Route 66 Guitar

2026 is not only the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, but also the 100th anniversary of Route 66. Long before modern interstate highways were built in the 1950s, the US began a system of federally designated highways and in 1926, stitched together a bunch of previously state run highways into the 2,448 mile (3,940 km) Route 66. It ran from Chicago to Los Angeles (technically it takes a right turn in LA and ends in Santa Monica).

There are a lot of kitschy sights along old Route 66

In honor of the 100th anniversary, Chicago extended the Route 66 designation 10 blocks north and 5 blocks east, so it now officially starts at Navy Pier. I can now see its starting point out the window of my condo.

I had bought a Route 66 sign years ago thinking I should build such a guitar. But it wasn't until the 2026 4th of July holiday that I finally got inspired to make it happen.

You can't buy a body already shaped like the sign, so I needed to buy a 2" thick "body blank" slab of poplar and then use a jigsaw to cut out the body shape. Then I used a router to carefully route out the neck pocket. I used a drill with a Forstner bit to create the cavities needed for the pickups and controls, smoothing out the contours by using a wood chisel.

I cut the Route 66 sign for the neck pocket and drilled out holes for the volume and tone controls as well as the pickups and bridge posts. Because the body is not as long as typical guitar bodies, I used a one piece wraparound bridge. The pickups were some spare parts I had laying around - a 12k dual rail bridge pickup and a 6k neck pickup. The bridge pickup was a 4 lead pickup, so I soldered in a coil splitting switch.

I used a spare neck that originally came from an Epiphone Les Paul XL that I had previously converted to an 8 string Mandocello. The spare neck was a light blue color, so I painted the body in a similar shade. Rather than showing the Epiphone logo on the headstock, I printed out a picture of a light blue 1960s Corvette onto self adhesive vinyl, stuck it onto the headstock and cut it to the right shape.

I added some Route 66 fret markers to the neck. As a final touch, I had a Route 66 medallion sitting around so I drilled that out to use as the output jack plate.

I'm very happy with the result. It plays nicely and really rocks when switched to the full humbucker in the bridge position.