First Designs

[Smarty]

Last night I took the liberty of designing a guitar and a bass for once (if) I get to the commercial stage of lutherie. I'm looking for some professional, unbiased opinions on them.

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/8546/gu...designs20wz.jpg

Regards,

Al

[NamelessOne]

i'd say to draw it out with accurate positionings on frets 12 and 24 (if you have one). they are at exactly half and 3/4 of the scale length, and if you know exactly where they are, you can get a better idea of the upper fret access and balance. with the porportions of the necks and bodies where they are, the designs look like they'd have either limited high fret access and bad neckdive... you want the front strap button to be close to fret 12, for good balance.

The headstock looks cool, though... i was thinking of going with somthing like that on my upcoming project, though my design is just a bit different.

[Smarty]

Yeah, they were just quickies to see if they would look nice. The actual drawings are no more than three inches in height, limiting the detail I can put in. I need to get a CAD program or some larger paper and some rulers and ducks.

[Smarty]

Well, I revised it a little in Photoshop. Again, it was a quickie so the details are a little off. The design allows for 20 frets - not great, but it's meant to be a rhythm guitar anyway. I'm thinking of making it semi-hollow seeing as the body will be somewhat large. Any suggestions are appreciated.

[Nitefly SA]

looks like that bass paul mcartney plays

[Robert Irizarry]

looks like that bass paul mcartney plays

Yep - the Hofner (mickguard corrected me - thanks). I guess I'm not so sure how comfortable one of these would be. I also agree with NamelessOne - get it drawn to scale so you can get a real sense of how it will work with a human. Otherwise, its interesting although I would say the straight lines in the upper body area conflict with the lower rounder body. But that's me.

[Thoughtless 7]

My bass has the EXACT same headstock as that.

[Mickguard]

I thought that was a Hofner bass?

I can't imagine you'd have much success selling that design, frankly. It's too close to the violin bass, and there are already a number of copies of that out there (and they sell cheaply too).

But it'd be a fun guitar to have. I kind of like it that it's a little like a cross between the violin bass and the Vox teardrop (fill in the cutaways and you're close to the teardrop shape)>

One thing--I'm willing to be that the strap button won't work there. From my own experience, if there's no upper horn, the balance will be off--it'll throw the neck down and the body backward. The strap button will have to go behind the neck.

[Smarty]

The cello-ish look is what I was going for. I just simplified the curves and made the side curves larger. As for the strap button, I agree. Besides, it looks hideous where it is. (could just be my sloppiness though) At the same time though, the body is much larger behind the bridge than conventional guitars. I'd best make the final decision after (if) it's built.

Thanks for the input.

[american_jesus]

yeah, the one on the right looks too much like the violin bass. the one on the left looks to me like an ESP eclipse, save the horn a tiny bit...

[Hoser Rob]

They look cool, but I'd strongly suggest getting rid of the pointy things on the lower side. Anyone who tries out something like that sitting down is going to find it painful and they'll never buy it.