New Guitar Ideas For Second Build

[justin squire]

I recently finished my first build with a maple/purpleheart iceman design and I am now planning my second build. I have sketched up a few pictures of some preliminary ideas, but I was looking for a few suggestions. I decided that I wanted to do some sort of chambered/semi-hollow body design and include a pattern on the guitar top, similar to an F-hole, but with a different design. In my sketch, the design to replace the F-hole is a series of circles.

Here are the pictures of my sketches:

I am wanting to build a through neck, with some very colorful woods laminated together. The back side will be different contrasting colored woods, with the top being something with a very nice figure, maybe birdseye or flame maple. Does anyone see problems with my design? Or criticisms?...constructive or not haha.

Being fairly inexperienced with guitar building, I have a question as to how the shape of the hollowed out portion of the guitar will effect the sound. I am planning on chambering and hollowing out both sides of the guitar, not just the side with the hole designs.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

[bob123]

a semi-hollow neck through... interesting... to be blunt, you may be better off with just the neck through, or perhaps a simple chambering job. F holes would be unnecessary, and probably difficult to execute effectively.

As far as chambering goes, it makes it sound more "woody" and "open", and also helps on the back.

With this kind of elegant design, I'd go for a buckeye burl top over a figured maple.

http://www.conklinguitars.com/custom_shop_guitars/guitar_pictures/custom_8_string_guitar_buckeye_burl_cocobolo/custom_8_string_guitar_buckeye_burl_cocobolo_1_large.jpg

[WezV]

I think you need to draw it out full size to be sure, also do a plan of the chambers, hardware and contouring to get an idea how it will all fit together.

the horns look a little thin for my tastes, but its very close to a fully coherent design idea. I also dont see the reason for using so many different pieces of wood... it will look great in the neck section, but does the body also need it?

seems like an ambitious design for a second build, having the neck through revealed on top will make it a fair bit less complex so is worth considering. I just hope you have a lot of clamps

F holes would be unnecessary, and probably difficult to execute effectively.

f-holes might be a pain, but a row of different size circles certainly wont be. i did a pattern with different sized circles on my first chambered guitar, took about 5 minutes and looked awesome!

[justin squire]

Thanks for the responses, I do plan on drawing it out to scale soon and I have since altered the horns a little, because I started to look at them and saw that they didn't quite fit. As far as the back side, I may just do the body wings out of one piece of wood. I am still thinking about my wood selections and I will probably go check out the local lumber store in the next week or two.

Another question, is there any easy way to draw up blueprint style plans if you don't have much experience with CAD or other programs? I suppose I can just take my time and draw it out to scale carefully on a large piece of paper too.