Some self made instruments...

bea

bea

AmBASSador of the F Clef
Country flag
... and other gear.

Maybe i might start from my beginnings. My number two. I did it with 15 with extremly limited tools and total lack of skills. After two mayor overhauls - however maintaining the integrity of the instrument - it has long reached a state where i could call it finished.

I always liked Vs. But i always felt that the idea could be designed better; the Gibsons, at least many of them, have the charme and the edges of a truck.

And that's my first approach:

Flying_V_Guitar_Body.jpg

Unusual in many ways. But mainly because this is a semihollow. Or beter 2/3 hollow. A very stable frame of spruce with internal parallel bracing, a sustain block on the bottom filling about half the height of the body, and the maple insert of the top floating freely give it a warm, yet powerful tone about half way between an archtop with freely floating pickup and a solid body. In a way offering the good of both worlds - the archtop sound as well as a fat sounding rock guitar.
 
so its obviously in the form of a JR one pup V but was wondering why the neck spot over the bridge spot for the pickup ???? more Jazzy a sound ?
 
LOVE IT---- I spend 80% of my time on the neck pup---- richer fuller tone IMHO---

the Spirit really helped me "embrace" the bridge some ----LOVE the "V" bea!!! Well done!
 
JohnnyGoo said:
so its obviously in the form of a JR one pup V but was wondering why the neck spot over the bridge spot for the pickup ???? more Jazzy a sound ?
Click to expand...
That was my intention. But even on an archtop with a floating (at least on mine) You can get a very hard and sreaming tone with a lot of attack if You simply play really close to the bridge with just the neck pickup.
I found it unnecessary at that time. Meanwhile - on the SG with its P90 - i like all three positions, but on guitars i would always prefer a pickup close to the neck if i had to decide on just a single pickup.
 
bea said:
... and other gear.

Maybe i might start from my beginnings. My number two. I did it with 15 with extremly limited tools and total lack of skills. After two mayor overhauls - however maintaining the integrity of the instrument - it has long reached a state where i could call it finished.

I always liked Vs. But i always felt that the idea could be designed better; the Gibsons, at least many of them, have the charme and the edges of a truck.

And that's my first approach:

View attachment 1458

Unusual in many ways. But mainly because this is a semihollow. Or beter 2/3 hollow. A very stable frame of spruce with internal parallel bracing, a sustain block on the bottom filling about half the height of the body, and the maple insert of the top floating freely give it a warm, yet powerful tone about half way between an archtop with freely floating pickup and a solid body. In a way offering the good of both worlds - the archtop sound as well as a fat sounding rock guitar.
Click to expand...
Pretty. In case you didn't see it yet, I'm building my take on a V right now. This is inspiring.
 
Well, originally it was not intended to be an "archtop", just a tribute to the possibilites i had with my "tools".
Acustically it is pretty silent, similar to an ES335 like, but with a slightly warmer tone. And thats how it should have come out. I did that about 30 years ago during the final modification of the guitar (when i added the "sustainblock").
 
Well, the guitar i bought after this one actually has its own thread: http://thetonerooms.com/threads/sorgenkind.679/

So it's continue with the next one. I like Jazz, and i like the specific guitar sound of this genre. And i liked the acoustic sound of Sorgenkind. But she had her problems for long and it was forseeable that i would need to replace it in the band i was playing then.

So the next one was an archtop. Which - as a student - i could not afford. So i decided to build one according to my needs. Fully carved, acoustically usable but even more good electric tone. And the stability Sorgenkind was lacking. It took a period of 9 months of learning, studying instruments and searching for literature on luthery and aquiring a minimum set of tools to do the job.

I drove 250 km to a dealer selling wood for violins and bought what i needed: a block of maple for the neck of a small upright bass, top, bottom and rims for a small cello. After half a year of work and the production of 5 kg of dirt in my kitchen and my living room this was the result:

Jazzgitarre_2011.jpg


Ok, the photo was taken 30 later showing the natural ageing of wood. The guitar has a few peculiarities: an oversized head block filling the entire space below the fingerboard. Active electronics an floating pickup (Gibson Johnny Smith), fully mounted to the pickguard. Space did not permit using a battery and a 1/4" jack. So i chose to use a 3.5 mm stereo jack and an external power supply:

Netzteil_Jazzgitarre.jpg

Quite recently i decided to do a refinish with hard oil and give her a new bridge. By that opperotunitiy i also did some tap tuning of the top:

Bridge_Violin.final.jpg

Fine tuning the bridge while making it:

Bridge_Violin.opt.jpg

Old finish removed, top thinned and tuned:

RenovierungRohschliff.jpg


Now it looks almost as it did before. Just with fewer scatches.

ArchieAndBass.jpg

Th pic also shows my SX shortscale acoustic bass. Small body, not loud, but fine sound.
 
Ok, now we are about 20 years later. Family. Job. Which i lost without any realistic chance for a new start in the IT business. But i had time to realize two ideas. 13 years ago.

The first one was a prototype of an electric violin. I had the idea of converting a cheap "decoration" violin. That thing was absolutely unplayable. And it turned out that both build quality and materials were so poor that i spent a lot more time to deal with the issues resulting from that than with the actual build. But i would have had bad feelings cutting a playable instrument into pieces.

As i am showing instruments in this thread, i'll start with the result. Not final: electronics are still missing. Well, i actually added a passive piezo pickup soon after finishing the build.

gr16.jpg
 
Maybe it is time to show You the instrument have built together with the violin. Both builds took me just one week (i lost my job and had enough time...).

A bass. 5 string. Fretless, neck through. Music man style pickup by Harry Häussel. Interesting feature: no truss rod, just a neck constructed to be very stiff just by a careful choice of woods. Scale 32", STB mount, so that i can use long scale strings.

V-Bass.jpg

I am still experimenting a bit with bridge and the tailpiece. In the past i have had similar problems with creep in the glue joints. After adding a shim under the finger board using a different (PVA) glue it looks stable.
 
I do like that headstock on the bass. What is that dark layer that almost looks like binding? Did you sandwich a dark layer in underneath the top?
 
The bass is semi hollow. Like WavMixers carved top SG. The fine layer at the top of the rims (8 mm of maple, btw, is a 4 mm layer of machiche. As machiche is a very stiff wood i used it in the neck instead of a trussrod. The fingerboard is 10 mm Katalox, btw.
 
bea said:
The RD guitar shown elsewhere (btw, i have never seen one in action) inspired me to show the RD bass. Chronologically it is actually the next i did after the V, but with a large gap of about 10 years.

View attachment 1896

View attachment 1895

View attachment 1894
Click to expand...

You are very talented, as opposed to me. I am reasonably skilled, but lack artistic talent. You have both. I'm really impressed with what you have done. The bass with the "hollow" headstock is amazing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top