FretFind2D is a two dimensional fretboard design tool. FretFind2D doesn’t just calculate fret spacing. It models the entire fretboard, strings and frets, as a system of line segments on a two dimensional plane, ready to download and print.
For normal Guitars the simple options are totally enough. If you want to work with multiple scale lengths and non-parallel frets, turn on the extended mode.
All these ideas and concepts are applying for everything between ukulele and guitar. Partly even for violins. So this collection covers many more string instruments than just guitars.
We will walk over all parts of the guitar. Beginning from the head and ending with the body. For every part you will find a collection of different options. Some are easier to build, some others sound better. Some are realizable just by collecting the right trashes, some others require some shopping. None of them aims to guide you to a high-end instrument, as you can buy them from professional luthiers (guitar builders). But you should get a well playable, self-made instrument with a very individual style.
If you never build an instrument before, get a good overview about the options, gather informations and then just try it out. Don’t stress too much about details in the beginning.
Still, this website offers inspiration and possibilities, but is not a simple step-by-step instruction. So for a first instrument, better watch some video tutorials to get an idea, and then figure out your favourite way, with the help of the collection of this website.
Like a 5-string guitar with a capo at the 5th fret. So you can play it like a Ukulele, but with a deeper sound.
The body is out of an old aluminium bowl, the neck from a single big piece of beech (was the only available wood). Thanks to string based frets and tuners out of wire, it was an easy and cheap projects.
The guitar head gives a lot of space for creativity. Depending on the tuning pegs, the tools available and your own preferences, there are various design options. But before creating crazy head forms, here are some things to consider:
Head and neck are made from one and the same piece of wood.
Head and neck are made again from one and the same piece of wood, but in this case, the tuners come in from the side.
Good old tenon connection… With this you can achieve the classical angled head style look, even do I never saw this used in any ‚professional‘ guitar.
Aesthetic, light, and simple head form for wire direct mechanics.
Tuners are responsible for adjusting the tension of the strings.
When you want to do a more „professional“ guitar and your main focus is not to make everything yourself and 100% no-budget, than I actually would recommend buying them. It’s definitely more relaxed to tune your instrument with them. Still, they are maybe even not the most simple solution, when it comes to the installation, because you need to work a bit more precise when drilling the holes.
Good old classical. You can make them completely yourself out of hard wood. It is possible to make them just with a saw and some sanding, but to make them properly and well tunable, special tools (something like a huge pencil sharpener) are needed.
The tuner gets slightly thinner, at the end. Like this, it will not get loos, even if it gets turned lot in the hole.
Fence wire, clothes horse… useful wire is always around. Two/ three millimeters is a nice diameter. Thicker is mostly hard to bend, thinner gets a bit weak or doesn’t hold well in the wood anymore.
This is by far the most common concept. Hard wood, bones, aluminium or other metal – as long as the material is hard, it will do its job.
The advantage of using a 0 fret, is that you don’t need to worry about the depth, when you saw the gaps for the strings. That’s because the (free swinging) strings will basically start from the 0 fret and not from the nut any more.
Imagine making a nut, but then glue it upside down… Sounds weird, but the reason is simple: when you make neck and head straight, there might be the problem, that the strings will not be pulled down enough to the nut. So the nut takes this responsibility itself and pulls the strings down to the 0 fret.
The classical neck, glued in the first few centimetres of the body top.
This neck doesn’t stop in the body, but goes through it until you can attach it on the bottom of the body.
The fretboard is a ~5mm – 10mm thick wooden plate, which is glued to the neck. To calculate the position of the frets on the fretboard you can use this fretcalculator:
In this case, there are no frets at all. You either need to press the strings precisely on the right position, like it’s done on for example a violin, or you use a bottleneck and an open tuning to have an American styled slide guitar.
This is the standard for all guitars & ukuleles. Fret wire has a T-shape so, you just need to saw a thin line on the fret board and press the fret wire in. That’s it. Even glue is optional.
As professional fret wire is not the cheapest of all options, the thought is coming up, why not using nails or wire.
Well, it’s possible, but…
This style is widely used in Turkish/ Arabic/ … instruments. But it’s generally a good concept also for guitars & ukes.
Fishing line or nylon string or similar plastic strings are working well. Important is, that the material is as hard as possible. So don’t take wool. 😉
0,4mm – 0,5mm is a good thickness
~1mm cable ties are probably the easiest option for making frets.
Alright. Let’s jump to this wide topic. It’s important to think from the beginning about what kind of strings do you want, because many things, like the stability of body and neck or the attachment of the strings, are changing with this decision.
And one more tip right before we go into details: Strings are one of the easiest way to improve the sound (also afterwards). If you started with random nylon, a change to professional strings will be drastically remarkable. So if you are not going for full no-budget solutions, consider good strings, even for instruments out of trash.
What to consider, when using metal strings?
I would say, those are fine for real no-budget trash instruments. I did some Ukes with fishing line, and it’s kind of working. For guitars, you will run in to difficulties finding thick nylon for the lower strings, which are normally wrapped with wire.
Too thin string for a lower note will leave the string with too less tension to sound well. Too thick string for a higher note will just rip the string somewhere
This is the distance between nut and bridge. More precisely, it’s the length of the free swinging strings.
The measurements below are standards, and you can buy strings for exactly these lengths. Still, you don’t need to stick 100% on these numbers. Making it a little longer will make the strings tighter with a higher risk of breaking. Shortening will reduce the tension, but the sound becomes quieter.
Ukuleles | Scale length | Standart Tuning |
|---|---|---|
| Sopranino | 28 | G C E A |
| Soprano | 35 | G C E A |
| Concert | 38 | G C E A |
| Tenor | 43 | G C E A |
| Guitarlele | 45 | A D G C E A |
| Baritone | 51 | D G B E |
| Guitar Uke | 56 | G C E A |
G C E A is the standard tuning of Ukuleles. This is the same as the 4 higher strings on the fifth fret of a guitar. So you can actually play Uke chords on a guitar as well. From Sopranino till Tenor Uke the tuning is exactly the same. The baritone ukulele is an exception. It is 5 semitones lower and therefore corresponds exactly to the lower four strings of the guitar (only an octave higher).
The guitar ukulele is exactly one octave lower than the standard ukulele. To make this possible, E A D and G strings of a normal guitar string set are used and retuned to G C E A. In order to avoid the string tension becoming too high, the scale length has to be shortened to approx. 53 – 56 cm compared to a normal guitar. Either the high or the low E string of the guitar string set can be used.
Guitars | Scale length | Standart Tuning |
|---|---|---|
| Guitar (steel strings) | 61 | E A D G B E |
| Guitar 4/4 (nylon strings) This is the standart full size | 65 | E A D G B E |
| Guitar 7/8 | 63 | |
| Guitar 3/4 | 58 | |
| Guitar 1/2 | 53 | |
| Guitar 1/4 | 48 | |
| Guitar 1/8 | 44 | |
| Mandoline | G D A E |
Instruments | Scale length | Standart Tuning |
|---|---|---|
| Banjo | 58 – 81 | E A D G B E |
| Mandoline | 33 – 35 | G D A E |
Even if guitars have mostly 6 and ukuleles 4 strings, there is no reason to feel limited to this. For example, for an ordinary guitar strummer, it can be quite nice to just make a 5-string guitar and kick the deepest string. For many chords, you are anyway not allowed to use it.
| Standart guitar | E – A – D – G – B – E |
| Standart ukulele | G – C – E – A |
| Open G (for playing with a bottleneck) | D – G – D – G – B – D |
The bridge holds and guides the strings on the body’s top. While building your bridge, keep following things in mind:
The strings are hold by a separate string holder, which is attached at the end of the body. The strings are leaded the over the bridge, which is placed on the body.
This method is required for banjo like bodies (when you pull the strings over a „drum“), but works in almost all cases fine.
This bridge type is directly glued (and maybe reinforced by small screws) on the bodies surface.
The sound resonates in the body.
What to take care of, when planning your body:
Metal fuel tanks are mostly available in 5l, 10l & 20l on the junkyard, in grandparent’s garage or in the regional classifieds. They are rigid enough, to support both: a going through neck and „standard“ neck.
Yes, it is possible to make a guitar body out of paper, just by sticking many little scraps of paper together. It’s possible to have a wooden plate on the back or have a nice rounded full paper shape.
The top surface of the body stays anyway paper, so you will have a good sound.
