Wave guitar build project

Megii

Hi, I joined up on here a couple of weeks or so ago, so thought I'd better post something! Some amazing looking work shown here, quite intimidating lol. I do have a current guitar project on the go, and have built a tele and strat from parts before that, plus have developed a liking for guitar tinkering and modding in general. Well the current one was prompted by my having a spare neck from an Starfield Altair model from the early '90's. Embarassingly, I kind of knackered the body for this guitar once when trying to strip it down to bare wood and do a natural oil finish - it's a long story. But I have designed my own body shape to replace it, which has just been built from swamp ash by www.guitarbuild.co.uk . I'm currently eagerly awaiting delivery, which should be this coming Monday. I'll post a couple of pics so you can see what you think:

 

I have got a relatively cheap bridge to use:

 

which seems nice enough, and has a bit of mass to it, but I do wonder if I should upgrade to a Hipshot fixed bridge maybe - I don't know if anyone would like to comment on that, I'd be grateful for any thoughts. There is obviously more I could say about the project, but that would be going on a bit too much for one post. There is a blog I'm running on another forum here if you're interested. And sorry those pics are looking a bit huge, I'll watch out for that in future, but hope it's OK for now, cheers! 

JookyChap

That looks wicked - can't wait to see this one..

Shame about the Starfield, but the necks on those were lovely, so not a bad start

Looking forward to the build thread already

And welcome...

Megii

Thanks for the welcome JC, appreciated. I am really struggling with the waiting at the moment, it's taken me 7 weeks to get from first ideas to guitarbuild having actually made the body. They tell me it is quite something, so Monday can't come quickly enough really. I do still feel bad about the Starfield, it's honestly not like me to ruin guitars - and as you say, they were decent quality instruments. Although somehow, there was just something not quite right about the one I had, the bass strings in particular had a dullish sound, and not a huge amount of sustain - maybe mine just happened to have some duff body wood or something. But the neck is a good 'un certainly - a 25" scale length, light oil finish, rosewood fretboard - and at least I've now done something to give it a new lease of life.

I did make an earlier plan of the guitar shape, which I photographed with the guitar neck and some parts to give an idea of the final instrument (apologies for my feet!):

JookyChap

It looks good

Though maybe clip  your nails

Megii

Cheers! I have attended to my toe-nails since taking that pic lol ">

Sporky

As I was scrolling down the image, I did think "that lower horn is a bit hooky", but when you get to the cutout in the back of the body it makes sense. I quite like that.

Megii

Sporky said:

As I was scrolling down the image, I did think "that lower horn is a bit hooky", but when you get to the cutout in the back of the body it makes sense. I quite like that.

Thanks Sporky, I would accept what you're saying re the lower horn - it is perhaps the one place where there was a conflict between aesthetics and practicality - and the aesthetics won that time. But I did at least make the cutaway quite wide and low, so I feel it's unlikely to cause me too much of an issue in reality - I do play up there sometimes, but probably won't be attempting any sweeping Steve Vai arpeggios with my fingers splayed over 10 frets, or anything, so I think I'll have enough room for my needs. The cutout in the base is where the jack socket will be btw, glad you like it!

Megii

It seems a bit crazy perhaps, but  Guitarbuild also did a short computer-generated 3D video of my guitar body design - it doesn't last very long at all, but does give some extra impression of the shape - I've put it up on YouTube here .

There's also a couple of 3D images, I've since changed the contouring on the back, but otherwise much the same, and you can see the jack socket placement going through to the control cavity, which I'm rather proud of.

 

JookyChap

I really like that and the video is cheesy cool, love it

Megii

The video certainly puts a smile on my face, I love the cheesy background music I have to say. I do wish it lasted a bit longer and took in some more angles, but I guess that would use an awful lot of computer processing. All the 3D stuff did actually help me to gain a good idea of what I was actually doing, and what I wanted to change, so useful stuff.

GuitarMonkey

It's good to see an unusual design for a change. 

I do think it needs to be painted though to show off its curves.

Megii

 GuitarMonkey said:

It's good to see an unusual design for a change. 

I do think it needs to be painted though to show off its curves.

Thanks! I did surprise myself somewhat with the design, I'm normally a fairly reserved sort of chap, but somehow I seem to have let my wild, artistic side out a bit with this one. I'm afraid it's not going to be a painted finish though, I really like the natural wood look with guitars. Guitarbuild tell me they picked out a nice slab of swamp ash to use, with some nice grain pattern (one-piece) so in a way it would be a shame to cover that up. Plus I think I'd be rubbish at doing a good spray finish, but I can handle Tru-Oil OK, so I'm sticking with that. I hope the curves will be shown off reasonably well though all the same.

monquixote

Ace to see a self build that isn't an S or T type. 

Hope it goes well, looking forward to seeing more posts. 

Megii

monquixote said:

Ace to see a self build that isn't an S or T type. 

Hope it goes well, looking forward to seeing more posts. 

Cheers for that! I will be sure to post a few piccies when I get my greedy mits on the actual body on Monday. I must admit my previous two projects were a tele and then a strat lol.

OilCityPickups

My custom built Manson in the seventies had a less extreme version of your lower cut away. it was great ... as it would stand up against an amp without falling over.

Megii

TheGuitarWeasel said:

My custom built Manson in the seventies had a less extreme version of your lower cut away. it was great ... as it would stand up against an amp without falling over.

Cheers for that, I didn't realise the idea had been used as early as that, though I am well aware I'm not doing anything original. Do you still have that Manson btw, I'd be interested to see a pic. There was some British maker in the 80s I think - I remember seeing the guitars in Guitarist magazine, perhaps that was in my head. I was also thinking a bit along the ergo-guitar kind of thing at first, but did not want the huge upper bout they have - as the design took shape it kind of morphed into the result you see. I am planning to have 2 strap buttons, one each side of the cutaway, so the guitar will stand on those if lent against an amp or the wall.

Afraid I'm still waiting for the body to arrive today - it being a bank holiday Monday, no deliveries today, and the parcel was sent on Friday with next working day delivery - so that's tomorrow!

Jalapeno

Very interesting - keep us posted.

Would like to hear how you got the shape, who did the drawings etc

DiscoStu

Looks good to me. The cut out on the body reminds me of something else though and it's bugging me what it is!

Megii

Jalapeno said:

Very interesting - keep us posted.

Would like to hear how you got the shape, who did the drawings etc

Thanks! The shape is basically my own work - I just started with a blank sheet of paper and started drawing lines on it, and with a collection of vague ideas in my head. The cutaway came in as a result of the shape of some of the ergonomic guitar designs I'd seen, and also the Ovation Breadwinner, which I'd looked at. But I really didn't want anything quite so radical, plus I had the idea the Guitar Weasel mentioned, that it could be a shape that stands up on it's own. At some point I hit on the "wave" theme - so the horns and cutaway/lower bout all form breaking wave shapes - or at least that's the idea. I can show you a picture of an earlier version, from which I then started to adjust and improve - one thing you can see is that the wave idea came in, and also the upper horn got a fair bit more radical. Plus I had to detail the front and rear contouring I wanted, the edge radius, control cavity placement, where the controls would go, pickup cavity size and placement etc. etc. It all took me about 7 weeks to get to a result I didn't want to change any more.  Phil at www.guitarbuild.co.uk  produced the nice images at the top of the thread after putting my plan drawing through a CAD process.

This pic shows an earlier effort, next to the final plan that I sent to Guitarbuild.co.uk (there were still some changes made after that, as a result of the CAD images Guitarbuild sent me, notably to the rear contouring):

Megii

DiscoStu said:

Looks good to me. The cut out on the body reminds me of something else though and it's bugging me what it is!

Something good I hope, let me know if you remember!

DiscoStu

Megii said:

DiscoStu said:

Looks good to me. The cut out on the body reminds me of something else though and it's bugging me what it is!

Something good I hope, let me know if you remember!

Got it! Tom Araya's old bass: