Wood Pickguard for Electric Bass

I play the bass, precisely a Fender Tex-Mex. This bass has a white pickguard made of plastic but I don't like it at all.

For this reason I decided to try to build a wooden pickguard also beacouse it seems like a very simple project.

Let's start!

SInce the original pickguard is more or less 3mm we can build it by gluing together a foil of mahogany (which is 1mm) three times... very simple.

The first idea I had was to glue a 2mm foil of plywood with a 1mm foil of mahogany but I didn't find the plywood so that I used only the mahogany....it is not so expensive.

At the end we have to draw the boundary of the pickguard on the foil and the points where make the holes for the screws.

Now that the foil is ready we can cut it following the line we designed. We must go very slowly because it is only 3mm foil... really fragile!!

As you now the patience is maybe one of the best tool...so just use it.

After a long time, when we have finished, we should make the guide for the screws we need to fix the pickguard to the bass. We should first of all choose the screws and then make the hole for them depending on their diameters. This is important since otherwhise we could make some demage.

The truth is that I have no experience and so much patience....that's why I make tons of error...here's one of them.

As you see I made a bad cut and I have two points where the wood is where it shouldn't be. But this is not a big problem.

If we are in this situation we have to use some the lime...In this case very small and possibly a curved one since we have to "expand" the circumference.

Again it is important to go very slowly since we have to do a precision job.

After some time, as you see, we can solce our problems and now we can continue.

This is almost the end.

First of all we could use some sand paper (really light...say P100) to make the boundary very smooth. Infact now We have a 90 degrees foil on the boundary and it is not so cool.

Finally I think that, since I really like the dar wood (it looks like more confortable), we could use a dark woodstain. As you see in the photo there is a lot of differences.

It could be a very good idea to use some paint to do something more colourfull or also draw something.

My first idea was, at this point, to do an incision but I made some attempts but I realised that it is something really artistic and really hard to do. I WILL DO IT IN THE NEXT FUTURE!!! I SWEAR...but I would like to do some practise before.

Now we have done. We have just to choose the screws: it depends on our taste. Personally, since the bass is black and the wood is quite dark, I think that it is a good idea to use a golden screws with the head as big as possible.

REMARK: In the photo you can see that the bass is not so cool since the metallic part are grey. The next step will be to use golden metallic part....but I have still no idea about how to do it.

However I hope you like.

That's all folks!!!

Ciao

Andrea Maioli