Making a pickguard

[Rolland]

I want a gold pickguard for my strat, but the ones in the shop are way too expensive. So I think of making my own one, from a piece of aluminium sheet. After cutting out the shape, then I'll chrome it gold. But, are metal pickguards safe and advisable to use for guitar?

 

[Steve Tittle]

Right off hand after thinking about it I would say as long as you have a good ground,
run a jumper from the pick guard to the same location as the rest in the electronics cavity, you should be ok. Not sure how you'll
have to fasten it but it should keep the possible noise to a minimum.

 

[Jerome Dragun]

I am a cnc machinist and a musician and have
made several pic guards from aluminum, stain
less steel,etc for other people and they never have had a problem with them. They should also deliver better sustain due to the density of the material under the strings. If you have any friends who are machinists: what I did was have my friends take the pic guard off the guitar and trace it on a piece of paper then I digitized it with the cad-cam package at work and wrote a
program for it and cut it out on a cnc mill,
could save ya a hell of a lot of time.

 

[drstawl]

Have you ever tried machining one out of Teflon sheet? CPVC? Polypropylene?
High Density Polyethylene?
The aluminum has the advantage of a cool assortment of dyed anodized finishes.
Personally I like the aesthetics of brushed 316 stainless steel.

 

[Jerome Dragun]

Nope only machined them out of the alum and
the steel, could do it though. You can also
send aluminum out for hardcoating which makes it tough as hell. Can also sandblast the metals to give you that nice satin finish. 316 is hard to work with, 303 is much easier to machine.