Wednesday, February 11, 2009

more sketches






this blog was supposed to be about guitar making but it turns out lately to be about guitar drawings - that should be like this until I have a little bit more time... but it's not so bad, uh?
published by bertram labels :

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous2/12/2009 2:13 PM

    The headless designs are really good... so are they all, but I'm particularly attracted to guitar designs, which take ergonomics into account.

    Sorry to butcher your design, but I'd like to propose an alternative way of mounting the tuners on your "guitars-pk.jpg" sketches . The holes made for finger access when tuning look good, but they might be too small to be practical. How about mounting a metal plate in place of the hole and have the strings going through slots in the place? Under the plate, the tuners should be mounted, with the knobs sticking up through the plate, easily accessible.

    It's a bit hard to explain without pictures, so I made a small post:
    http://tbeamguitar.blogspot.com/2009/02/using-traditional-tuners-for-headless.html
    on my blog to illustrate the point. It might go poorly with your design intentions, but to me it seems like a solution worth considering, so I'd just mention it.

    BTW, I haven't made it myself yet, so I can't say for certain that it will work well. Can't see why it shouldn't, though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2/12/2009 8:12 PM

    hello Alex, thank you for your comment and your idea, it's interesting, and could fit to the aluminium front plate I intend to use on most of my projects - though the plate would probably not be strong enough and should be reinforced... Firefly style tuners could also be used..

    the minus is that I have to admit that my headless design is more for aesthetic than ergonomic reasons - so I wouldn't want to hide the tuners (I'm quite a fan of the BC Rich Bich 10 - not exactly a sober guitar).

    on another sketch you can see a ES-330 shaped guitar than would probably fit the best to the concept - with a neck-through and semi-hollow body, there is room enough to put big holes to access the tuners (also tuners could evolve a little bit and be smaller, they don't have to stay so 19th century).

    anyway I appreciate your blog since we have often similar ideas (and building time problems!) - if you don't mind I will show your sketches on my next post (and BTW what software do you use for drawing? - I'm so old school with the pencils I steal from the kindergarten of my kid!)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous2/13/2009 11:41 AM

    hello Alex, after looking more carefully at your sketches, I realize that the tuners are on the front of the guitar - I dumbly figured that they would be behind - hence the reference to the Firefly style tuners... Then I would not put your plate system on the front on the guitar but 1 com deep to avoid to have the tuners in the way - I'll post a sketch of this later...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous2/13/2009 3:30 PM

    OK, good you found out ;-) It can be difficult to explain, even with pictures. I also thought about making a model including a guitar body. Probably should have done that, but I was lazy.

    I use Google Sketchup for my designs. Compared to pencil sketches, it's slower, but more precise. By making correct 3D models, I've avoided a number of design errors that wouldn't be discovered until building the actual guitar. Sketchup is not very good compared to pencils if you're looking for shape rather than function (but I'm a "form follows function" guy, so that's fine with me).

    I can see that some of your designs (especially the "open ended" ones) give more room for the fingers when tuning. And I agree: If the tuners look good, why hide them?

    Still, for some of the more "early sixties-" or "Danelectro"-inspired of your designs, I think a cover plate with knobs would go well. One of your sketches shows a Fender Jaguar inspired tremolo system, and the tuner plate would look quite at home on this one. If one should decide not to have the tremolo.

    You're right about recessing the plate in the top of the guitar to avoid contact with the picking/strumming arm. And unless very large tuners are used, there should be room enough for the tops of the knobs to be flush with the guitar body's top without the bottoms of the tuners sticking out. Grover Rotomatics, e.g. are around 40 mm long, AFAIR.

    Please use the sketches as you please. I used yours without asking, remember ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

gUitarREN's facebook

gUitarREN on Facebook