Making a Cardboard Electric Guitar That Actually Works! ( No Expensive Material Needed )

When I was younger I always longed for a guitar, I tried to make some cardboard full sized ones with steel strings... that didn't end well. But fairly recently I found a better way and you can also make the electrical components at home, its easy as PIE! Basicly you need a guitar template ( link: http://www.guitarplansunlimited.com/images/Body%20Design%20Images/Flying%20V%20BT-Model.jpg ) Print it, on 1 sheet of paper for a ukulele sized guitar, 4-6 sheets for a 3/4 size, 8-10 sheets ( depending on your printer ) for a full size guitar ( note the larger a guitar the more expensive and harder it will be ). Anyone should be able to make these its fun and easy once you get the hang of it.

All you need is:
Copper wire ( optional )
Magnet (optional)
Cardboard
Wooden/ metal/ plastic stick at least a foot long (Recommended)
Scissors
Skewers, aluminum, paper, or plastic, anything you can roll up into 2 millimeters thick ( used for frets and bridge )
Screws ( used for turning pegs, not necessary, but recommended for a wide verities of tones)
glue gun or tape ( good tape ) or any glue

Seems hard right? not really...

Step 1: Cutting Out the Guitar and the Hardware Cavities

So by now you should have the guitar cut out and should be cutting out the guitar and the places for the bridge and other misc stuff.
You should have 4 pieces of the guitar shape you want cut out. each one should look slightly different.

Step 2: Glueing Your Guitar Together and Cutting Out Neck Pockets

SLOW DOWN! DO NOT GLUE THE GUITAR TOGETHER YET! Decide how thick you want the neck. i decided my neck to be the thickness of 3 cardboard pieces. The neck pocket should be around 1 cm to 1 inch long. now we will start winding the pickup and glueing the pieces together in order. the pickup is optional, only if you want to slightly "electrify" it. Making the pickup will require some copper wire, cut a rectangle 1.5 inches ( width ) by 1.5 cm ( length ) this will be your pickup, ( cut two ) next info will be given in step 4

Step 3: Making the Pickups and Placing Them

You need to cut a plastic rectangle ( relative to the size of the guitar not to big not to small enough to fit in the guitar ) you will make this out of a plastic bottle, or cardboard ( thin ). You will also need copper wire, and a magnet.

Basically you need to coil the copper wire around the magnet attest 20 times to generate sound.

Step 4: Fitting Parts and Designing the Neck

So just test fit everything make sure your jack fits and then start drawing the neck

For the neck you need to cut 11 pieces ( varies ) of cardboard and them glue them together ( i will put pictures on what i mean in the next step ) you will basically be making ply-cardboard

Step 5: The Neck

As i said i would put pictures on the next step so here its at the bottom, it works nicely and you don't "need" a truss rod.

You might also want to glue the neck in place and for extra support add some screws

Step 6: Finishing Touches

Now that your neck is on and secure go ahead and make sure all your pickup wire is jumped up in the back of the notch me made.
put some screws on the head to tune the guitar ( if you don't have screws just glue them ) make the bridge by using a fairly "fat" piece of wood.

Step 7: Stringing the Guitar and Playing

almost done! we just need to string the guitar. you need a skewer or something sturdy and cut it according to the rectangle cut you made in the back of the guitar. Make 4-6 holes ( depending on how may strings you want ) over the rectangle you cut in the beginning.

After you cut the wood piece ( skewer ) tie 4-6 rubber bands and glue them on, then run them through the holes you made and tie them to the screws.

Step 8: Last But Not Least

Putting frets and tying the strings.

Frets are basically skewers or anything sturdy along the neck where you can press the string and the sound will change.

after you finish YOU HAVE A ELECTRIC GUITAR

Comments

[naturegirl2764]

Can I use a cardboard stick for the neck?

[bbvigfh]

You should try to make a full size! haha, check out my other instructable for a full size guitar.

[totusvoloestmei]

You can seriously actually play this? I don't know why I want to know as I've tried guitar twice already and I sucked, lol. This just looks fun and I'm curious about what it would sound like. Also, I don't suppose a piano version of this would work (only thing I know how to play and it's been forever). Or would it?

[bbvigfh]

Actually if you make the pickups with enough high output you could play it, i made mine very high output ( and i have several guitar pedals to amplify the signal further ). A piano sounds interesting, im not sure if it would work or how, i will look into the piano :D

[gothking85]

BRILLIANT!!! Question: do you think one could craft a BASS guitar?

[bbvigfh]

Yes, indeed you could, bass pickups are much easier as they dont require extremely strong magnets. Also you could make it to scale thanks for liking it :D