The Guitar and the Chop Saw: Danger!

 Ok, maybe not Danger, but certainly Risk.      ...and maybe two guitars... but who's counting?

First part originally posted 2023, updates through 2025.

Plunking (plucking?) along for years now, and all the instruments here, at least ones that get used, are all tuned in 5ths. Five semitones between each string. They may have 4 strings, or 5 or even 8, but the interval between is the same. In various starting (lowest note) configurations. C, G, D, whatever. Even F# that one time, but we're not getting into -that- mess.

Yeah kinda like this only older.

Way back in that time we got an electric guitar, of the 'mini' variety. Thought that would be easier to play and I guess it probably was, except nobody here bothered to learn to play guitar. Guitars mostly have this nonsensical wonky tuning of all fourths but with one third (closer interval) tossed in the middle. You basically have to memorize instead of using your brain. Guess there's a market for that. ;-)
It was an eBay cheapo, one pickup dead, bent tuner, a little rust; $50, so what the heck. ...And dust collection ensued.

Fast forward to a blues band startup where having an electric guitar 'lead' (ie: non rhythm) player might be nice, and here's a spare electric guitar sitting in the closet. Still the problem of not knowing how to play guitar (OK, can do six or seven chords, but that does not a guitar player make, unless it's a punk band) so we still have the problem ... hey wait, what if it was tuned in fifths, like the Bouzouki I've been playing for years?

A quick trip to the online string tension calculator and yeah, if the top 'E' string stayed the same, hey it's already as thin as you could want, and then work out string thicknesses and tensions as you go down. This could work! Couldn't fit a fifth string into the calculations. Either tuned higher than 'E' and break frequently, or be so thick as to be unplayable on the bottom end.
Did a test fly, moving the four strings closest to the right diameter ('gauge') into the middle four slots and tuned it up and, huh, not half bad. Went out to StringJoy and ordered up a custom string set (11-38 if you must know) but testing was all weird because the fingerboard is way too wide for just the four strings.

Too wide? No problem. We own a chopsaw. Ya know, for construction.
Not for wimpy little wooden instruments. Cue luthiers (fine instrument makers) running away screaming.
But hey, it works. Take off the neck, screw it to a jig you made from scrap 2x6 and a couple precision cuts* later you're sort of in business. The flare, where it gets wider going into the body wasn't well thought out and looks seriously janky. Most people don't notice, which tells you things about them. 
You can also see the first two cuts on the headstock. Hey, only four tuners, and we didn't want this masterpiece looking like some stock Fender, right?

*well OK, mistakes were made, it came out 1/16th inch too narrow on both sides, well, and the errors near the body joint, and a little splintering that had to be sanded out, and the headstock got cut 1/8" too short. But hey it's an experiment on a fifty dollar 'instrument', where's the downside?

There was sanding. Lots of sanding, and file-ing the newly and sharply cut fret ends. and maybe a little refinish work.

The dead pickup got removed and replaced with a 'Hot Rails' that was designed to go in the neck position of a Telecaster, got for $10 long ago and sitting in the parts box since then. It was supposed to go in a mandolin project that didn't pan out.
I also had a set of individual piezo pickups (GraphTech) that I got from someone because one of the six was dead. ...but I'm only using four. :-)

Yes it's dirty, and yes the cuts could be better...

Unfortunately the 'acoustic'-ish individual bridge pickups didn't work out very well due to the board they're supposed to plug into, that's used to individually balance the outputs and sum them together, isn't available any more and just connecting them all in parallel didn't work well. No big problem, as the 'regular' electric guitar pickups worked well once we heated up the pole pieces (those metal dots under each string) and pushed them up or down to get good string-to-string balance there. There's also been some experimentation with string gauges.
Anyway, the whole thing was more or less a success. Plays pretty well although the neck and string spacing could be better. Just like learning by doing...

Which brings us to the second guitar project:

Chop Saw II: Fire for effect!

Single coil pickups, of the kind found on Stratocasters, were not, it turned out, quite what I was hearing for. Something in-between Gibson humbucklers and P-90's was more the goal. A search for a similar 'axe' with a humbuckler type pickup in the neck position turned up this:

The Fender Squire mini Jazzmaster HH. It has the identical neck size/length as the one we were just working on. Now that we're somewhat confident in the outcome, a larger budget was allocated: $100 on eBay this time. Had some stains on it that needed cleaning and the strings were trashed but otherwise pretty nice.

Apart it came and off to the saw again:

This time a smidge wider and better tapered and a different cut pattern on the headstock, but same basic principle. Lots of detail cuts and sanding. Mostly with manual tools.

The pickups and wiring were next up. Guitar Fetish (GFS) makes a pickup designed to be halfway between P90 and Humbuckler tones called the P180. Clever much?  Augh, more than $30! there goes the budget. But it does actually sound like it should and comes with five output wires so you can switch it into 'single coil' mode and get a more authentic P90 edge to it if you like. I like. So the instrument grew another switch.

Backside of the pickguard panel during 'surgery,

The big 'pickup selector' switch also ended up getting swapped out because Fender uses simply awful parts there. What also doesn't show in the pictures is the dozens of hours spent fileing nut slots to just the right depth/angle and truss rod adjustments and bridge adjustments and pickup distance-to-string adjustments to try and get it all playable and even (volume) sounding and all that. Basically all the guitar setup work you'd normally go through if you cared about sound/playability, compounded by different strings in different places with different overall string tension and therefore the amount of neck-bend.
I'd say it's mostly there now.

And yes it gets used.

_________________________

The pantheon, in repose

Oops, there's one more there than promised! Fear not. It doesn't exactly fit this narrative since a Bass tends to come with four strings and rest assured it has never been near the Chopsaw. The Bass is an Ibanez Mini that popped up on C.L. for cheap (of course) and has, just like the others been retuned in fifths. Similar process: String Tension Calculator, order strings, then trial and error. Error was winning for awhile but we're most of the way there now. Probably only one more string swap (105 gauge down to 95) on the bottom 'G' string.

Sounds bass-ish, especially through a bass amp. That brings up the bigger topic of guitar pedals and amp sounds and all that other stuff that complicates the lives of electric musicians, but that's for another post later.

Q&A:     Yes, people had the temerity to ask questions.

Q: How come they're all 'Mini' instruments? (and the related "Aren't you man enough for a full size guitar?")

A: As far as I can tell, Acoustic Guitars are the size they are due to tradeoffs. The bigger/longer the better the tone, but the finger-reach to the notes you play (distance between frets) also gets larger, and so smaller hands suffer. 25-26 inches string length seems to be the norm. Instrument body size also varies based on the tone you're trying to achieve vs. the size of the person playing it.
Less of this applies to electric instruments. If everything (string gauge, pickup size/spacing - etc) is shrunk proportionately physics would tend to indicate little tonal change, at least for small (10-25%) adjustments.
However when you're tuning in 5ths rather than 4ths your fingers have to reach one more fret,
so 'shrinking' the neck length/string length/fret spacing makes the whole thing viable. We're down from 26" to just above 21" here or around a 20% reduction, similar to the 20% difference between 5 and 4 frets your fingers must traverse in chords. With a 26-inch Bouzuki as a regularly played instrument, you can trust I know about how this works.
We'll grant that tiny guitars might look kinda silly compared to your expectations. Cue photo montage of old fat guys playing the ukulele ;-)

The Pedal Board post. Non-standard of course.