Ibanez Shrg7!

[MuffinPunch]

Okay, by now youre probably all tired of me posting designs and ideas without any building going on, so I promise after I get this one out ill cool it for a while! Like Ive mentioned in my other posts, my guitar projects have been hibernating for the past three months, but will wake up and stretch their limbs come May when I return to So Cal and back to school where I can access the shop and tools, etc.

So for my final pipe dream, Ive been absolutley in LOVE with the Ibanez SHRGR1Z HR Giger model ever since I first layed eyes on it! I have no idea how it plays, but I assume its great just like any other S, only it looks AMAZING! I have been a Giger fan ever since I first saw Alien. The guy is seriously twisted and undoubtedly disturbed, but his artwork is incredible.

So why am I trying to replicate this guitar instead of just buying it?

1. I could never afford to buy a Giger model...

2. They only made a few of them anyway...

3. It only comes as a six stringer...

4. Your limited to one color choice...

After doing some research, I found that the chemical etched surfacing of the nickel plated guitar, could be easily replicated using my handy dandy school laser. Rather than going through the mad scientist process of chemical baths and what not, a similar effect could be done in a few different ways. I could laser etch the design directly onto the wood or laser cut a mask and sandblast the body. I could also laser etch the design onto a thinner piece of materiel and glue that to the surface of the wood. As I am planninig on building and S body with a carved top and bottom, it might be a little trick trying to get the laser to stay in focus while etching directly onto the wood, so that probably isnt a very viable option for me, but any of the other ones could work just fine.

Specs:

Poplar body

22 fret rosewood finger board

bolt on maple neck

25.5" scale

DiMarzio "The Breed" HB neck pup, bridge TBD

5 way selector switch w/ master volume, master tone knobs

Ibanez ZR 7 trem w/ zero point system

The neck inlay is still to be determined. It will probably end up as the spine from the original in maybe black, gold, or white pearloid.

The top one is nice and simple, all white with black hardware. The second is pretty much an exact duplicate of the original in appearance but would be a mat paint rather than nickel plating. The bottom one shows the most potential IMO. White with gold undertones and gold hardware. Ive always wanted a guitar with white and gold, but they always look too classy for my taste. This one shows a little bit of class disguising its darker nature... Let me know what you guys think, and if you have any other suggestions ill be glad to hear them! Thanks!

[Prostheta]

The Sabre shape is very difficult to replicate by hand as the sides are very slender and show inaccuracies REALLY easily. Couple that with keeping the thing still once one side is shaped is an annoyance also! There are different Sabre shapes, which is more down to the overall thickness I believe.

If you are going for a painted finish, buy a second-hand body off eBay. That's how I went about my Dark Sabre. The body I bought was a two-piece, and the individual pieces of timber didn't really match up "naturally".

If the top surface can be laser carved (the non-flat surface might prove difficult for focusing) then a high resolution 2-bit raster image generated from a vector drawing would do this perfectly. Obviously shades of grey would be redundant for this purpose! That said, adding a degree of noise and erosion to the bitmap might create more interesting results. It will be a lot of laser time, no doubt.

I think it's eminently possible, and you should do it!!

[MuffinPunch]

The Sabre shape is very difficult to replicate by hand as the sides are very slender and show inaccuracies REALLY easily. Couple that with keeping the thing still once one side is shaped is an annoyance also! There are different Sabre shapes, which is more down to the overall thickness I believe.

If you are going for a painted finish, buy a second-hand body off eBay. That's how I went about my Dark Sabre. The body I bought was a two-piece, and the individual pieces of timber didn't really match up "naturally".

If the top surface can be laser carved (the non-flat surface might prove difficult for focusing) then a high resolution 2-bit raster image generated from a vector drawing would do this perfectly. Obviously shades of grey would be redundant for this purpose! That said, adding a degree of noise and erosion to the bitmap might create more interesting results. It will be a lot of laser time, no doubt.

I think it's eminently possible, and you should do it!!

Good call on the second hand body... I have looked into that a bit already. If I were doing a six string I would have tons of S bodies to chose from. Unfortunately sevens are few and far between, and the couple I came across have immaculate 'Prestige' figured tops that I would hate to paint over and cost as much as I could get a new one for. This project might warrant the use of the CNC again if I still have access to it. I agree it will take a lot of laser time whichever rout I take, but the results will be worth it I think. The mockups above had a little bit of noise added to them when I put them together but the originals were full scale and with the resizing, much of he intricate detail has been lost. another option I thought of is a solid clear acrylic body with smoked and/or frosted recesses. Ill have to throw a mockup together of that.

[Reinhold]

Acrylic would be pretty sweet, but the gold was nice also. If it were me I would do acrylic and then laser out thin aluminum strips to put in the recesses, but that usually isn't an option for most people. Looking forward to seeing this.

[MuffinPunch]

Acrylic would be pretty sweet, but the gold was nice also. If it were me I would do acrylic and then laser out thin aluminum strips to put in the recesses, but that usually isn't an option for most people. Looking forward to seeing this.

That might be cool. Kind of hard to mock that up without it looking cheesy though. I did through together this mockup to give a rough idea of what it might look like as clear acrylic.

The HS would be painted white with a thin sheet of etched clear acrylic on top. The body was taken from an image of a JSY2K Crystal Planet clearboy, so the contours and electronics cavity would be slightly different on the real thing, but you get the idea. kinda neat looking. Yet another option would be to make the body blank out of a thin sheet of double sided mirror acrylic sandwiched in between two thicker sheets of clear acrylic, with a sheet of mirror acrylic on the HS. The body cavities would go right through the mirror so it might look kinda weird in those areas. I wont go as far as to mock that up, it probably wouldnt look right if I tried, but its a thought.

Edited April 2, 2010 by MuffinPunch

[ae3]

I'm a big fan of the gold one, the acrylic one seems like a cool idea but i don't know if the design would stand out enough.

[Prostheta]

Fluorescent acrylic glows "on edge" so a carve in that material with internal LED lighting or external blacklight would look fantastic.

Edited April 4, 2010 by Prostheta

[ae3]

Fluorescent acrylic glows "on edge" so a carved in that material with internal LED lighting or external blacklight would look fantastic.

Now you're talkin.

[MuffinPunch]

Fluorescent acrylic glows "on edge" so a carve in that material with internal LED lighting or external blacklight would look fantastic.

You're absolutely right. Id love to give it this kind of effect: but im not even going to try to mack that up...

But after giving it some thought, if Im going to have to build the whole thing from scratch and im not making an effort to be true to th original design, theres no real reason why I should restrict myself to an Ibanez Sabre shape. Instead, Ill use a Sabre style carve on a body shape that ive been working on. I think its gonna be my "signature" shape for a while, so I want to put it to use on some more projects. Originally I came up with this shape for a flat top bass (Crimson King project) but I did a couple of sketches with a full carve top and bottom and it would look really great.

I still want to do an acrylic body with a possible internal LED lighting, but I will be making a casting of it so I will need to build a body that I can use for the mould. No reason why that body cant be finished and made into another guitar right? So I put a few more mockups together using the new body shape, this time playing mostly with matte black here. tell me what you think!

By the way, Prostheta, do you have a thread on this forum for the "Dark Sabre"?

Edited April 5, 2010 by MuffinPunch

[Reinhold]

I like that even better, nice inlay.

[Juntunen Guitars]

By the way, Prostheta, do you have a thread on this forum for the "Dark Sabre"?

I like the top one and bottom one. I would choose the all black one but the gold is right behind it

[Prostheta]

By the way, Prostheta, do you have a thread on this forum for the "Dark Sabre"?

Yep - http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=40031

[ArMelvin1]

Hey I have been looking in to building an acrylic body but so far have only found thin acrylic sheets and the only place i found with thick enough material was extremely expensive and only came in clear. I saw you said you needed to make a mould? Meaning perhaps you know where to get the mix yourself acrylic? I would be interested in that if you could help me out. Thank you.

[MuffinPunch]

Hey I have been looking in to building an acrylic body but so far have only found thin acrylic sheets and the only place i found with thick enough material was extremely expensive and only came in clear. I saw you said you needed to make a mould? Meaning perhaps you know where to get the mix yourself acrylic? I would be interested in that if you could help me out. Thank you.

I have only looked into it a little bit, but a quick google search turned up things like this. Its a clear acrylic casting resin and catalyst you can use to cast a block for machining or whatever, or cast your part (shape). They also sell it in blocks and sheets.You can probably add pigment to it to do custom colors too, but I really have read into it much yet. People at school make acrylic peices all the time so I will definately learn more about it whan I get back.

Edited April 5, 2010 by MuffinPunch

[killemall8]

Isnt that LGMs guitar design?

[MuffinPunch]

Isnt that LGMs guitar design?

Now that you mention it... Its does have some similarities to the LGM Laviiathan. Primarily the upper horn.

A can assure you, that wasnt my intention, but as that IMO has some nice looking design features, ill take that as a compliment. The flat top version of my design bears an even closer resemblance... But the Leviathan is a bit busier and not as refined i think. Essentially they are both variations on a Strat, so you could technically say its the same design as an RG, a Soloist, etc.

Edited April 5, 2010 by MuffinPunch

[MuffinPunch]

I guess I just cant help myself. I decided to redo the mockups of my original three with the new body shape.

and of course:

I doubt I will even make a decision until i get ready to start finishing the body, but I dont know what else to do right now. Im obsessed with designing guitars! I want to build them all RIGHT NOW, but I cant. I guess putting together hundreds of mockups is the closest thing I can do at the moment so I hope you guys like em cuz Im sure they will keep coming.

I know I said at the beginning of this thread that I would stop posting design ideas for future builds, but I have nothing better to do and I still have a plethora of ideas overshadowing my day to day thoughts. When It comes down to it I will probably have to put to a vote which project to build, not how I should do each of them.

[MuffinPunch]

Ive been excited about the prospect of building a seven string guitar, but after some shopping around, Ive come to the realization that having a limited budget is going to make this guitar a bit difficult to build. The ZR7 bridge alone will cost more than the rest of the guitar altogether, including mould blank and casting supplies. However, I came accross multiple listings for a standard six string ZR bridge on ebay that cost less than 1/4 of what Ibanez is asking for a new ZR7 bridge.

So to make a long story short, I have reluctantly decided this will be a six string build. I will save the seven for another bridge design. To solidfy in my head that this change is a reality I have also thrown together one last mockup, which I really think is the best combination thus far, using an all matte black finish and a maple fingerboard with the black plastic spine inlay. The headstock got a little messed up here. the real one will have a shape much closer to the one I designed for the 7. I may deicide I want a slightly mor weathered look when I actually start finishing it, but as this guitar will be build from the mould blank for casting the acrylic body, it will be secondary in importance.

I have also figured out a way to use this build to get school credit, so It will definitely become a reality this summer. Cant wait!

Edited April 11, 2010 by MuffinPunch

[Prostheta]

Not a big fan of the headstock to be honest. Pointy things like that don't really work on anything other than Vs (in my opinion) as headstocks generally compliment the body shape. From the body shape and the bound of using a 3x3, I myself immediately think "offset Widow shape, incorporate the tail stinger shape". The body is quite busy and in your face shapewise, and the headstock just doesn't seem to carry the same aspects of the top waist inset, tail stinger, etc.

Just my gut feelings there. I think that if you want to incorporate a trem system into a clear body, you'll run into the problem of seeing the back cavity's mechanics, wires from the pickups, pots etc. That said, the acrylic JEM 20th (Google image search that for pics) manages to disguise them nicely, using white coated wire, etc.

Can't wait to see what you come up with.

[MuffinPunch]

Not a big fan of the headstock to be honest. Pointy things like that don't really work on anything other than Vs (in my opinion) as headstocks generally compliment the body shape. From the body shape and the bound of using a 3x3, I myself immediately think "offset Widow shape, incorporate the tail stinger shape". The body is quite busy and in your face shapewise, and the headstock just doesn't seem to carry the same aspects of the top waist inset, tail stinger, etc.

Just my gut feelings there. I think that if you want to incorporate a trem system into a clear body, you'll run into the problem of seeing the back cavity's mechanics, wires from the pickups, pots etc. That said, the acrylic JEM 20th (Google image search that for pics) manages to disguise them nicely, using white coated wire, etc.

Can't wait to see what you come up with.

Thats a good observation. I gotta say I completely agree with you on both points. I will definitely work on the headstock design. My original intension was to mimic the original Ibanez HS design in a 3x3 format and slightly more aggressive. As far as the wiring and control cavities go, I hadnt really thought of that much. I figured if I frosted the inside of the cavity it wouldnt show as much. Ill look into the white coated wire.

[Prostheta]

Frosting is a fantastic idea....perhaps that is how the acrylic JEM 20th was "solved" as it has a trem also. Can't say I recall seeing the hardware, but then again it is chrome IIRC. I wonder how the surface of frosted Perspex is achieved, whether it's a casting process or a treatment that can be carried out on arbitrarily shaped surfaces, such as a sprayed chemical etch. Hmm. You might even be able to use the laser (with surrounding areas masked off) to etch a fine bitmap noise pattern onto the cavity's internal face to achieve a frosted look.

Damn, if I had a laser I would be doing all kinds of crazy messed up stuff....!

[Our Souls inc.]

Isn't that Metalhead28's headstock ? really close to it anyway.

besides , don't you have a battle axe , a bass and some other geets to do first ??

[MuffinPunch]

Frosting is a fantastic idea....perhaps that is how the acrylic JEM 20th was "solved" as it has a trem also. Can't say I recall seeing the hardware, but then again it is chrome IIRC. I wonder how the surface of frosted Perspex is achieved, whether it's a casting process or a treatment that can be carried out on arbitrarily shaped surfaces, such as a sprayed chemical etch. Hmm. You might even be able to use the laser (with surrounding areas masked off) to etch a fine bitmap noise pattern onto the cavity's internal face to achieve a frosted look.

Damn, if I had a laser I would be doing all kinds of crazy messed up stuff....!

A quick burst with the sandblaster will do an amazing "frost" job. I was thinking I would frost the entire backside of the guitar including cavities, but that still needs to be worked out.

Isn't that Metalhead28's headstock ? really close to it anyway.

besides , don't you have a battle axe , a bass and some other geets to do first ??

I always thought Metalhead28's headstock looked more like an exaggerated "metal" PRS shape, and I admit that I love it. I was going for a 3x3 Ibanezesque shape. It kinda failed tho. Im working on some new headstock designs for this guitar which will probably carry over to the bass as well. Im still going to finish the Battleaxe first, and eventually the bass and San Dimas Jackson copies will get done, but as I mentioned, I learned I can get school credit for doing this one so Im giving it priority at the moment.

Ill post some headstock mockups when I get a chance.

[yorgo]

ibanez putting those zr bridges on all there premier guitars. What i've been hearing from people over at the ibanez and jem sites is that they don't like them. personally i've never played one, but i will tell you thta the edge is still the best floating bridge out there. .....INMO of course. i think mand esge bridge is around 200 on ebay.

[MuffinPunch]

ibanez putting those zr bridges on all there premier guitars. What i've been hearing from people over at the ibanez and jem sites is that they don't like them. personally i've never played one, but i will tell you thta the edge is still the best floating bridge out there. .....INMO of course. i think mand esge bridge is around 200 on ebay.

Thanks dude, I appreciate the words of advice. I wasnt exactly sure what you meant by that last sentance as it looked like you started typing blindfolded with your face, but I gathered that you were saying I could find Edge bridges on ebay for around $200?

Ibanez only puts the ZR bridges on their S series. Personally, Ive never read a review or talked to anyone who didnt like the ZR bridge. Ive only played one a handfull of times at the guitar shop, and I wasnt plugged in, but it felt good to me. I like the Edge too tho. But, a big part of the point here is to emulate an SHRG, which uses the ZR trem, and I have found listings for under $120 used. Set up and intonation is incredibly easy with the ZR from what Ive learned. Its not a "floating" bridge in the traditional sense, as it utilizes a ball bearing pivot rather than a knife edge, so they potentially stay in tune much better and longer, and are more durable, and it essentially has a built in tremsetter and stop. Its kind of an all-in-one vibrato and Id like to try one out for a while. To be honest, I was sold when I saw Herman Li hold up his guitar by the trem arm in the middle of a solo and return to perfect pitch at my first DragonForce concert (dont judge me ).

Yes, I know the Egen has an Edge Zero on it, but he used to use a standard S Prestige with a ZR, and the Zero Point system is identical in both bridges.

I dont profess to be an expert on bridges, but I know what I like and I know where I feel other bridges are lacking. I may find that I prefer the Edge over the ZR down the line, and I have yet to try a Kahler, but by then I hope to have built and/or acquired a few guitars with each. I have plans for about 5-6 different guitar and bass builds at the moment with more coming all the time, and no intention of selling a single one of them yet. That may change as I gain more experience and confidence, but Im not getting into this because I think I can make money doing it. (Although, in order to convince my wife to let me set up a wood shop in our future home Ill have to use that as an excuse. )

Edited April 12, 2010 by MuffinPunch