Axkoa
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I'll preface this post with saying that I have almost absolutely NO chance of building this guitar soon, within a year or two, as I'm currently a first year University student studying Engineering that has no job... :help:
So after I finished up some work repairing brass instruments over my (too long) holidays I got bored during the wait between the end of working and the start of University, so I decided to try my hand at designing a guitar. I don't have any experience with this kind of stuff so many hours were sunk into researching as well as lots of guessing work...and tedious times learning eMachineShop.
The first thing that I did was sketch up something that I wanted the end result to look somewhat like. I've been lusting over offset guitars since I started playing guitar so I decided to try design one of them, something that 2 years of Senior graphics at school helped me with... I'm pretty sure the day that I started drawing this up I had visited a guitar store and had a try at one of Fender's new Orange Duo-Sonics, so I was just a little bit influenced by that day out. Mainly with the colour of the guitar and the scale length of it, which I actually really enjoyed playing, it just felt right. I also really enjoyed playing with the maple fretboard, which contrasted nicely with the orange of the guitar. But anyway, here is my original (very) rough sketch with some of the potential specs I would have with it:
Most of the hardware and woods I had done a little bit of research on that's why they're not your typical mahogany, ash, maple etc. That kind of stuff is too expensive to source in Australia. :laughing11:
After this I decided to try out making this in a newly downloaded free program "eMachineShop". After taking some (lots) time to work out how the hell to work the program I came up with a somewhat version of that sketch I had done in an electronic form.
Even without consulting anyone, I knew how dodgy and amateur this looked, so I decided for a change with the pickguard, pickups, controls, bridge...pretty much everything with the shape except the scale length...I decided to go with a Les Paul sort of layout.
Now THIS looks a lot better than that version before. Mainly because of my use of actual dimensions for most of the stuff. After this I decided to try out using paint.net and give it some colour. Between the stages I decided to modify it a little bit and put a Trapeze tailpiece on it as well as having it be double bound with cream binding, ALSO with a cream Les Paul style pickguard.
I was a lot happier with this than I was when it didn't have the whole tailpiece, there was just something about the back that made it look odd...I guess that's the whole point of your own opinion, making stuff look good whether its really NEEDED or not. :toothy12:
But there was just something about this body that didn't really appeal to me super much. It didn't have enough of an offset for my liking as well as looking a little too...well...mainstream? So I went and did an overhaul this morning and came up with something, that I think, looked incredibly unique and amazing, but I may be a bit biased... :laughing7:
This new design actually borrowed a little bit off of a Jazz bass, and you'll see why in a sec. However, I much prefer this new design, it's a lot longer so I can have a longer tailpiece and have it not look as fat as it did beforehand, something that really didn't appeal to me.
So without further ado, my final (as of now) design (without the pickguard cause I can't be bothered going and getting a snipping of the version I have with one)!
One of the major things with this design, I guess, is the fact that I changed the scale length to 24.25" instead of 24"...I'm not entirely sure why I did this besides the fact that I thought it would suit Rock, which this guitar is aimed at, more. Though you can definitely see the influence of the jazz bass with this though, the bottom left hand side of the guitar really sticks out like a Jazz bass, and I've always loved the butt of a Jazz bass. :turtle:
I decided to go have it go under the same procedure as the other design I had, the precarious paint.net surgery...
Well here we are! The essential final design. One thing I changed was the fretboard because I wanted to have a bound fretboard to match with the body of the guitar. Chrome with cream hardware still looks really nice with the "Surf Orange", as I'm dubbing it. I've got the new pickguard in there as well but I'm not 100% sure of it yet... I put a lot more effort into the design of this current version of it than I had the original, but that makes sense doesn't it?
The last thing I did was print it out to scale and sticky tape it together which gives me a proper idea of the scale of the guitar. Without a doubt it's shorter than my other guitar scale length-wise, however it has a longer body, which I don't really mind. So here is the picture of it in real-life:
So yeah, that's my personal design process. I'm interested as to what you guys think of the process and the final design of this guitar, so it would be awesome if you could leave some thoughts, or even some constructive criticism, I don't mind!
Thanks for reading! :headbang:
So after I finished up some work repairing brass instruments over my (too long) holidays I got bored during the wait between the end of working and the start of University, so I decided to try my hand at designing a guitar. I don't have any experience with this kind of stuff so many hours were sunk into researching as well as lots of guessing work...and tedious times learning eMachineShop.
The first thing that I did was sketch up something that I wanted the end result to look somewhat like. I've been lusting over offset guitars since I started playing guitar so I decided to try design one of them, something that 2 years of Senior graphics at school helped me with... I'm pretty sure the day that I started drawing this up I had visited a guitar store and had a try at one of Fender's new Orange Duo-Sonics, so I was just a little bit influenced by that day out. Mainly with the colour of the guitar and the scale length of it, which I actually really enjoyed playing, it just felt right. I also really enjoyed playing with the maple fretboard, which contrasted nicely with the orange of the guitar. But anyway, here is my original (very) rough sketch with some of the potential specs I would have with it:
Most of the hardware and woods I had done a little bit of research on that's why they're not your typical mahogany, ash, maple etc. That kind of stuff is too expensive to source in Australia. :laughing11:
After this I decided to try out making this in a newly downloaded free program "eMachineShop". After taking some (lots) time to work out how the hell to work the program I came up with a somewhat version of that sketch I had done in an electronic form.
Even without consulting anyone, I knew how dodgy and amateur this looked, so I decided for a change with the pickguard, pickups, controls, bridge...pretty much everything with the shape except the scale length...I decided to go with a Les Paul sort of layout.
Now THIS looks a lot better than that version before. Mainly because of my use of actual dimensions for most of the stuff. After this I decided to try out using paint.net and give it some colour. Between the stages I decided to modify it a little bit and put a Trapeze tailpiece on it as well as having it be double bound with cream binding, ALSO with a cream Les Paul style pickguard.
I was a lot happier with this than I was when it didn't have the whole tailpiece, there was just something about the back that made it look odd...I guess that's the whole point of your own opinion, making stuff look good whether its really NEEDED or not. :toothy12:
But there was just something about this body that didn't really appeal to me super much. It didn't have enough of an offset for my liking as well as looking a little too...well...mainstream? So I went and did an overhaul this morning and came up with something, that I think, looked incredibly unique and amazing, but I may be a bit biased... :laughing7:
This new design actually borrowed a little bit off of a Jazz bass, and you'll see why in a sec. However, I much prefer this new design, it's a lot longer so I can have a longer tailpiece and have it not look as fat as it did beforehand, something that really didn't appeal to me.
So without further ado, my final (as of now) design (without the pickguard cause I can't be bothered going and getting a snipping of the version I have with one)!
One of the major things with this design, I guess, is the fact that I changed the scale length to 24.25" instead of 24"...I'm not entirely sure why I did this besides the fact that I thought it would suit Rock, which this guitar is aimed at, more. Though you can definitely see the influence of the jazz bass with this though, the bottom left hand side of the guitar really sticks out like a Jazz bass, and I've always loved the butt of a Jazz bass. :turtle:
I decided to go have it go under the same procedure as the other design I had, the precarious paint.net surgery...
Well here we are! The essential final design. One thing I changed was the fretboard because I wanted to have a bound fretboard to match with the body of the guitar. Chrome with cream hardware still looks really nice with the "Surf Orange", as I'm dubbing it. I've got the new pickguard in there as well but I'm not 100% sure of it yet... I put a lot more effort into the design of this current version of it than I had the original, but that makes sense doesn't it?
The last thing I did was print it out to scale and sticky tape it together which gives me a proper idea of the scale of the guitar. Without a doubt it's shorter than my other guitar scale length-wise, however it has a longer body, which I don't really mind. So here is the picture of it in real-life:
So yeah, that's my personal design process. I'm interested as to what you guys think of the process and the final design of this guitar, so it would be awesome if you could leave some thoughts, or even some constructive criticism, I don't mind!
Thanks for reading! :headbang:
ccasion14:
