Töp-x guitars

Currently on Hiatus..working at Spalt Instruments in Vienna..

more about my internship in Vienna

Dinner in austria...like anybody cares..

I am Mikko Skousen and in the photo collection one can find the PORTFOLIO related to studies at IKATA during the period of September to May of 2016-2017. Rauno Nieminen is my primary instructor. During this period it was our task to design and build an ELECTRIC GUITAR and an other ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENT: I chose to build a telecaster style guitar with a bolt-on neck and a ukulele.

The original Electric guitar body was very similar in shape to a standard TELECASTER, but because the fretboard turned out to be too soft of a wood..i had to rebuild the neck and at the same time desided to alter the body style.

The design and construction of the neck included several different attempts to alter the truss-rod design to one in which the neck joint would be stronger at the head-stock. This is not so important as on a neck with a angled neck joint such as a Gibson. My new style truss-rod is to become a TRADE MARK of sorts to distinguish my guitars.

The photos and descriptions of the building processes are broken into several categories. Also included are some images of the beginning construction stages of a Glue-on style neck (a black 'batman' looking guitar.

Questions can be directed to me through e-mail at [email protected], or comments can be added to the images themselves. Comments are acceptable in English or Finnish.

a couple of the projects that i have finished..several others are still in different stages..

Images of the tools and such used to build the guitars. As much time, or more goes into creating the jigs and templates used to build a guitar. They must be designed well or the same mistakes will be repeated in the guitars. Once they are done, then the amount of time to make the guitars is reduced.

Here is a detail showing the location of the truss rod anchor. The truss rod goes into a hole in the anchor which transfers the stress to the location at the base of the headstock-neck joint

Here is a sketch of some ornation that i want to put on the frame of my humbucker pickups..to be laser etched onto a wood plate and then glued to the top of the frames