CoryKer

When I see that first design, I automatically think a nice metallic orange paintjob, 3 cream P-90s, and a rosewood fretboard so damn much. I think overall the initial design is the strongest!

Just an idea... make it a setneck with a contoured heel, and make the neck a three piece with a laminated strip of cherry in the middle that continues the line from the body? I think that would look beautiful with one common strip to unite the neck and body.

My thoughts exactly... the large difference in horn size is one of the cooler elements of that original drawing.

We've all missed a very important point in hynsu's post... this is gonna be a set neck! If I remember correctly, we've only ever seen bolt-ons! This is a new one!

How embarassing, I double-posted.

Contrary to everyone else's opinion, I think a nice yellow would look fantastic. More of an amber, I guess. You see an awful lot of trans blue guitars, but not many trans yellow. I think an amber-type finish would look great against the darker fretboard.

For some reason, I really didn't dig that neck that at all by itself. But it's working amazingly well on that body, which is absolutely gorgeous. The whole thing has a nice, piano-like class to it. Wicked guitar!

That's looking absolutely beautiful. I can't wait to see it finished.

I think stuffing some cotton balls around your trem springs ought to fix it.

I really dig that shape. Call me crazy, but something about that design screams out for 3 P-90s.

That is some great looking rosewood.

I probably couldn't. But given neutral amp settings, I could certainly tell you what kinda tonal properties the guitar had. And that makes it reasonable that if you know what kind of sound you want, you'll pick the right wood for the application. So whether or not we can identify what wood was used is kinda irrelevant. My preference would be for alder, but that's just me. But it's not like a mahogany baritone would sound bad or anything... depending on what he's going for.

I really prefer the curved one as well. It is a nice indicator of the telecaster influence, and it also breaks up an otherwise pretty rigid design.

Are you sure you meant Mockingbird? I can really only see one vague similarity.

Honestly, it's pretty tough to make a guitar nowadays that is both A.) original and B.) Subtle. You can only do so much with traditional guitar design, and that's a single or double cutaway. A design that fits your criteria is just going to be a variation on either of those themes. Sorry, but it seems like you're asking for a design that is both original and traditional. I'm afraid with the way guitars have developed, you're not gonna find it.

Actually, oddly enough, that didn't really factor in, though I do dig the shape. The tail of the guitar is really more Fernandes Ravelle than anything, and the other dimensions of the guitar are based generally on an Ibanez RG. From there, I lengthened the bass horn and shortened the treble horn (just personal taste, I like the top of the guitar to extend a bit more to match the extension of the tail). The ends of the horns became more "stubby" and less pointed at some point, probably inspired by Trey Anastasio's Languedoc (sic) or possibly that one Schecter line. In the beginning stages, this design had full C-cuts, which was actually just as a result of violins and such (at the time, I hadn't really seen many guitars with them, though I certainly acknowledge this was not an original idea). The lower C cut was transformed into a half C cut since I often play sitting down, and the top one went to match the bottom. Whew... that was a mouthful. But yeah, I do dig the Iceman, and I can see some of it in this design now as well. The highly offset cutaways is supposed to be kind of a main point of this guitar... When you say balance, do you mean physical balance or visual balance?

Yeah, it totally broke my heart when I saw those Leviathans. I've been kicking around the basics of that design (the extended bass-side horn, the "tail", and the sharp cuts around the waist of the body) for honestly 3 years now. I didn't notice that this headstock is pretty much like lgm's till you brought it up now though, so that'll probably change. The headstock design probably seeped in subconsciously from when I first saw it. Wouldn't be the first time... in that first draft three years ago I accidentally "designed" the headstock from Hetfield's KL explorer.

So I've been working on this design and slight variations on it for a damn long time now (it, along with others, litter the left margins of my notes in about every class). I hope to take a general shop/woodworking class at the local college nights in maybe the summer or something, just to get a feel for the tools I'd be using. But anyways, here's a design I'd kinda like to do something with. I've gone back and forth on woods, but this is what i've settled on (at least for this design). -Alder body, 1/4" flame maple top (if I can manage, a drop top bent over the forearm contour) -Bolt on neck, either all maple or maple with 2 very thin bubinga (or comparable dark wood) laminates -Ebony fretboard -Flame maple veneer on the headstock -AANJ style neck joint -6-inline reverse headstock -Strat-style hardtail string-through bridge -Single EMG81 pickup, volume control -Medium blue, stain black/sand back style finish, matching on headstock -Natural "faux" binding on the maple top on the body, white binding on neck/headstock -MOP inlay at 12th fret only, as in picture Anyways, tell me what you think. I'm not gonna make any false promises and say "I'll have it done in months", but I really hope I can get a start on it this summer.

Bound deep blue on quilt is one of my favorite looks for a "showy" tele. There's a couple great examples of it in Warmoth's gallery. I don't speak from experience, but that binding looks VERY clean. Lately I've been really wanting to build a telecaster. It'd be a relatively uncomplicated first project, and I could use some tele tones as well.

See, that is a perfectly good looking guitar, and I can definitely see why (from an aesthetic point of view) many people would dig seeing the stripes. Unfortunately, I'm just not one of them! Frankly, though, despite my tastes even if the stripes were showing on this guitar, I'd still think it looked fantastic! I can't wait to see it finished!

Just so someone says it, I really dig the way you've chosen to do it. The multilaminate necks look awesome as a subtle thing behind the guitar, but IMO when they're visible from the front, combined with all the hardware and such, it gets too busy! I think the way you've chosen to do it looks awesome.

That's gonna look friggin' sweet in orange. I can't wait to see it finished.

I've been designing a new guitar off and on for a while now... I think I've finally settled on what I want. -Body shape of my own creation, somewhat Conklin and Fernandes Ravelle inspired -Neck-thru, 3 pc. maple/bubinga/maple -Mahogany body wings, 1 3/8" thick -Flame Maple top, 5/8" thick, with a sharp 3/*8" "carve" (see a Yamaha AES model to see what I mean -Stained black faux binding on the maple top, 1/4" thick -Natural finish, slightly darker on the carved portion than on the flat top -Offset double cutaway, bass bout meets the neck at the 19th fret, treble bout at around the 23rd -Rosewood fretboard with natural maple binding, 24 frets at the low E to 27 or 29 on the high E (its all for the visual, I want the distance from the bass bout to the end of the fretboard to be the same for the treble bout) -Somewhat sharktooth-shaped inlay at the 12th fret, maple center with an ebony border -Reverse Ken Lawrence-esque headstock with matching veneer (I'd just made a headstock that echoed some of the lines in the body... very dissappointed to see that it had essentially been done before ) -Logo inlaid into headstock of the same style as the 12th fret inlay, uses the letters CKM (Cory Ker Model, or Music, or whatever) -Single EMG81 humbucker in the bridge position, mated to a single volume control -Black hardware (matte if possible), recessed tonepros and string-thru -Hadn't thought about it until today, but I like the idea Brian posted about creating a recess in the back of the body for the string ferrules so that the strings don't exit the body at such a sharp angle... I'll look into this further. -Output jack recessed into body in a way I can't describe without pictures... but it makes it easier to feed the guitar around the strap and leave less cord sticking out. ...I think that's about it. Man, I wish I did things as much as I planned them.

That's shaping up very nicely. For colour, I'd love to see that in transparent green, with no burst involved. I think with the flashiness of the gold hardware and the somewhat radical V shape, a burst finish would just be "too much". Green is one of the few colours that I really like with gold hardware.

Wow... everyone note how the inside of the pickup cavity is flamed on that last pic... how freaking thick is that maple top?