Re-shaping an Electric Guitar Pickguard - Luthier Tips du Jour Mailbag
In this episode, Robbie O’Brien reshapes an electric guitar pickguard on a Strat.
Video Transcription
[on-screen text reads: Luthier Tips du Jour Mailbag]
Mailbag question: I'm making a new pickguard and I'm concerned about how to shape it. Do you have any suggestions?
Robert O'Brien: Today's Tips du Jour Mailbag question comes to us from California. "Robert, I want to make a new pickguard for my electric guitar. I'm concerned about how to shape it. Do you have any suggestions?" Adam in California.
Adam, most pickguard material is either wood, plastic or metal, and they're usually very thin and can be shaped or worked with normal woodworking tools. Now, on acoustic guitars, that's fairly easy because there's no hardware in the way. However, on electric guitars, we have a problem, especially if the pickups and some of the hardware is mounted into the actual pickguard, and I've got a perfect example of that on my bench. Let's go over and have a look.
How to shape a pickguard for an electric guitar
So Adam, here's a very beautiful Strat that came into my shop and it's made out of a spalted maple on the top here, laminated to what appears to be an alder type body. It's absolutely gorgeous. The owner brought it in and said, "Look, what a shame. This is almost a crime to hide all of that beautiful wood under that pickguard. Can you make my pickguard smaller?" So that's what we're going to attempt to do.
Now on the Fender Strat, all of the hardware is mounted into the pickguard. The first thing I did was lift up the corner here and make sure that the finish was as good under the pickguard as it is outside of the pickguard. And that is the case. It doesn't make a lot of sense to mask off that area when you're doing your finish work. Just spray the whole thing, buff, the whole thing. So underneath the pickguard, yes indeed, there is a very nice high gloss finish under there.
Remove the pickguard
What I have to do now is remove the pickguard, remove the hardware, reshape the pickguard so it's smaller, so we expose more of this beautiful wood here, and then put everything back together. Keep your fingers crossed, strap yourself in. Here we go.
[Hard and fast electric guitar music]
[Robert removes the pickguard from the guitar]
Make a template and cut new shape
So now that the pickguard is off, we have to make a template of the new profile that we want for this guitar. As you can see, underneath that, there's some beautiful spalted maple that the owner would really like to make that visible as much as possible.
[Robert uses a pencil to trace cutting lines on the pickguard. He then applies a sheet of plastic over the top of the pickguard on the side where he traced the lines. He then uses a black marker to trace the cutting lines. He cuts out a wood template, screws the pickguard to the template, then uses that to cut the new pickguard shape]
Install the new pickguard
So here's the new shape of the pickguard. It's going to go on right like that, and as you can see it exposed a lot more of this beautiful spalted maple. All I have to do now is put it back together.
[Robert installs the new pickguard and all hardware]
So here it is, all put back together. All I need to do now is put the strings on and it can go back on stage.
[on-screen text reads: More Luthier Tips and online courses available at www.obrienguitars.com. Private and small group guitar building and finishing instruction available.]
