire, I cut each fret to size, leaving just a little bit of overhang on each side. Even though there is not a binding on this guitar, I undercut the tangs on each side of the fret. This leaves a little room to fill the gap in each fret slot on the end for a cleaner look.

I do lay down a bead of wood glue in each slot before pressing them in. This is not to hold the frets in place, but more to fill gaps in the slots. About every 6 frets I bend the edges with a few light taps and cut the ends close to the fretboard. I find that bending the frets like this helps them to hug the edge of the fretboard.

Once all the frets are in and trimmed, I file the edges down flat with the fretboard. I hold this file between my fingers resting the finger tips on the neck. This way I can keep the file off the wood a bit and avoid damaging the fretboard. Lastly I use my bevel file, which is just a file lodged into a 35 degree slot in a section of 2x4, and bevel the edges.

Next up is to fill the fret end gaps, and add finish to this neck, then I’ll level crown and dress the frets.

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Creating Heel and Headstock Transitions

This is another task I love doing and my tool of choice for this is a 4 in 1 rasp. I draw some lines at the heel that match the curve around the neck pocket and just start shaping with the course rounded edge of the rasp. Once the basic shape is obtained, I flip the rasp and use the smoother rounded edge to blend everything together. This goes pretty quickly as the rasp removes a lot of material. I also use a finer rounded file to further smooth everything out before moving to sandpaper.

At the headstock end I draw some curved lines that start from the edges and meet in the middle somewhere between the nut and the 1st fret.

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Carving a Neck

This is one of my favorite things about guitar building. I really enjoy shaping a neck by hand, and the Shinto saw rasp is my go to tool to get this done (and I know many use this too). I use the facet method, creating two facets along the sides of the neck and then thinning down the back creating a third facet. I like to shave the back to about .860 at the first fret and .900 at the twelfth fret.

I use straight edges to make sure I have everything even. Any gaps like the one shown here I can work the surface to flatten it out. Once the facets are in place, I blend everything together generally using the smoother side of the Shinto saw rasp. Eventually I move to a smoother file to remove the harsher tool marks of the Shinto. I use a contour gauge to check the shape at various points on the neck.

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All the Little Things

Before sanding this body down and prepping it for finish, I’m taking care of all the small details. I’m drilling the hole for the jack plate, bridge ground and wire routes from the pickups to the cavity. I drill the wire route from the neck pickup to the bridge pickup straight through the neck pocket. I use the small piece of brown board to help protect the edge of the pickup cavity. I drill the holes for the strap buttons and finally add a ¼” round over to the body. Now this body is ready for final sanding and finish.

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Final Cavity Cover Attachment

Using my original template guide, I mark the holes for the cover then drill the holes through and chamfer them.

Then placing the cover into the body, I mark the same holes across the control cavity. Then back to the drill press to drill the holes just deep enough so the screws will hold. Lastly I’m just test fitting everything to make sure it all fits.

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Making a Control Cavity Cover

Using the same template I used on the body, and my router inlay bushing set, I attach it to the piece of alder I’ll used for the cover. This time I am using double sided tape. Routing the cover is different than the control cavity section, as the bushing must be held against the template at all times. It takes a bit of practice, and I’m not going to lie, this took a few tries to get it right. I added a small island piece to the center of the cover for support across the template.

Once I routed deep enough, I remove the template and cut the cover out with the band saw. I made it about 3/8” deep. I’ll be sanding it down to about ¼” using the drum sander. Once the depth is close I fit it into the cavity and sanded it flush with the body. It was a very tight fit, so as I do with all cavity covers, I added a bevel around the edge. It took a little sanding around the edge to make sure it wasn’t too tight of a fit. Over all this method took longer than my normal sand to a line method, but there’s no rush and I think it looks pretty good.

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Routing the Control Cavity

I made a whole new set of control cavity templates for this guitar as I wanted it to be slightly smaller than the cavities I have made in the past. I also wanted to make the cover with a router inlay kit for a better fit. With the templates complete, I layout the controls and drill the holes for the pots and switch all the way through the body. This just helps me with the layout on the back of the body.

Flipping the body over, I can trace out the template and hog out a good chunk of material with forstner bits. Then I attach the template to the back of the guitar, again using the CA glue and tape method and route out the cavity clean leaving a little over ¼” thickness at the bottom of the cavity.

This part was new for me. I’m using an inlay kit to create the cover route and ultimately the cover hoping for a little cleaner looking fit. Previously I had a template for the cover route and would just craft the cover by hand. An inlay kit has a router bushing guide and a removable bearing that allows you to use the same template to route cavity and cover for a very accurate fit. I got the kit on Amazon if you’re interested in checking that out search “router inlay kit”. The router bit hit the side of the cavity at some point when I was lifting it out of the template. I had already planned on adding a recessed notch to make it easier to remove the cover, so I used a Dremel and added the recess. In the next video I’ll show how I hade the cover.

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Routing Pickup Cavities With the bridge in place, I position the pickup cavities and hog out some of the material with a forstner bit in an effort to ease some of the wear and tear on my router bits. Then I attach the templates and route the pickup cavities to depth.

As mentioned in many past videos I’m attaching these templates using masking tape and CA glue, it gives me a few seconds to get the template positioned just right before the glue sets.