Aluminum

[bagman67]

Warning: possible threadjacking!

Well, more a rabbit trail off the main topic, but...  I have a few sheets of aluminum/steel sheetmetal - (leftovers from the HVAC install on my house).  Wondering - could I use them as a veneer on a guitar?  Or even a top for a thinline style guitar? I've learned a ton building a thinline from scratch, but I'm ready to do another one & make it much better - if I could use this sheetmetal as a top (I could polish it into something seriously shiny), would that work?

This guy has done amazing things with copper, brass, steel sheet metal tops on guitars - I think you needn't worry too much about a thin veneer of metal screwing with your tone, at least if the metal is glued down to wood, since (all together now) the primary sound source on an electric guitar is the string vibrating within the magnetic field of the pickup, not the resonance of the wood. 

http://girlbrand.com/

See, e.g., http://girlbrand.com/indexM.htm

See also Tony Zemaitis:  http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/Guitarist/322/ac-zemaitis-mf501-bl-custom-metal-front-460-80.jpg

 

[AutoBat]

Stubhead: Only USA & Canada call it Aluminum, all other English speaking countries go with the IUPAC Aluminium. spelling.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Good thing that's where he and his aluminum guitar are.

 

[stubhead]

Also, there's a Swiss designer named H.R. Giger who's most famous for having designed the monsters for the Alien/Aliens/Alien 3 movies, as well as the sets. He's designed sets for other creepy/science fiction movies, done album covers (Brain Salad Surgery, anyone?), furniture... and

His art has greatly influenced tattooists and fetishists worldwide. Under a licensing deal Ibanez guitars released an H. R. Giger signature series: the Ibanez ICHRG2, an Ibanez Iceman, features "NY City VI", the Ibanez RGTHRG1 has "NY City XI" printed on it, the S Series SHRG1Z has a metal-coated engraving of "Biomechanical Matrix" on it, and a 4-string SRX bass, SRXHRG1, has "N.Y. City X" on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giger_gitarren.jpg
One of the guitars had like an engraved metal top, and another one had like a trilobyte skeleton behind a gray wash. Ibanez has pretty good online documentation, I need to track down that trilobyte thing myself. I'll post again when I find more.
Giger also designed this guitar:
http://www.lieberguitars.com/guitars/gigerstein/

If you have any Victorian-era commercial buildings in your town, they most likely have pressed-tin ceilings. It may be buried under acoustic tile or it may have been sold to rich New Yorkers to add charm to their lofts. There's jillions of patterns for the tin, and a lot of online info of the history and even process. People collect the stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressed_metal_ceiling

Really, any sort of ornamental pattern is fair game - architecture, M.C. Escher, Ernst Haeckel, industrial, it's a bottomless pit. My next build is going have some of this stuff, so I'm right in the trenches. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

The latest Vintage Guitar magazine has Joe Satriani on the cover, and he mentions that Chrome Boy is dipped in actual chrome plating.  It looks amazing, but it cracks and splits like chrome plating is wont to do, and he has to glue it down with plastic to avoid cutting up his hand on the razor sharp chrome flakes.

 

[DangerousR6]

The latest Vintage Guitar magazine has Joe Satriani on the cover, and he mentions that Chrome Boy is dipped in actual chrome plating.  It looks amazing, but it cracks and splits like chrome plating is wont to do, and he has to glue it down with plastic to avoid cutting up his hand on the razor sharp chrome flakes.

I believe i said that... :icon_biggrin:

Chrome Boy looks like a mirror. Not really aluminum.

As much as I love the finish, I wouldn't want a guitar with it. It would be impossible to ever keep clean. I can only imagine it would always be covered in fingerprints and such. :dontknow:

Chrome Boy is just that, it's chrome plated Lucite... The finish would be murder to keep clean, but I'd still love to have a "real" chrome boy, but I haven't 10k to throw down on geetar... :dontknow:

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

Yes indeed, not stealing your thunder Dangerous, just directing people to some pics.  Also the little tidit about the razor sharp edges I found interesting.  Just shows that sometimes a cool experiment has unintended ramifications.

 

[DangerousR6]

Yes indeed, not stealing your thunder Dangerous, just directing people to some pics.  Also the little tidit about the razor sharp edges I found interesting.  Just shows that sometimes a cool experiment has unintended ramifications.

LOL, I know, just ribbin' ya.... :icon_thumright:

 

[oldfart]

I've always been interested in the special run of Aluminum Stratocasters Fender put out back in the day.  Anyone else played one?  I was wondering if there would be any interest in an improved version.

 

[stubhead]

Out of the 400 Strat bodies they got, they made 109 into the Harley-Davidson 90th Anniversary edition. They were selling for between $22,000 and $30,000 before the crash, I don't think any owners with kind of thing is doing anything other than waiting.

http://www.maverick-music.com/fender-guitars/1993-fender-90th-anniversary-harley-davidson-strat

If you do some searching, you'll find that a certain unknown quantity were farmed to the custom shop, who painted them with palm trees and hula girls and such. And those were the lucky ones. A lot of them were finished in what was called a "blue tie-dyed" or "purple tie-dyed" finish, even a green, blue or red "splatter" anodizing; they look to me like Fender was trying to do a homage to the swirl Ibanezes - and blew it.

Yuck.
There's a good overview in this article about a collector (can't play :icon_scratch who's got like one of each, including one of the three GOLD-plated ones:

http://www.stratcollector.com/newsdesk/archives/000262.html

I have seen pictures of the Telecasters in the blue tie-dyed finish, but they've all been inhaled into collector land. 400 Strats, only 100 Tele's, figures. The body I have was one of an unknown (to me) number of overruns. There have been at least two people claiming to be using up the last of the old Fender bodies, that Kellett guy mentioned in the article and someone else. There have been vintique-like issues of people paying out thousands of dollars, waiting two years and...poof! Presto magic, no guitar. There have also been at least five completely separate people who have made one-off Aluminum Telecasters, including the Normandy guitar company, who I think is actually in production.
http://www.normandyguitars.com/

There's ALSO somebody out there making them out of bell brass, copper and bronze, but I don't have time to chase it right now. The biggie is the James Trussart Steelcasters, of course.

Ooh here's another one:
http://liquidmetalguitar.com/

It's not really new or radical, they've been making metal dobros for 80 years or so.

 

[DangerousR6]

Out of the 400 Strat bodies they got, they made 109 into the Harley-Davidson 90th Anniversary edition. They were selling for between $22,000 and $30,000 before the crash, I don't think any owners with kind of thing is doing anything other than waiting.

http://www.maverick-music.com/fender-guitars/1993-fender-90th-anniversary-harley-davidson-strat

If you do some searching, you'll find that a certain unknown quantity were farmed to the custom shop, who painted them with palm trees and hula girls and such. And those were the lucky ones. A lot of them were finished in what was called a "blue tie-dyed" or "purple tie-dyed" finish, even a green, blue or red "splatter" anodizing; they look to me like Fender was trying to do a homage to the swirl Ibanezes - and blew it.

Yuck.
There's a good overview in this article about a collector (can't play :icon_scratch who's got like one of each, including one of the three GOLD-plated ones:

http://www.stratcollector.com/newsdesk/archives/000262.html

I have seen pictures of the Telecasters in the blue tie-dyed finish, but they've all been inhaled into collector land. 400 Strats, only 100 Tele's, figures. The body I have was one of an unknown (to me) number of overruns. There have been at least two people claiming to be using up the last of the old Fender bodies, that Kellett guy mentioned in the article and someone else. There have been vintique-like issues of people paying out thousands of dollars, waiting two years and...poof! Presto magic, no guitar. There have also been at least five completely separate people who have made one-off Aluminum Telecasters, including the Normandy guitar company, who I think is actually in production.
http://www.normandyguitars.com/

There's ALSO somebody out there making them out of bell brass, copper and bronze, but I don't have time to chase it right now. The biggie is the James Trussart Steelcasters, of course.

Ooh here's another one:
http://liquidmetalguitar.com/

It's not really new or radical, they've been making metal dobros for 80 years or so.

There were also a run of "Mustang" strat's made by Fender for Ford's Mustang anniversary.. There were 35 made, 20 went to Ford execs, and 15 were given away in a contest.

And the ones that were done in all the strange tie-dyed and various grafix were done by Peter Kellett..

 

[Updown]

These look like they have Aluminum Neck on them 

 

[DangerousR6]

They do, I've ran across a couple different ones that have aluminum necks.

See them on Feebay from time to time.

There's also another aluminum bodied guitar called Sanctum and they use Warmoth necks..

 

[DangerousR6]

How about an all aluminum Jaguar... :headbang1:

 

[stubhead]

Oddly enough, I used to have a Travis Bean TB1000 back in the deep dark 80's. It was the exact opposite - wood body, aluminum neck. It was shaped like a 335, but all solid koa, 14 lbs worth. It was an amazing sounding guitar, the wound strings sounded like a grand piano. Only better, because it was a guitar. However -  a long thin piece of aluminum subject to heat changes reacts QUICK, just your hand temperature alone... I read somewhere that "some guy" had compared the expansion coefficients of wood vs. aluminum and "proved" that they didn't go off key worse than wood-necked guitar - right after he proved that honeybees can't fly and trickle-down economics makes poor people rich.  Like this->

Out of all the ones I used to have, this is the ONE I wish I'd kept - as long as you're sitting in the living room, not trying to wield it live.

My aluminum Telecaster looks like that Strat on the inside, there's a solid block under the neck and then a frame of welded 1" X 1/2" aluminum bars that extend down through the body. The strings run through the body & through another little block and their tension in the ferrules actually holds the back plate tight. Here's one of the newer "Kellett" guitars - with slightly fanned frets - on a six-string?  :icon_scratch: -

Those finishes just look like a stupid little kid did them - a Mexican on a horse riding off into a wasteland of bloody vomit? Sure, I want THAT one.... Lucky I don't have $4,000 and not enough guitars. "Pop Art." And somebody's always getting up to some kind of trouble:

 

[Red Rocks]

We have tried all sorts of chrome paints but the end product always has issues. We would love to find chrome that actually looks like chrome. Most chrome paint jobs look ok in the picture but up close and in person they look pretty bad.

 

[DangerousR6]

We have tried all sorts of chrome paints but the end product always has issues. We would love to find chrome that actually looks like chrome. Most chrome paint jobs look ok in the picture but up close and in person they look pretty bad.

http://alsacorp.com/products/mirrachrome/mirrachrome.htm

 

[Disco Scottie]

Aluminum's for sissies. Real men play brass... because only real men can strap on a 79lb guitar:

 

[swarfrat]

You can use your brass guitar to play Weird Al's Living With a Hernia.

 

[Red Rocks]

We have tried all sorts of chrome paints but the end product always has issues. We would love to find chrome that actually looks like chrome. Most chrome paint jobs look ok in the picture but up close and in person they look pretty bad.

http://alsacorp.com/products/mirrachrome/mirrachrome.htm

We tried Alsa but had poor results. We also tried other brands with better results but not anything we would want to sell.