Will This Work?

[Mickguard]

Let's see if I'm understanding this correctly...

I'm seriously considering building a lyre-shaped guitar (aka the Dano Guitarlin/Longhorn) in the near future...but I don't necessarily need 31 frets.

I'd be tempted to buy a Danelectro, but the last one I saw was just so damn cheaply built, I'd be spending the bucks just for the looks.

Fine then, I'll build one, that way I can put in what I want (like, say, the Fender strat pickup assembly I have here....heh heh...and a tremelo)

So in order to respect the scale length with a normal guitar neck, all I have to do is shift the bridge back closer to the tail of the guitar, right?

Here's a mockup of the idea:

Not sure how comfortable that would be to play. I suppose if I dig playing the Bocaster, I can play anything, eh?

[antique_dream]

I'll admit, I'm a sucker for that guitar, too. Dano's do seem to be made cheap, but I love my mod 7. There is something special about the sound. Moving the bridge looks like it will work, but why not try this:

Make a baritone guitar out of it, that way, going up to 31 frets wouldn't be too high, and you would have more lower range. It looks kind of funny without a long neck.

If you really want be adventurous, make it fretless. Oh yeah!!! Good Luck!!!

[Mickguard]

Make a baritone guitar out of it, that way, going up to 31 frets wouldn't be too high, and you would have more lower range. It looks kind of funny without a long neck.

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Style wise, you can't beat Danelectro...I don't know about the Hodad, but the U2 reissue I saw in a store felt like crap. Fun to play maybe, but not worth the price (in euros these days). Maybe I can still get hold of one of the Jerry Jones guitarlins though.

In the meantime, yeah, I think it'd be weird without the long neck. I can think of a couple of ways to overcome that:

1. Scale down the body shape so it will remain proportional to the length of the neck

or

2. Extend the central column of the body, so that the normal neck attaches in the appropriate place. Since the guitarlin pretty much just bolts on to the body without any real neck pocket, strength shouldn't be an issue-- I'm also thinking that the neck and extension can be jointed and glued together. If they can do that to attach the headstock, why not an entire neck?

That way I'd still have all that extra string space for playing slide...or an ebow, got to get me one of those one day...

The baritone's an interesting idea, and I used to be a bass player, that could be fun...it wouldn't be too difficult to find a baritone neck...I'm not set up to make my own necks yet, and I don't know if I should start with a weird neck like a guitarlin's

[antique_dream]

I've actually been thinking of a few projects this summer, and I thought of this body as a design to use. I think it would be really awesome in an 8-string a la Novax, but I am nowhere near the capability to build a fanned fret neck or buy one for $1000. I am planning out a frameworks build and i think i might shape the sides to this profile.

If you want a custom neck, the warmoth baritone seems cool. I'm a 7 stringer, so I would like the baritone 7, which, with the extra frets, would be a really wide range of notes.

Best of Luck!!!