With all templates ready, I was set to start routing all pockets for the electronic components of my guitar. As detailed in my "Decide" post, the type and position of pickups in the guitar is mostly dependent on personal preference. The one thing I needed to get right was their horizontal alignment along the vertical axis on the body.
What you need
routing templates (pickups & control cavity)
router
narrow sillhouette routing bit
masking tape
double sided tape
clamps
consideration
Pickup cavity depths depend on the type of pickup used and the distance between body and strings. Once an electric guitar is assembled, you’ll want the distance between string and its pole piece to be about 2mm while the string is pressed down on the highest fret.
Generally, a 0.75” so roughly 20mm is a good starting point. The ears on a humbucker will have to be sunk in an additional 8mm. The good news is, a pickup’s height is generally adjustable once it sits in the pocket, so you don’t have to worry too much about going too deep.
Telecaster control cavities range from 1.5”-1.75” depth. More depth is really helpful for fitting the electronics in. After all, the space under a tele control plate is fairly tight. That said, one has to keep in mind the thickness of the body and the strength of the material it’s composed of. The body of my guitar comes in at a standard thickness of 1.75” (~44mm). To leave sufficient space to the backside of the guitar, I settled for 38mm of depth for the control cavity.
Execution
I fixed the guitar to my workbench using a wide plank of junk wood and some clamps. Then, I moved the outline into the planned position. As a result, the lower bounds of my P90 soapbar pickup would end up roughly 1.5cm above the bridge saddle. Similarly, the neck pickup can be moved up as close to the neck as possible. Meaning, the cavity should leave enough space to the neck socket, such that the Humbucker frame still fits with the neck installed.
Alignment
All my pickup templates had a vertical line drawn onto them which I aligned with the one sketched onto the body.
Fixation
Damage free fixation and removal of templates onto a guitar body is simply done by:
applying masking tape on body and template
putting double sided tape on top
sticking the template in place
If you find the above image is a bit out-of-context, it is sadly the only one I made for template fixation. Also, I can’t stress enough that drilling the string-through holes for my guitar was an embarassing fuckup. I guess continuously showing the impact of it here will help raise attention to it. Maybe that is why I started this page…
Using the right bit
Anyway, since I could not use a jigsaw to do a rough-cut first, my only choice was to route the cavities in multiple shallow passes. Remember, routers aren’t made to take out large chunks of wood. As you probably know by now, the bearing on the bit has to touch the template outline or else it cannot be guided by it. Taking all that into account, I needed a shorter router bit.
“Why not use a higher template?”, you might ask. That’s a hack! Just kidding. Actually, my router was not height adjustable enough to reach all the way down into the bottom of the control cavity. Additionally, a new bit could also be smaller in diameter. This would allow a tighter edge radius on the pockets, which is important to achieve a snug fit for the pickups. As you’ll see further down this post, especially the ‘ears’ on a humbucker cavity require a small radius on your router bit.
I asked my template supplier, Andreas, at Deutsches Tonholz for advice. He suggested a 10mm diameter silhouette routing bit with a cut length of 13mm, which I ordered at Rall Guitars & Tools. Coming in at ~40€, this bit cost about as much as the set I initially picked up at my local hardware store. But it is absolutely worth spending the extra coin. Plus, at this point I had already had so much fun, I was sure this wouldn’t be the last instrument I’d work on. With all the measurements locked in, all I had to do was route. So here we go…
Not only, did the woodgrain of the pickup cavities look beautiful, but I also precisely ended up at the horizontal deck slices covering the bottom of the control cavity. Nice! At the same time I was a bit bummed out by looking at these pockets. Because eventually all of this would be covered by pickups, electronics and hardware. A small price to pay, I guess.
I still had a bunch of skate dust left to bear witness of the process. I wanted to snowboard down a hill covered in them. Does that make me a skate guitar nerd? Maybe. Does it make you want some of it? I hope so.
