metal frame guitars sketches

Lately on the Guitarz blog I saw several interesting metal frame guitars, such as the Stonehenge III, the Weston Rail Bass, the Sardonix, and got inspired for this series of sketches. I learned from the wonderful Teuffel Birfish - the best of its kind - that aluminium is a perfect conductor for sound vibration, so fragmenting the wooden body should not be a problem for the acoustics. Have to admit that these guitars look a little too arty for my personal taste but it might interest someone !

more sketches (and a few comments and links)

I don't like so much forcefully fancy guitars, mostly not the "metal" ones ridiculously trying to look fierce (and worse when they are handled by graybeard musicians). On the other hand, when 90% of nowadays guitars are just boring Strat/Tele/Les Paul clones, metal guitars are the most creative ones once you got rid of the superfluous... Some are just classics of elegance (I don't have to mention Gibson's Flying V or Explorer claimed by metalheads though they were designed in the 50s) like the Ibanez Iceman, the Dean Cadillac, the BC Rich Bich 10... And I enjoy crazy guitars designed for Japanese Visual Kei musicians such as the ones you can see on ESP Japanese site, who are reaching a true poetic baroque and fit to the genre...

Anyway lately I let myself sketch some fancy guitars just for the fun of it and I don't regret it since it provided some nice ideas - also because I tried to keep them ergonomic. There is something to do with the double low horn that allow a good stability when playing sitting combined with a long horn. Also I was trying a kind of lyre guitar and found that in guitar history some have been more interesting than what I had in mind - as you can see here (amongst the fancy guitars I also like the lyre style Danelectro Longhorn) ; I won't go very far with lyre guitars but it inspired the back horns and better, the ram-horn (should be made out of aluminium)...

some people do read this blog!!!

I'm flabbergasted, I've just been reading a post about this blog on the Guitarz blog, and I must admit that I never really considered that anybody would look at my stuff, but a few friends to whom I can send this link when they ask me about my last activities.

GL Wilson from Guitarz makes a special mention of the "neckless guitar" project - this is encouraging and I will keep working on it - and expects to see some real building soon. I'm still busy with other things right now but in February I will start the OSB version of the 7-string guitar.

Lately I've been looking for answers to an important question: "where is the best position for a neck pickup" (even more important when you make one-pickup-in-neck-position guitars). I've been reading that 24-fret necks are not as good as 22-fret since they prevent to put the pick-up at the "harmonic node" of the strings (it was Robert Smith on guitarplayer.com about the conception of his Schecter Ultracure) - but several guitar makers to whom I asked the question told me that it is just a matter of taste and that I should try different positions until I can make the best choice (if you have more information about this question, it's welcome)...

But I don't think that for my prototypes I will build and string a guitar without the pickup and try I don't know how and check the sound, so all I can do is copy the position from my own favorite guitar...

in the neighbourhood

Lucky me! In my own neighbourhood, I found some support for my projects, at Nick Page Guitars. They make beautiful chambered aluminium glued front guitars, super light and with a nice twangy sound. Their website show mostly telecaster clones but they have better on the working bench, one claimed to be the merge of a Rickenbacker 4001 and a Fender Mustang (sorry, no pics - but believe me, it really works).

What were the odds that I would find just around the corner people who have similar demands and ideas for their guitars? Good to have someone who didn't look at me like I'm bizarre when I described my projects and asked for advice.