Camilo

My first guitar build (sustainer system, 1:3 bridge relationship).

I’ve been doodling guitar body designs in the margins of notebooks since sophomore year. I made one of my best friends that way! For years I had wanted to build a Jazzmaster, but as time went on, that idea felt less and less special, and I was more and more confident that I could figure out something more ambitious. Taking inspiration from a number of sources including some Sonic Youth custom builds and the Moog Guitar, I wanted to make something that had a deeply unusual approach, but could still be played traditionally if needed.

Body was cut with a jigsaw (in the middle of winter on a saw horse in the back yard of our apartment building) from a walnut blank I bought on eBay. I cheated with the neck and bought it via Warmoth, but I DEFINITELY didn’t have the tooling at the time, so gimmie a break. I DID drill the holes for the tuners and finish it though. My router blew while I was working on the body, so the pick-up cavities were carved with a knife given to me by the same friend I made drawing guitars with in high school.

The electronics

The electronics are based around a Sustainiac system with a good single coil and a mini humbucker in the other positions. I REALLY wanted to build something that emulated the Moog Guitar’s design that (much like an EBow) used induction to drive strings, but this was at the very start of my electronics journey and I didn’t know what I was doing yet. Thankfully Paul Vo (designer of the Moog Guitar) was very kind and hopped on a call with me to talk translocated drivers and other neat concepts.

Behind the bridge, there is a 1:3 ratio of string length so you can (in theory) get some very cool matching harmonics from any open string.

This was a great learning experience, and it came out pretty cool looking! Pick-guard is an old scrap piece of linoleum that Erin gave me (it works remarkably well as a pick-guard material!)

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