JPF Home Page Forums Creative Arts Forums Visual Arts and Photography Forum Building an electric sitar

I wet-sanded the body, used rubbing compound and bowling alley wax and got a shiny finish on the body. But I didn't like it. I liked how it looked with the matte finish. That just seemed classier for this project, so I got the steel wool back out, and rubbed it down to an even matte finish. Usually, I like a nice gloss finish, but this project just cried out for a flat finish.
Here's the top:


And here's the back:


Installing the 6 pins for the sympathetic neck strings:


All pins installed:


The old plexiglass former refrigerator front turned pickguard had a slew of scratches. Tried my best to buff and hand rub them out, but there's some that are so deep, it's probably impossible. The buffing made the edges look really nice though.


I flipped it over and added shielding. This is another thing I pulled from the dumpster years ago when I worked at ENSONIQ. This was the shielding that went into the bottom of the keyboards (possibly the VFX or Mirage). At some point, the keyboard was retooled and redesigned, so all of the old shielding was just tossed. I have rolls of this that will last more than my lifetime. I was able to position this so that the existing holes (from the keyboard layout) would overlap pickup cutouts.


Then I used the exacto blade to cut it to size. Pickguard shielding complete.


I mounted the pickups to the pickguard, and did a test fit to the body. NICE - no additional routing needed. However, the wires for the tube pickup would be too short to reach to the electronics cavity, so I soldered extensions onto it.


When I was away, I was able to get a pack of scroll saw blades. However, the store only had one type of blade and only one set left and it was not for cutting metal. The pack had 4 blades. That is why I purposely cut the holes for the pickups first. I figured I would end up wearing these out and breaking them as I cut through the brass. I lost three blades in the process, but was able to cut all six saddles needed. Now it's a matter of filing edges and shaping them.


I've decided to make 6 brass "inserts" that sit upon the existing saddles. This still allows me to adjust the height of each one with the set screws and set the intonation correctly for each string.

Here are the inserts with the edges smoothed, and ends bent up.


Then, I set the bridges on a scrap wood block in the vice and cut string guide slots in each one.
[img]http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/rockndrtom/stringslots.jpg[/img]

That's all for now... more to come later today.