Thursday, December 23, 2010

ELECTRIC GUITAR PROJECT part 23

Step 23 of my guitar project:

I've got another decision to make. I need to choose between 2 kinds of jack plates. Visually the flat circular jack plate is nicest. For usability though, the angled plate is way better. The flat plate would shoot the wire straight up in the way of my hand while I tried to play it. The angled plate kicks it down and out. Lots of guitars have the jack plates in the edge of the guitar but since this body has such a deep shape I don't have enough room to do that.

Another problem: The angled plate is too big for the space it would need to fit into. It bumps the pickup plate and still hangs over the break of the body's shape.

A possible solution would be to turn the jack plate backwards and upside down. Then I'd have a convex plate rather than concave. Then the extra length of the plate wouldn't be needed and could be cut off.

This is what it would look like with the flat circular plate.

And here's how the angled plate looks.

And here's a digital simulation of what it would look like after I removed some of the metal and rebored it.

It's a weird nontraditional way of doing it, but the idea is starting to grow on me. Alternatively I could stick the jack plate in the back of the body but then the wire would always be in the way of my ever-growing gut.

7 comments:

  1. what about the angled plate but facing parallel to the neck? so everything's lined up like a car...

    you could also buy a 90degree cord for the round plate

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  2. You are right. With all the horizontalness of the laminated wood it does need to be going the same direction.

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  3. I vote circular plate - the guitar has such a classic look to me; plus the angled plate, at any angle, looks too dominant on the top of the body - it sort of clutters up the nice, roundish look.

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  4. I like the looks of the simple circle too. It frustrates me though because of the way it points the wire into my strum hand. This guitar body is pretty small so it seems cluttered no matter what I do. I turned the angled plate horizontally to match the laminated stripes and it looks less overpowering that way.

    Thanks Mykal, for the visit and comment

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  5. could you make the jack part of the back strap-lok?

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  6. KW: Ooooh, that strum hand obstruction is a real consideration. Can't have that, you're right. That would be a never ending annoyance. Too bad you can't drill into the body and hook it up on the edge of the guitar like a Les Paul (probably isn't thick enough).

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  7. I reeeeaaally wanted to put it in the edge, but that shape routed around the edge ate into my work space. Next time I need to add about 1/2" of thickness to the body if I want to put in such a deep shape.

    As it is now I have 1" of thickness in the edge of the body, and the jack requires a 1" diameter hole.

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