Build Instructions

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• 1

  Buying a guitar or building a faux one

  WARNING: ALL INSTRUCTIONS ARE A WORK IN PROGRESS AND ARE LIABLE TO CHANGE ON A REGULAR BASIS TILL THE PROJECT IS COMPLETE!!

  Buying vs building

  [Discussion of pros and cons]

  The main advantage of buying a ready-made guitar is the significant reduction in work needed as compared to building a fake guitar from scratch.  The primary disadvantage is that guitar bodies are designed to resonate and to amplify sound, which is not what you want from a speaker housing.  I've addressed this latter point in my build by gluing in layers of MDF inside the bodies of the guitars.

  Buying

  This option involves buying a guitar and then making alterations to it to make it suitable as a speaker housing.  (I'll provide more details about this later in the instructions.)

  The main considerations to make when buying are guitar are as follows:

  1. attractive shape and colour;
  2. choosing one with that has an internal volume a little larger than required for the mid-range driver being used; and
  3. location of internal framing, as cross-beams that are placed under the sound board can make the widening of the centre hole for placement of the driver quite difficult.  

  This was the option I went with for this project, as I wasn't overly keen to build any from scratch right at this time.  Perhaps in the future...?

  I was able to find some ludicrously cheap guitars online that looked okay but importantly were the right volume [see step XX below]. 
  

  Building

  Quality speaker housings are typically constructed from MDF (either painted or covered in a timber veneer) in order to provide a solid, dampened structure.  The ideal approach, then, when building the fake guitar bodies is to make them from MDF so you have the best of both worlds—a well-made speaker cabinet but one that looks like an acoustic guitar.
  

• 2

  Selecting a mid-range driver

  Finding a mid-range driver is the first step for this project, as this will determine an ideal volume for the guitar body.  Alternatively, you can 

  [I'll add more information in here over time about the selection of drivers.]

• 3

  Selecting tweeters and designing crossovers

  [This will briefly cover 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-order crossover choices plus selection of quality electronic components.  I will likely heavily reference other sites here because I don't claim competence in this area.

  I'll also talk about options for tweeters in line with the previously chosen mid-range drivers.

  Inductors, polyester NP capacitors, polyspeaker protectors, tweeter, and mid-range driver.]

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