IWishICouldShred Posted January 26, 2008 Report Share Posted January 26, 2008 I picked up a neck yesterday from a friend of mine for like 15 bucks and decided to use it for practice defretting, considering that my next project will probably be a fretless. Anyway, I brought it over to my friend's house so we could start working on it, cause it goes much quicker with 2 people. I'll post pics of the de-fret later if you want... I'm going to epoxy it today. It looks sweet. But I digress. Each guitar I have worked on thusfar, I've approached from a carpenter's point of view. I know nothing of carpentry (except now, how guitars work...). After we finished with this neck, I realized that maybe I was taking the wrong approach. My friend is a toolmaker by trade and we do auto body work in our spare time (Currently doing a resto-mod of a '54 GMC pickup)-- with all this experience working with metal between us, why not try and do something a little different? So we started tossing ideas around and came up with this idea to make a tube-frame guitar. It will have the basic outline of a Stratocater or Les Paul, made of metal tubing. We'll add cross-braces to support the control cavity, which will be made of sheet metal (pre-shielded!) and essentially just sit in the middle of the guitar. From there we can either add more interesting electronics (on-board Big Muff?) or add more metal bracing to weigh the guitar down more evenly. If my description isn't clear, picture it this way. Start with an image of a neck-thru-body guitar, but only the neck piece. Now replace the wood with metal, from the end of the fretboard down. Now, instead of the traditional carved wood sides, just think of a steel frame that outlines the edges of the shape of the guitar, connected at the neck and also via a few cross-braces to the control cavity. There are only 2 issues I feel like we'll run into trouble with. 1.) I'm not sure how to do the neck pocket so that it will support the whole deal and 2.) Between being fretless and not having a body, this guitar may run into issues with sustain. On the other hand, we could add chambers or the resonations throughout the tubes might give it a really interesting sound. Another solution to the last problem would be replacing the middle section with a block of some sort of heavy hardwood, and then covering it with sheetmetal panels. Has anyone seen or heard of anything like this before? Successes? Failures? Please let me know what you think!!! This is my first build since I finished "The Green Monster" last summer. I'm not sure if I ever posted pictures of that or not. I left the CD that they were on at the house of the girl I was dating back then, and we don't talk any more... but I have a few hard copies I could scan. It was a neon green/black crackle finish superstrat with a plexiglass pickguard and EMG's with an afterburner. Wow. I talk too much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IWishICouldShred Posted January 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2008 Bump. Negative feedback encouraged too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwedishLuthier Posted January 27, 2008 Report Share Posted January 27, 2008 It has been done with some success. James Trussart builds hollow body metal Teles and LPS and guitars like that. Chech them out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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