Kenny Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 (edited) well, i know you guys dont like concept drawings at all, but here is my design for a 7 string lp style, (im still working on string spacing for nut aswell as saddle placment LEFT: i used to peice of redwood i had to do the render RIGHT: scale cad drawing that i will make a template out of Curly Redwood im using Wood body wings - Mahagony/walnut/redwood Neck laminate - Maple/bubinga/maple/bubinga/maple Heavily flamed redwood top Alembic style headstock joint Maple fretboard bound in ebony gaboom maple (figured?) pickup covers Maple/ebony gaboon bridge maple turned knobs other specs 27" - 25" fanned frets ( the strings will have slightly differnt scale lengths becuase the edges of the fretboard have the even length, but no worries) the fan is measured on the taper using calulus and is mapped to the nanometer slightly chambered body 48.72mm nut at highest point perpendicular 12th fret. stewmac wide graphtech saddles Kaye headstock design THANKS TO ERIK or all the help with the cad, couldnt'a done it without you, i loved your design for the bridge so i adapted it for something on my project Criticism? comment? i want to hear what you have to think Kenny Edited January 22, 2008 by Kenny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 Gut reaction: The trapezoid inlays look all kinds of wrong fanned with the frets like that. I'd go with plain dots. Bear in mind that I HATE plain dots, especially on fancy guitars like this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 22, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 (edited) i think it looks bad on the cad but the rendering i did it looked kinda cool i like new takes on old ideas the whole thing im trying to do with this guitar is its a LP but with my twist i really dont like dots... on any guitar Edited January 22, 2008 by Kenny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 22, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 here are pictures of the woods to be used. the piece of maple on the far left is possibly for the fingerboard, ebony for the accents. the walnut/mahagony laminates are for the body. one is flipped over. also the Redwood is dry so the figure doesnt show very well, but trust me, its STUNNING! P.S. Comment on my design/ wood choices!! I WANT FEEDBACK! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anderekel Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 Well, I personally like the trapazoidal inlays. Looks like it should be a cool lookin' guitar. I'll be interested to see that redwood top. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xanthus Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 Gut reaction: The trapezoid inlays look all kinds of wrong fanned with the frets like that. I'd go with plain dots. Bear in mind that I HATE plain dots, especially on fancy guitars like this. +1, not a fan of the trap inlays. Then again, none of the guitars I play on have inlays in the first place *shrug* Otherwise, I dig it! I love Erik's build, and I'm sure to like this one as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j. pierce Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 Rather than the trapezoidal type inlays, I'd be tempted to go with blocks, but angled to follow the fanned board - so, I guess they'd be parrallelograms, but I think you know what I mean? sides of the inlay parallel to the string centerline, and the tops and bottoms of each inlay parallel to the frets it's between. That's just what I imagine my preference to be, either way, I think it'd be cool. Are you going to dye that redwood? At first, I want to say leave it natureal, but with allthe other wood types you've got going on on this build, I can see how dying it black would pull it together, and I think it'd actually look pretty darn good. It could just be the white space playing tricks on my eyes, or the added width of the extra string, but the waist seems a little narrow, and the treble horn a little slim, but that's just for my tastes - I can see how that could very well be an aesthetic decision you might choose. All and all, it looks like it'll be a fun build! I'm getting intrigued by all the fanned-fret instruments I'm seeing, I wish I was enough of a player to warrant building one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 (edited) i played with the block idea, i did each one parralell to the nearest frets and to the edge of the fretboards, but it didnt have the same effect. i like the kinda sharp edges of the trapazoids since it ties a little into the bridge treble horn and headstock also my reasoning for the thin waist and light upper horn was to give an almost feminine appearence to the guitar body. soft and gentle, then get more aggresive on the ornaments and yes, im dying the redwood black and i guess grey, i dont knwo how im gonna do it, but my billit is very large so i have lotsa test wood. i want it to come out like this we'll see i love the negative space of the white maple <3 and as far as the body shape goes i love curvy women, so i always say encorperate your loves to your art Edited January 23, 2008 by Kenny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xanthus Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 It's curvy AND it's got a nice round bottom... I'm sold I think the natural will go over well, the woods look pretty sexy just sitting there! But to get the black transparent look, there are two big methods: the stain/sand back and the Perry (I need to be different/better than everyone else ) method, which is dying in layers with different colors. I dunno which one's better for you, because I've done neither, but there are tons of threads out there that deal with your problem at hand. The figure on that redwood looks nice already! How thick will it be after you resaw it? ::EDIT:: I see you picked the 12th fret for the perp fret. I've never played on a fanned fret, but I see the questions raised about playing bar chords... GC needs to start stocking unique creations, I'd really like to sit down and play a fanned guitar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
komodo Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 I love the whole thing. Doing a LP style fanned is awesome, and to do the trap inlays is even cooler. I'm not a huge fan of maple fretboards though. I think this is almost perfect and would be with an ebony board and MOP inlay. The tweaked shape is cool too. Can't wait to see this one progress . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 xanthus - shes a bute :-p im going to try both methods on some scrap and see whcich it comes out best, i took the picture on the rong side of the billet, the figure on the other side is much better Komodo - my original design had an ebony freboard w/ maple bindings and maple bindings on the body, but it looked too black and there was no contrast. plus cutting maple veneers gets tricky when you hit the corners of the trapezoid im going to get a lotta ebony dust and a little epoxy to do the inlays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WezV Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 it look slike a cool idea but make sure you do test the finish schedule first.. not sure how a direct stain on redwood will come out since it can be very thirsty wood. I think it might be much safer to do tinted lacquer. I am guessing the dean is just tinted lacquer.. anyway, you will see what works best when you do the test pieces Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bygde Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 I really like the body shape, and the inlays looked good. Which pickups are you going to use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 I really like the body shape, and the inlays looked good. Which pickups are you going to use? im thikning seymour duncans but im not sure which ones an air norton on the neck for sure and a ver yhigh output on the bridge Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2008 it look slike a cool idea but make sure you do test the finish schedule first.. not sure how a direct stain on redwood will come out since it can be very thirsty wood. I think it might be much safer to do tinted lacquer. I am guessing the dean is just tinted lacquer.. anyway, you will see what works best when you do the test pieces wez - this is what im thinking im going to take the scrap peices i get from resawing tommorrow and do differnt scheduals. 1 - black stain to darken the flames and then a grey to get rid of the red after sand back 2 - black stain then tinted laquer 3 - tinted lacquer but im not sure, since i had some checks start to appear on the top and sides of my wood. i talked to the guy i bought it from and he said he can give me a full refund if i want, or i can try to resaw it and if im not happy i can get a credit towards another purchace here are some pics of the checks to accent the worst ones... Side cracks the one im really worried about! this ones outside of where id be cutting, might make a good area to test on Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmrentis Posted January 24, 2008 Report Share Posted January 24, 2008 (edited) Let some others comment on those checks, but that is truly concerning, already you've lost a ton of useable wood. The last plank of zebra I bought had a couple checks, but they were in places that were or little to no concern. Plus I bought it at cut n'dried here in Socal, so I knew it wasn't going to change much at all. As per the name all their wood is dry enough to use following acclimation. As for the design and such, I like it. Is there going to be a carved top or flat with a rounded edge or what? The only thing that sits outside my personal preferences is the waist, its a tad too thin or the bottom end is a tad too round, either way the contrast is a tad too much for me, but again its your design and I say right on! and Go for it. The inlay design I thought was really cool and something that will really stand out on your build. I'm not huge on the ebony dust and epoxy, but it will be interesting. Some black pearl maybe or just some ebony would look great as well. I also really like the idea j.Pierce came up with about using parallelograms, in using this idea the 12th fret could be a normal square block. It would be cool, but I really like the traps as well, they stand out a bit more. For the ebony and epoxy mix, if you could do some black and grey marbled look, that would be really killer and kinda mesh with the figured top. Anyhow, great stuff, can't wait to see how this one turns out, best of luck. J Edited January 24, 2008 by jmrentis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2008 Jmrentis, where in sandiego do you go to get your wood mostly i drive up to Th&h in mirimar, sometiems to rockler in clairemont. i bought thsi wood from oregon, and its upsetting becuase its very old redwood :X! im debating what to do, i might just carve top with some sort of ebony binding that has maple accents so it doesnt compete with the neck binding. mostly im lazy which is why i dont want to do ebony inlays, but i guess its worth the effort since im taking the time to do this anyways! also, the guy who i bought the wood from seems very knowladgeable, and he said that once i resaw the wood, i will end up probly having 2 surfaces that are stable and steadfast. we will see, either way its win win since i can get a nother beautiful peice of wood from him for next to nothing now. aswell as this i emailed Dean zelenski of dean guitars and asked him about his finish. me and him have been aquainted before and i am good friends with one of his endorsees, michael angelo batio so we will see what he says, since he did the finish i am about to copy :-p Kenny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmrentis Posted January 24, 2008 Report Share Posted January 24, 2008 (edited) I mix it up and check many places, I guess you could say I love to shop, but only for tools and lumber. Th&h definitely will offer some better prices than many places, but I've bought some wood from most of the shops around. Cut n' dried has plenty of great useable wood for lutheiry purposes. They tend to have less figured and exotic stuff, but I've seen some fantastic mahogany, zebra, cocobolo, ebony, wenge, all kinds really. Its not a huge stock though, but well worth a look. That place is up the coast by Solana Beach, which is really a shorter drive than you'd imagine, up the 5. Frost has a lot of good wood, Rockler has some nice pieces, I may try and buy a fretboard sized piece of black and white ebony from there if they have any of size. Also Tropical Exotic Hardwoods of Latin America is another great place bursting with exotics, love that dang place. I was worried it might have burned down during the fires, but luckily it made it through. They have loads of all kids of awesome woods and they get shipments from all over like Australia and so on. Definitely worth a look. Aside from those I still will grab some stuff online or from friends around the forum, I've bought stuff from at least 4 different people, everything from figured top and fretboards to buffalo horn nuts which are black and fretwire. Also one of the reasons that I check cut n' dried hardwoods is they will cut boards for you. Many places require you buy the entire plank and sometimes you just can't afford 15 board feet of figured bubinga, so at cut n' dried they will cut you off any size off a plank as long as it leaves 5 feet left on the plank. This makes it very friendly for me, even if I could afford that much wood, I really wouldn't put it to good use as I'm so slow and I will probably try loads of different woods before using that one again. It was very sad to see all those checks appearing, it really is beautiful wood. I'm just worried that when you resaw you'll find some checks that will make using it impossible and at that point you'll be out of luck so to speak. Plus you've already lost a lot of wood that you paid for. I know how you feel though. I'd see what some other members say like Rich about that wood and if its worth using it, I don't have the knowledge to say yay or nay. As you said, since you are going to do such a complex build, it would be in your best interests to do everything as best as possible. It will kill you later when you have this amazing flawless build and something that doesn't quite look right to you. I've seen some great epoxy inlays that work very well, but I just don't envision that concept for this build, but who knows. Personally, I would go with ebony or black pearl even. Andy Depaule can actually make them for your no problem if you send him the designs, so you wouldn't even have to cut them yourself, only route. If you need any pearl I would check his site, has just about anything you can think and it really ups the presentation of your efforts. Andy DePaule inlays/shell. Again, best of luck with your build, I think it is going to be one killer build. Jason Edited January 24, 2008 by jmrentis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2008 (edited) i was looking at andy depaule's inlay blanks, i like the very black black pearl, and maybe a ligther gold MOP for the "kaye" logo here is what i was thinking for a binding. a creamier more maple colored purfling on the top of the bdoy with an ebony binding.. i wanted to die the bubinga stringers black aswell. i really wanted a black and maple theme going but im not sure how i would pull it off. becuase i have a very good idea for the neck joint. but....i only want it a two tone guitar. or just keep it clean with ebony/maple/ebony/maple bindings (so the black doesnt comepete witht he black fretboard binding) i think it has potential, i just need to work it out so that i keep things clean on this build. dont want it to be tooo gaudy Jmrentis - also Th&h lets you keep 7 feet of the board :-p, they have some nice figured maple sometimes, good exotics. i found very nice peices at rockler from time to time. and ive heard about that latin import store, but since i dont have a car ATM it would be difficult to do :-p Edited January 24, 2008 by Kenny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmrentis Posted January 24, 2008 Report Share Posted January 24, 2008 Again, it sounds like a killer project. I think the color scheme you're working out, sounds good. Same for your binding ideas, all of them sound good, its hard to offer an opinion because I don't have the vision of this thing in my head like you would, each of your ideas sound great though. That black pearl will look great I think and same for the gold lettering. Andy is a hell of a guy and will pretty much swap out anything that doesn't make your standard or wishes. Each time I've gotten off the phone with him, I've thought to myself, damn what a cool guy. So far everything I've received from him has been top notch and he'll usually verify that he has what you asked for while still on the phone and even give more in depth descriptions on the colors of the shell, so if you like more green or blue, etc, you can choose. So, if you like the really dark stuff, just ask if he can pick out some extra black. If he doesn't have some, he's usually really good about getting some for you. Like I was told from Rich and few others and as I've found out, he's a hell of a guy. Cool to hear Th&h does a similar thing to cut n dried, I had no idea really. The guys at rockler told me about that place a little while back and as I saw, their prices beat most of the other places around. They used to suggest frost to their customers, now they send people to Th&h. I would offer you a ride up to those other places, but I have some health issues and only get out on occasion, but if I decide to go, I'll let you know and see if you wanna cruise. My car beats walking, but thats about all it beats, just recently passed the 200,000 mile mark on the stock motor and still runs like a champ. Plus, I can always ask my parents to borrow their truck since its easier to carry wood in than my little beater import. J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2008 (edited) UPDATE! i resawed my block of redwood today, and its a somewhat bitter sweet story. i payed 120 for this block, so i expected to get a beautiful peice of wood, and possibly two tops. heres my story i was planning it to get it ready for the band saw and i made a horrible discovery....the checks were very deep. so i had a tough choice to make. give up the beautiful figure on this wood (WHICH I LOVE!) and get another for no cost to me, or cut the wood thick, and avoid the checks i went with the latter of the two adn resawed my wood i only got 3 peices out of the whole billet...here are the choices for a top - Choice A (my favorite, becuase the tops big enough where i could avoid the knots, i like the clean look) - Choice B (good flame, but there are knots i cant avoid here ) - these are the cracks i avoided :-p you can also see the beautiful figure! now how am i going to carve the top :-p. thats another problem to work out!, and what am i gonna do about those damn bindings! Jmrentis - i just got kicked out of the woodshop i was using at the school so its going to be difficult to find a place to work hahaha, where do you do your working? i had also emailed Dean Zelenski of dean guitars about the finish on the guitar i posted on page 1 and this is what he said "You have to do a combinatiion of watered down black stain on the wood and also toning it by spraying black stain. If you take it slow and thin out the stain, you will have best control. Dean Z" so looks lke we have an answer Edited January 24, 2008 by Kenny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2008 i think i chose combination A of tops but another problem, i ahve nowhere to do my working since i got kicked out of the wood shop at my school, and my very good friend who would let me use his shop recently passed. does anyone use shops other than at their houses? Kenny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmrentis Posted January 25, 2008 Report Share Posted January 25, 2008 Yeah, top A looks nice. B looks very nice as well, I couldn't see where the knots were exactly, but if they were in the center area toward the top or bottom, you might be able to make it so the neck pocket will go there, so you'd end up routing it away anyways, just a thought. I was able to align one of my checks where the neck pocket was and another miniture hole where one of the pickups went, so they were no longer there. As for shops, I wish I had some help for you. Right now I am looking for a new place to live, but it still won't be a house, so more than likely I'll have my big equipment at either my parents house or my best friends house. My friend lives in Point Loma in basically a mansion and he said I could set up shop there if I wanted, but thats a much longer drive than my parents pad at the moment. As I've said in another post, I still am trying to collect tools, I have enough to build with, but my access to build is very limited. If I hear of any good shops I'll let you know, but if you get desperate and really need to do a cut on a bandsaw, use the drill press, or make a quick route, we can try to set something up, but as I said I really don't have a shop nor room for a shop at the moment. Wish I had the money to have my own house. Hopefully upon finishing my degree and getting a job, I might be able to get a place, though San Diego is so dang expensive. We'll see. Anyhow, check other local schools, I'm sure you could work out a deal with one to let you do some work, maybe even ask around at Rockler and Th&h and see if anyone there has a shop, offer to pay for your use and wear and tear on the equipment. Either that or try and make amends with your school, if possible. Those tops are great by the way, hope they don't do anymore funky stuff. best of luck. J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny Posted January 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2008 Jmrentis - thanks for the offer man, im gonna look around and see where i can work cause i gotta get this stuff done. my very good pal lived in point loma aswell, im looking into borrowing or buying his equipment, since i am very good friends with his wife aswell everyone else - IS NOBODY GONNA COMMENT ON MY TOP! haha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RestorationAD Posted January 25, 2008 Report Share Posted January 25, 2008 Nice choice... even though I would have just left the knots. Unique is one reason we build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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