ShatnersBassoon

1 hour ago, henrim said:

Highly subjective. If you like it, it is good. Whether I do or don't is a moot point unless you try to sell it to me   Honestly I kinda like it though! 

But in my thinking the shape of a guitar has other qualities than just the looks. Qualities that either make it or brake it.

What is the intended purpose? In an electric guitar the body is there to support all the hardware and to provide the player an ergonomic user interface. Without any thought on ergonomics a square block will do for the body (of course if you are Bo Diddley it will do in any case). Scale length defines the minimum length and that's about it. Add a jack and maybe a knob or two.

Ergonomics of course highly depends on the intended use and playing style. If the instrument is only played on stage in standing position, you need to place the controls accordingly, but the overall shape can be virtually anything. Think about Prince's guitars or think about the map of Finland (about the only country that makes a semi-decent guitar shape, btw). As I see it, the purpose of those shapes is to make a statement. They are not necessarily shapes that everyone likes or they are not the most ergonomic shapes. But they have a purpose.

If you play classical music sitting on a chair the requirements are totally different. If so, a so called "ergonomic guitar" design may be a good choice. They can be very nice to play, but not everybody thinks the ergonomics driven design is visually pleasing.

Personally I spend a lot of time tweaking the curves of my initial designs. In the end I always end up with more or less traditional shapes, driven by the intended purpose and the most important question: 

Does it look like you can convincingly play dirty rock'n'roll with it? 

That is my design driver and it automatically excludes too modern approaches and all the otherwise intriguing shapes. I know I lean towards clean simplicity on my designs but I try to keep some street credibility in them too.

My 2 euro cents. 

I will be honest here and say that part of the thought behind the design, was born from an indecision regarding what to do with the bottom half of the guitar. So I thought “what if I just chop off that section”? The original thought was to use a panel, but whilst thinking of a material and colour scheme that complements and contrasts with the rest of the instrument. That has proved to be a bit of a head scratcher. 

This particular revision has a somewhat iconic look to me, because of its ‘uniqueness’ (a subjective metric I know). But I fear that the overall look of it is a bit like marmite for many people…you either love it or you hate it!

I may spend a bit more time photoshopping and seeing what refinements  I can come up with. Failing that I will just continue with the original shape.

3 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Interesting indeed, but where's the jack?

Haven’t drawn it in yet

Still working on the finishing process! Had quite a mishap recently with some epoxy that I hadn’t mixed correctly. Anyway…Really not sure about this idea that I mocked up in Photoshop. It's weird for sure. I kind of like it…but hmmm…what do you think? 

Thanks for the replies guys. I really appreciate it as always! I’ve figured out that part of the issue is simply because I wasn’t getting rid of some of the scratches from previous grits. I also hadn’t properly got rid of a few imperfections in the epoxy. Back to 600 grit and working my way up! Using only wet sanding now, as I have a feeling I was pushing material around that had been in bedded in to the  sandpaper and causing the more undesirable type of scratches. Maybe I was using too much pressure, so working on close to zero now. Also, I’m going to do a different sanding direction on each grit now, so I can gauge my progress a lot better. 

Gorgeous work! 

On 3/10/2024 at 2:57 PM, Bizman62 said:

One reason for that is that the dust wanders deep into the wool instead of building a hard lump on the surface. Nylon abrasive felt works similarly and you can even use it wet without fear for rust colouring the surface.

2500 grit definitely requires a couple of pastes for a gloss. Or finer grits and a swirl remover compound.

 

So…I seem to be getting a gloss now. But I think I might need to get some higher grits than 2500. Maybe I should get something like this? https://www.axminstertools.com/micro-mesh-soft-touch-pad-abrasives-211364?queryID=797b7e222982afa92a144bedc48ebc65
 

There’s some tiny scratches in there. Will try some machine buffing instead of just doing it by hand like I have been doing, and see how that goes, maybe that might get rid of the micro scratches. Failing that I will try getting the higher grit papers. 

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

How high was the highest grade? When sanding the 2K poly of my Strat I used "papers" intended for sanding paint, got them from a car paint vendor. Up to 2000 grit wet paper works quite well, from there I used 3M foam disks 3000 and 6000 grit, also wet. At places I had to go back one or two grits to remove sanding marks that popped up from an otherwise smooth surface. Even the 6000 left a milky shade to the clearcoat. After that I used a swirl remover compound. I skimped so I only bought the finest of the three of that series which I had to pay by having to use more elbow grease.

Thanks

I went up to 2500 grit. I may work on it more to get that shine. Or I may keep it a satin. I seem to have a huge problem getting rid of scratches though, still lots of tiny little marks if you look really closely…it’s the bane of my life  Interestingly, in the past I’ve noticed that fine wire wool does not show up marks in the same way that sandpaper does.

Turns out that I did indeed need to level etc, and a few anomalies did occur. Probably the environment I was working in. Anyway, went through all the sandpaper grades and it refuses to fully gloss…maybe the powers that be are telling me to keep it that way. Or maybe I need to work on my buffing I think this requires a scratchplate. It’s a bit bare without I think. Mocked up a quick idea with some paper. 
 

Yeah, it’s shaping up nicely. As is often the case with epoxy, it looks great when you first put it on, but when it’s fully cured the result can look sub optimal. I had to do some heating with the gun during the curing process to get rid of certain anomalies in the epoxy. Hopefully it will look good when it fully cures…otherwise lots of sanding will be needed to get it looking right. Won’t be the end of the world though. Fingers crossed!

Took off the black feathering/paint today, and put another layer of epoxy on there…with a more suitable brand.  I suppose you could say it’s evolving  

1 minute ago, henrim said:

Nah, at least I think you have a good process going on here. In my experience things like this may result something you wouldn’t have thought had you designed it in CAD. Of course, when designing while making, there’s always a chance of great disaster but still, you got to experiment and probably learned a ton. Which gives you new ways of thinking that you can use in future! Rock on!

I’m quite a fan of the whole “flying by the seat of your pants” approach. It’s exciting

This bloody guitar has went through more changes than David Bowie I’m sure there’s a few facepalms going around from people that are following this. I made the decision to actually go for a neck pocket, it’s not very deep…but makes everything look more streamlined. Put some fabric on the top…Made a mistake though, I stupidly used some Zap 30 minute epoxy. Whilst it’s a superb product, it definitely wasn’t ideal for the purpose. It was very thick and as a result hard to get level. Ah well, learnt some new tricks along the way, mainly how to get a nice 1k clear coat on there. Got some craft epoxy today that is much more suited to this kind of thing. Going for the fabric look on the headstock next, and maybe the back of the guitar. Maybe I should call this guitar ‘Ch Ch Ch Changes’

 So…after lots of finagling, I felt a change of plan was in order. I wasn’t quite satisfied on an aesthetic level. I got a sheet of stainless steel and did some heat treating on it with the blowtorch. You get all these cool colours when you do that, as I’m sure most of you guys already know. The bottom section is going to be covered by a panel…thinking of cutting some artwork in to that section so that atleast some of the tinfoil/epoxy is visible. So far so good! More shaping still to come obviously. I might do a bit of chambering underneath the new top, as the stainless steel has added another 1.7 lbs on to the weight. 
 

Still not sure what to do about fretboard inlays. The board is already scalloped, which complicates matters.

18 hours ago, henrim said:

There is substantial difference in hardness between different aluminum grades. But if you have worked with titanium it should be fairly easy to know whether you are working with aluminum or titanium. Aluminum work-hardens too, but I don’t think you get much of that that when working with file or saw. When shaping aluminum with mallet, english wheel or something like that, you need to anneal it every now and then, otherwise it gets too hard and cracks. But as far as I understand it shouldn’t be the case here. Maybe you got 7000 series or something.

It was a bit of a pig to work with! Another thing about the titanium I have is that it smells like horse dung….maybe that’s just my imagination though

26 minutes ago, Professor Woozle said:

Are you sure it's aluminium? If it's light but really hard it could be titanium.

Pretty sure it isn't. I have quite a bit of titanium in the house and it changes colour when i work on it (the whole heat reaction thing). Also it 'work hardens'. Not getting that from this particular metal. However, interestingly its heavier than other aluminium I have used.

Definitely ideal for Metal  Great work!

Did a bit more shaping today, added some contours in to the top and got rid of most of the extraneous metal from the sides. Incidentally, this aluminium is insanely hard…it must be some sort of space age alloy. Still need to shape it where it meets the end of the neck. 

16 minutes ago, henrim said:

Personally I wouldn’t want a guitar without a volume pot. I could very well live without adjustable tone though. And you can use a no-load pot if you want to temporarily disengage tone pot from the circuit.

Just a thought at the moment . I pretty much never use the tone personally, if I was to be totally honest I would wager that’s the same for most players…could be wrong ofcourse.

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Haven't done it, but addressing the potential treble issue is very simple: A resistor of 500k would equivalent a 5ook pot without the adjusting ability.

At least in my understanding, but I may be wrong.

Cool. I suppose I could do it and see how it goes. If it’s not to my liking then the resistor idea would be on the cards…or I could just add a pot . Clearance is an issue on this build, because the body is so thin. 
 

Another issue is the volume jump I keep hearing about. It’s already quite a hot pickup I believe, and would like to get a few nice clean sounds out of it along with the usual overdriven/distorted stuff. We will see. 

Wondering how many on here have done this, and what the experience was? Slightly tempted to do it on the current build, it features an Artec Hotrails in the bridge position. I’ve heard it adds treble, but how much? Is it a piercing amount, or does it depend on the pickup? Cheers all. 

Routed out a section on the top of the body and filled it with crumpled tin foil, put a layer of epoxy on the top.

My design now has evolved in to a guitar with no neck pocket (taking inspiration from Ken Parker). I bolted it on to the body today. The bridge hasn’t been bolted on yet, but it’s going to go on top of a corian riser so that it is at the right height for the strings. So far so good! Exciting times! 

As you can see, I need to titivate the shape slightly…parts of the aluminum are not yet plush with the carbon fiber. I’m also going to make it blend in to the neck section properly. 

Congrats! Awesome build as always

Maybe you could save the body section?

Ive sometimes thought about how cool it is that Ola kind of cut his teeth on this forum, and that him winning Guitar of the Month inspired him to take things further. Ofcourse, the rest is history. You can still see some of his posts on here. I wonder if he still checks out this forum from time to time? Its really interesting seeing how his ideas developed on here! A genuinely innovative builder by the looks of it. Both Strandberg and Ken Parker fascinate me.

Oh man!! Such an exciting build too. Love it when people work with unusual materials. Have you got any plywood left?