Sustain/press Forming

[whitey]

hey,yup,anouther crazy idea by me lol,well,u no how the harder the guitar body,the better the sustain.

well,would press forming give it a lot better sustain?it would be a bit compliated,and will have to be cnc'd and have stages to it,but squashing the wood down into shape.or even rolling the wood before hand,like what they do in iron works,just flatten and compress it,and then carve it out?

as it is copressed,it should sustain like a bitch(very good).but i guess it will be heavier,so would this work...in theory at least?

whitey

[unclej]

whitey..in theory that's a good idea but wood is tremendously resilient and would more than likely de-compress after you pressed it. and if you pressed it too hard it would simply crush. most hardwoods like walnut and mesquite (my favorites) provide all the sustain you probably need anyway.

if you really wanted a brighter axe that sustained to the max you'd probably want to look into other materials for the body like aluminum or brass or some man made composite..

but keep thinking man..that's how inovations are born.

[whitey]

yeah,just an idea,wasnt actually gonna try it,tho i heard carbon was good,i.e basslab.de prooves that lol

but maybe if u pressed it the space of months,even years,and i'm guessing that it wont ''pop back up'' to full size again,tho it might mess with the intonation,wat if u blasted it with steam?to keep the shape,like how they fold the drums togethor to form a cilynder?meh,i guess i should leave it all to some1 with knowledge to wood,but i bet in like 10 years time,my idea will be the next big thing since the solid body guitar came out,and some1 else would have launched it lol

Edited June 20, 2005 by whitey

[JPL]

I'm just melting down an old bell and recasting it into a 2 1/8" Les Paul. just think of the sustain.

[psw]

but maybe if u pressed it the space of months,even years,and i'm guessing that it wont ''pop back up'' to full size again

Thought:...what if you made a mold of a Lespaul and put it over a sapling so that the tree actually grew into the required shape....you'd get a nice strip of heartwood down the middle for added stiffness...mainly you'd avoid all that messing carving of the top.....

[Mr Alex]

hey,yup,anouther crazy idea by me lol,well,u no how the harder the guitar body,the better the sustain.

←

1. its not that crazy.

2. since when was the "harder the guitar body" a factor. you would only be making it more dense. And there is a lot more too it than that.

[frank falbo]

Greg Curbow's instruments are made from a material he calls Rockwood I think. Anyway it's laminates impregnated with phenolic under ultra high pressure. It's basically void-free. It's a good sound with excellent sustain. Maybe take some time to learn about him and his instruments as a side study of density vs. tone.

[Jester700]

Greg Curbow's instruments are made from a material he calls Rockwood I think. Anyway it's laminates impregnated with phenolic under ultra high pressure. It's basically void-free. It's a good sound with excellent sustain. Maybe take some time to learn about him and his instruments as a side study of density vs. tone.

←

Sounds heavy-ish... ;-)

[frank falbo]

That's why he makes them smaller, because then they have the same overall weight and mass as a larger body, just smashed into a smaller package. THey're not any heavier than a traditional instrument. Plus he uses a long upper horn so they balance well. They really are cool instruments, but different than anything else. He mostly does basses, and it's a great idea for a bass. It's very tight and clean, but with some good lows that something like a Steinberger can't get acoustically. And it's vibrant, too. The guitars are totally different from anything traditional, but they still sound really great.

The Korean Cort Curbow models are only similar in looks. They don't employ any of the same materials.

Edited June 21, 2005 by frank falbo

[whitey]

but maybe if u pressed it the space of months,even years,and i'm guessing that it wont ''pop back up'' to full size again

Thought:...what if you made a mold of a Lespaul and put it over a sapling so that the tree actually grew into the required shape....you'd get a nice strip of heartwood down the middle for added stiffness...mainly you'd avoid all that messing carving of the top.....

←

yeah,but then you have got the weight of the whole tree!lol

thanks,wel check greg curbow out

[tirapop]

Instead of crushing wood to make it denser, how about...

getting denser wood?

Ironwood is almost twice as dense as maple. Instead of doing a whole guitar out of it, you could put a chunk in the middle, from the neck joint to the bridge.

If you're just after sustain, you can put in a steel bar, like Reverend Guitars.

[whitey]

meh,there all good idea's,but i was askin if the idea in general was good,and its not just limited to maple,it was a general idea,if ironwood is the densest wood out there,make it more dense by press forming it...that was my idea,to get ultimite sustaine,have looked into ironwood and thats a good idea,making a neck through with it

Edited June 22, 2005 by whitey

[jnewman]

Why not just go to a material that's already as dense as you want? Like metal, or rock. Someone built a guitar out of granite a while back, and it sustained forever - but it had to be held up by a stand because it weighed in at something like 50 lbs (20 kilos).

Pressing/rolling/etc. metal is one thing - the microscopic crystalline grain structure is made more uniform by those sorts of things, resulting in a stronger material. In wood however, putting that much energy into the wood will break the much weaker bonds between cellular structures, causing the wood to fracture. If you somehow managed to hold it together while you crushed it, you would destroy the microscopic structure of the wood, and unlike with metals, the structure would not reorganize itself - you might end up with a denser material, but it would likely fall apart as soon as you started poking at it - unless you impregnated it with glue or some such, but then you'd more or less just have MDF and you might as well go buy it.

Edited June 22, 2005 by jnewman

[GuitarGuy]

Anyone ever hear of pressed back chairs? No, it wont pop back out. We have one of those chairs upstairs that washed up on shore. If that dosen't mess it up nothing will.