"The Gliding P" Electric Guitar

Please consider reading the whole thing as there's quite a bit of information condensed

Preamble

I was inspired by the “Prusacaster” designed by Mikolas Zuza (Link HERE for those interested). I wanted to try my hand at engineering my own guitar. I had my own goals in mind, I wanted something that

• Has a unique design
• Is high quality
• Modifiable
• Uses through body strings

I'm not sure if I hit all of those bullet points but I think I made a darn good attempt.

The Neck

Most of the parts I used (neck included) came from a StewMac Tele guitar kit I bought online. As far as cheap necks go I think its more than good enough and fits nicely in the body. I have, however, tested other necks (specifically a Guitar Fetish XGP Premium Neck) and that fit in with no modification needed.

The neck fits nicely in the body, a shim was needed to get the right string height however.

The Core

Since the strings (I chose 10s) put a lot of bending stress on the body I have to use stiff material. I chose to use carbon fiber PLA because it should be slightly more stiff than garden variety PLA and should be just as easy to print provided you have a hardened nozzle. 

Any material that has a high bending modulus should work however PLA is honestly the highest of normal filament you probably have.

I modeled in two quarter inch holes that should fit 9 inch long steel rods. I was hoping along with the 7 perimeters and the rods that stiffness would be satisfactory, along with distributing the weight better.

Two steel rods are hammered into place to provide maximum rigidity.

It doesn't look like it will fit on the build plate but trust me it does.

I used organic supports in Prusa Slicer pretty much everywhere but the holes for the threaded inserts. I am sure you could get away with less but I did not want to risk it.

With organic supports the core should look like this. Keep in mind this is quite an awkward part to print so feel free to use more support as you see fit.

I used 7 perimeters and an infil of 25% gyroid.

I thought it would be cool if I had a through-body string design mostly because i think its neat. I am not sure if this adds more or less stress on the core but it hasn't warped it at all so far.

You can also see how the guitars bridge connects to the core with 10-24 bolts going into hex nuts pressed into the cores surface.

Make sure to have long enough screws (flathead type) to go through the body.

All over the core i put in holes so you can install M4 threaded inserts to secure the pick-guard and the various body pieces though I'd prefer to secure everything together with glue as I wasn't quite satisfied with the rigidity of just screws.

There are specific spots for a strap to be screwed in on the core and body pieces, they are mirrored onto each side so if you want it left-handed it is already capable.

Battery (IMPORTANT)

I designed this guitar with active guitar pickups in mind. If you choose to use active pickups make sure when you put the battery in to wrap some ribbon around it so you can pull the battery out when you need to change it otherwise it will be quite a pain to remove.

Battery compartment shown left with red ribbon for easier removal.

The Pick-guard

Since EMG pickups are very expensive and I do not expect everyone to use them I made it so the guitar pickups mount directly to the pick-guard to make it easier to modify if you want to use other pickup styles. EMG pickups should be drop in if you use the pickup bracket model I designed.

The pickup brackets shown above and pick-guard shown to the left, no supports needed.

Fair warning with the pick-guard is you're going to need a low profile 3 way toggle switch as normal ones are too deep for the body. EMG makes some maybe some other vendors make them.

The three way toggle switch in question, shown on the right.

Shown below is the guitar knobs I used, they are included in the models and I printed them using fuzzy skin.

The Body Pieces

The pieces of the body should be the least problematic parts to print. I printed them in the carbon fiber PLA just because i was too lazy to change filament but a better choice would be to print them in something like PETG or some other material that has better impact resistance.

In quite a few spots on these body pieces there are holes with the idea you would use M3 screws and nuts to affix everything together however in testing I was not satisfied with how it felt strength and stiffness-wise so i just used glue which fared way better.

The upper leg of the guitar has a clip that I thought would hold a guitar pick but it was far too stiff to fit the thicker pick I had. Maybe it will work with thinner picks so I decided not to remove it from the model. 

Mentioned towards the beginning I needed to use a shim to get the neck to the right height height for the strings to be closer to the neck. I printed a shim and it seemed to work alright, instead of changing the model of the core I'm just going to include the shim for you to print yourself. You will probably need it.

Misc Information (IMPORTANT)

You are going to need a well tuned machine as there's a lot of tight-ish tolerances

I used 58x and HAX EMG pickups but I'm pretty sure any EMG pickup will work in this guitar as they all should have the same hole spread. Just make sure that you either have two active pickups or two passive pickups. If you choose to use passive pickups there is a hole near the bridge for you to pass a wire through as a grounding wire to ground on the bridge.

You must make sure whatever three way switch you choose to use will be short enough to not bottom out in the pocket, EMG sells a low profile three way switch which is what I used but other manufacturers may sell similar ones. The EMG B289 model number should work however.

You will have to extend some wires, specifically the wires connecting the output jack to the tone knob as it is too short stock so you will have to have basic soldering skills.

You will need quite a lot of M3 threaded inserts 

The body pieces are drawn to have holes for securing them together with screws and nuts, I didn't quite like the way they went together like that so I glued them together.

For gluing the body pieces together I used gel type Gorilla Glue, if I were to do it again I think I would use 2 part epoxy and clamp the life out of it because that should have a stronger connection.

The End.

I think that should be everything. If you have any questions I can probably answer them.

If you want something changed feel free to remix and make changes how you see fit, i tried to make it easy to modify so hopefully it gives you little trouble.