Robert Irizarry

Can you give some additional details? What parts are you looking to do yourself vs. farm out? Do you want to assemble from parts? Do you want to make the body but not the neck? The more everyone knows the better the suggestions we can make...

Welcome aboard! I'm fairly new to Project Gutar as well (just joined earlier this month) and in this time I've gotten great feedback from the group here. There is a lot of information here and great people as well. Avail yourself of the search feature because there's a lot of good stuff already here. If you don't find it there put the question out there. There a lot of great ideas here.

Recently discovered - like in the last couple of hours. When you are looking to build a particular design make sure that you account for the number of frets on the neck and how that affects the mounting relative to the guitar body. I've been looking at a design where the design meets the body at the 19th fret. The neck on the original design is 24 frets. I, however, picked up a 21 fret neck for a song. The problem is that there is very little area to actually mount the neck since there's so much less material to work with. I'll figure something out but man... Deep breath...

I think its a cool idea. I've seen a few guitars that have with a wood pickguard. I think it looks good but I guess it also depends on the overall theme of the guitar.

You work in an underground mine? Good god. I think I would soil my pants. :-) How is that?

That would be great. I'm sure I can work in the same range. I'll get the information for you and post it by tomorrow. Stay tuned...

Fantastic! I'm so glad I started this thread. That's what I was actually hoping for. Thanks!

Interesting project. I've been thinking about headless designs for a while now and one solution I've seen is the use of a conventional locking nut to anchor the strings. I've seen several examples of this as an alternative to using the stock headpiece (expensive) and double ball end strings (for some, hard to obtain). I think that if you model you're clamp after something like that, you should be fine. I would go with something like the Kahler style locking clamp that fits after the nut. Because its after the nut, you don't have to worry about its radius. Its just there to retain the strings. Here are a couple of examples using locking clamps/nuts: Chris Shaffer Headless @ Kronosonic.com Cotta Guitars Klein Replica As far as the adjustment range, if its any help, I'd be glad to get you an estimate of the adjustment range of the tuners on my Hohner headless as well as any other dimensions you might think helpful. Its currently strung with .010-.046 strings if thats any help. And again, I've never had problems tuning it. Let me know and I'll get these measurements for you this weekend.

May just be me, but I'd rather take a rasp to a piece of wood to rough the contour out and plane it smooth than invest in an 18" bandsaw and cut the guitar while it was standing vertically on edge. Duff Beer Man: Nice idea for a thread, but it's really where the Tools etc Reference forum comes into play.... If you read a little further into my post, you'll see that I don't suggest an 18" bandsaw is the way to go. I suggest that applying a little thought should make this feasible with a hand tool.

I have considered that but right now I'm looking at less traditional forms and solutions. I've done some reading about guitar ergonomics and sitting position and conventional guitar forms represent some concerns. For example, I've read a number of articles about the classical guitar and how there have been several attempts to improve supporting it including stands that position it at just the right height and angle. That doesn't seem like the way to go for me. I want the guitar to remain portable which for me is part of the appeal. Lugging around a stand doesn't cut it. That said, I'm looking for features and forms that improve the way the guitar "interfaces" with the guitarist leaving the guitarist to focus on playing and not the struggle to maintain proper position. Thanks for the input!

Welcome aboard! I've only been a member for a short while and I've already gotten some great feedback from the fine folks here. I'm loving it here. I'm sure you will too.

I'm a no-woodworking-experience newbie and I would love to see this as well. I haven't built this (yet) but I came across it during my endless wanderings on the Internet and I thought it was a great idea - They came up with a jig to expedite creating the forearm comfort cut. The jig consists of two boards. One is simply the base. The other is attached vertically at a 15 degree angle. The guitar is then laid across the vertical board and a bandsaw used to make the cut. By itself it requires an 18" bandsaw but I'm sure someone could rig it to use some type of flush cut saw instead. After that, all that's left is a little smoothing. It also makes for more consistent results. I add this because every place I've looked has shown creating this forearm contour by hand and that simply gives me hives. I was dreading this step until I came across this jig...

e I think that's a great idea and if you look at some of the aftermarket Strat bodies out there they've gone ahead and just routed out a rectangle spanning the whole pickup area. If you're covering it up with a pickguard, why bother to route out individual spots for the pickups? Its one of the only reasons I keep considering a pickguard on my as yet unannounced first project - ease of routing and flexibility in terms of switching pickups. Besides some of my fellow Project Guitar members think its unconscionable to do without one.

Very cool looking stuff. It almost looks like stone...

First question - Are there no tuners that would fit what you are trying to accomplish or is part of the goal making the tuners? Maybe some kind of diagram could help get some ideas from the fine folks here. Also, I own a Hohner licensed version of the Steinberger and I've never had issues with tuning. Second question -Are there any measurements I can take that on the bridge that might help?

Just doing a little thinking outside of the box. Personally, I can see some benefit for prototyping but maybe that's beyond the scope of what most of us have the time and/or money to do. (Dang reality!) And, I agree that there is something to the classic concepts and that we need to question why they've stuck around. That said, the world was flat for many years and then some guy came along and challenged it. Personally, I tend toward a more conservative approach thinking in terms of evolution rather than revolution. However, I thought the RKS design concept was a natural progression from the idea of starting with a core section of a guitar and adding wings to it. Just hoping to add to the body of thought.

Thanks for all the feedback and as far as Mr. Z... Well he is an "interesting" fellow. As far as his guitars I like his bare knuckles aesthetic - I'm into clean design. However, I have to agree that many of the points played up by builders as essential elements to their sound are more than likely just hogwash. I doubt there are many of us that can hear the difference a finish makes on an electric instrument (an acoustic is a whole other beast), or pickups that are mounted directly to the wood or any number of other little claims. As far as Leo is concerned I also admire the integrity of his approach and design. As far as any of these elements making their way into a project of my own - well I have a couple of parameters. For one, I would incorporate those features which are "cheap and easy to make" like Mr. Fender. I don't have the woodworking skills in order to come up with supercarved bodies so that's out. A superthin body like the Black Machine, however, is a cheap and easy feature to incorporate. A Danish oil finish is just easier to deal with and because its an oil/varnish mix, its far more protective than a straight oil finish. Pickups screwed directly into the body? Sure why not? It falls into another parameter of mine which is I like a clean design. It doesn't cost me anything to incorporate and I'm not a big fan of pickguards or pickup rings anyway. (I hope this last comment doesn't get me banned. For some, this is almost heresy. )

I love the front body contour - very nice! However, I have two concerns. 1.Those horns look mighty fragile. I'd be afraid of knocking the thing over. Any thoughts on that? (If this were a boat building forum, you'd be wrapping them in fiberglass and epoxy for strength.) 2. How does it balance? I'm wondering since there seems to be a lot of weight on the right hand side. BTW - what are the holes(?) along the right hand side?

Without a doubt. I think you're right - why bother with a proof of concept? I'd be better served by getting one under my belt, gaining the experience and going from there. I think I've also forgotten to factor the importance of commitment to the project. It would probably be too easy to lay it aside as just an experiment if it were just a proof. Thanks for setting me straight!

Same problem here. The middle pickup just happens to sit just about where a sound hole on an acoustic would be which is about where I've been told I should be. Yeah, its not an ideal placement so you're not alone. I like the suggestion of cranking it down lower - you can still use it if you like and you don't have to go through the trouble of hacking your guitar to get rid of it. If and when I start my first project though, there will be no middle pickup.

Ok. I think I found us an "answer"! Behold RKS Guitars! Essentially, the creator has taken a blank, carved out wings and a central cavity and then dropped a pod in the middle which contains the neck, bridge, humbuckers etc. We could take this idea and use it to just focus on the wings. Get a blank. Cut out the shape. Carve out a cavity in the center. Drop the neck/bridge,pickup unit (pod) in the middle. Bolt it together. I see a couple of advantages here. First and foremost, it works as a test bed for new shapes! You don't have to worry about fitting the wings to the existing pod. You're basically just centering your pod in the cavity and bolting it together. To prevent stripping of the attachment points, I would use machine screws with threaded inserts. Second, I think it actually looks kind of cool as a guitar regardless of its test bed possibilities. This actually would work rather well with my Hohner. Its a neck thru design made out of maple - essentially a rectangle - what is known affectionately among the steinberger crowd as the "broom". Basically its the original Steinberger design. So what does everyone think? I'm really pyched about the possibilities!

Thanks for the input. This won't be on my first project guitar but probably a second. (I can't believe I just "committed" to that. I still have to start the first. )

I like the sound of it well enough but even this shallow bowl guitar is a bit difficult to deal with. It was also a gift and the guitar that got me back to practicing so it has to stay. I'm fascinated with the idea of a very thin guitar like the Black Machine so I think I will need to do a bit of research around this. The Melody Maker sounds like a good place to start. I was thinking along those lines myself. At 40mm its still thinner than the standard 1.75" body blank. Adding contours would go a long way toward improving the comfort further. At some point I have to post my project idea but I'm still researching.

Cool! How does it work for you? Do you find that it gives you some useable sounds? Does it only work on a particular humbucker (neck or bridge)?

That idea has crossed my mind as well. I own a little Hohner/Steinberger broom which is basically a rectangle and I thought this could be a good way to run through some different ideas without having to worry about all the "hard stuff" such as intonation. But as Mickguard points out, the tricky part is getting the thicknesses to match up. I thought this would be an easy enough thing with my little Hohner but it turns out that it subtly changes thickness from the center to the edge. I didn't realize this until recently when I took it apart to take some measurements of various elements. That said, you may want to stick with a slab style body to ease making matching wings.