Flurko's guitar design thread

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Flurko
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Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Sun Aug 08, 2021 2:43 pm

...Or in a more honest manner, "Even after varied proof of the contrary, Flurko still believes that a degree in graphic design and a copy of Illustrator will allow him to one day design a cool new guitar, and in his wildest dreams build it".

The other day I remembered that forum member Stereordinary/ex-luthier extraordinaire Paul Rhoney did a few guitar design challenge threads, the first of which was there.

This was four years ago and this was fun, so I decided to post a thread to share some of the ideas and drawings I'm doing.

First, I wanted to repost this drawing I made at the time, which I still really love :

Image
full post there..

Now I'm thinking about how I would tackle something which doesn't really exist, like a semi or fully hollow 7 string guitar with fanned frets.

Here's a first very rough idea :

Image

I really like the idea of a banjo headstock with 7 steinberger-style planetary tuners, as they play nicely with the whole idea of placing tuners wherever you want on the headstock, thus allowing a straight string pull, and they're basically an evolution of traditional banjo tuners.
The body shape is basically a tracing of a Greco 950 "shrike", with the horns elongated to go to the 12th fret for strap balance. The more I look at it the more "dano longhorn-goofy" it becomes, and the less "weird Bela Fleck electric banjo-goofy".

That's all for the first post, I'll update this soon, I have some Ideas about bridges and trems. :ph34r:

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Mon Aug 09, 2021 6:39 am

Sometime you need to post your idea on a public forum and sleep on it to realize you need to draw the whole body shape all over again, based on another silly idea, before anyone has the time to tell you how weird the first one was.

The curves need to be smoothed out more, but heres v2 :

Image

I can't find it again but a forum member posted a thread about a strat trem located behind the bridge, like an offset vibrato. If it works with a strat trem, it should work with a floyd rose ? right ?

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Mon Aug 09, 2021 1:43 pm

I'm not making any decisive progress on the body design front, my attempts still look weirdly misshapen, I need to immerse myself in good design outside of the guitar world and continue drawing to make some headway.
Those versions are cool but not "wow, nice design chops !" cool. I still like my offset big body design from 2017.

Image

In the meantime I've been also experimenting with the Premier Scroll shape, a very nice early electric guitar from the end of the 50s, it plays nicely with the wide neck, the hardware and the weird banjo headstock:
Image

(the knob placements are just to fill up the empty space, this is not what I have in mind for the design right now).

Meanwhile, Nicolai Schorr from Schorr Guitars has posted an update on his "The Future" model, if this doesn't make you want to design cool guitars I don't know what will. What a great eye.

-I don't know if the lack of replies is due to a lack of interest, my choice of one of the least active boards on OSG to post this thread, or the internet slowness of summer, but this is becoming some kind of blog for me, and I'm really enjoying drawing and writing this.-

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by countertext » Mon Aug 09, 2021 5:05 pm

Flurko wrote:
Mon Aug 09, 2021 1:43 pm
-I don't know if the lack of replies is due to a lack of interest, my choice of one of the least active boards on OSG to post this thread, or the internet slowness of summer, but this is becoming some kind of blog for me, and I'm really enjoying drawing and writing this.-
Nah, folks are looking, keep posting!

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Tue Aug 10, 2021 2:35 am

countertext wrote:
Mon Aug 09, 2021 5:05 pm
Flurko wrote:
Mon Aug 09, 2021 1:43 pm
-I don't know if the lack of replies is due to a lack of interest, my choice of one of the least active boards on OSG to post this thread, or the internet slowness of summer, but this is becoming some kind of blog for me, and I'm really enjoying drawing and writing this.-
Nah, folks are looking, keep posting!
Thanks for the interest !

I found the thread I was referencing earlier, regarding strat trem + separate bridge. Turns out the OSG search function doesnt like too common words like "strat, "trem" and "bridge", but forumer (and surf guitar genius) Mel Waldorf posted a thread last year with his experiments with this setup, there.

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by antisymmetric » Tue Aug 10, 2021 3:04 am

Flurko wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 2:43 pm
Image
I remember this one, mostly for the headstock, but there's a lot of good stuff going on overall. I'd actually tried to find it again (unsuccessfully), so I'm glad you've brought it back.
8)
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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Ceylon » Wed Aug 11, 2021 1:01 pm

Flurko wrote:
Mon Aug 09, 2021 6:39 am


I can't find it again but a forum member posted a thread about a strat trem located behind the bridge, like an offset vibrato. If it works with a strat trem, it should work with a floyd rose ? right ?
In the Aria 1802/1803/etc thread there's one forumite who runs a Kahler behind the bridge. I can't find it now but I remember seeing it and being curious about it. I wanna remember he said it works.
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Electricity still lingers

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Wed Aug 11, 2021 1:08 pm

Ceylon wrote:
Wed Aug 11, 2021 1:01 pm
Flurko wrote:
Mon Aug 09, 2021 6:39 am


I can't find it again but a forum member posted a thread about a strat trem located behind the bridge, like an offset vibrato. If it works with a strat trem, it should work with a floyd rose ? right ?
In the Aria 1802/1803/etc thread there's one forumite who runs a Kahler behind the bridge. I can't find it now but I remember seeing it and being curious about it. I wanna remember he said it works.
Thanks for pointing that out, I searched for Kahler in the thread, it looks like it was done by the user "Thomasseminarford", but the picture is not online anymore.

It's pretty funny, I see his name popping up on Instagram sometimes, because he seems to be close to the luthier Nicolai Schorr, whose guitar I posted earlier. I'll send him a message on instagram.

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:50 am

Thomas very nicely sent me a picture of his Aria with a Kahler trem, which is pretty much what I hoped it would be :

Image

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by noisepunk » Tue Aug 31, 2021 4:02 pm

Flurko wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 2:43 pm
img]https://i.imgur.com/2h2Ryq8.jpg[/img]
this one is incredible–reminds me a lot of a Schorr.

i did a design a while back where the entire top and bottom were acrylic sheets, and the consensus on here was that it would self-resonate too much and make the pickups really microphonic. i don't really understand the physics behind that, and haven't been in a place to try that design out, but i imagine if that's true you'd have a similar issue here. but i don't think it would be terribly design invasive to just stick some legs on the end of the pickup plate.

that headstock design...superb, love it.
Flurko wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 2:43 pm
...Or in a more honest manner, "Even after varied proof of the contrary, Flurko still believes that a degree in graphic design and a copy of Illustrator will allow him to one day design a cool new guitar, and in his wildest dreams build it".
i make robots and software with an art degree– graphic design and some googling is more than enough qualification to design guitars.

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by BTL » Tue Aug 31, 2021 6:27 pm

It's always a fun thought exercise, nice work!
Owner, Lowe Custom Guitars

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:16 am

Thanks everyone for the kind words !

I've revisited my old design, because yes, this headstock is still one of of my favorite drawings.
After drawing it to scale, I just realized why no one does a slotted headstock with slotted tuners, the double slotting looks like it would be really hard to use :fp:

Image

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Fri Sep 03, 2021 8:27 am

So, I've updated the rest of my old design with my current obsessions, and most of the correct scale, I don't know if I want to bother with a behind-the-bridge floyd rose, so I haven't yet tackled drawing it to scale, soon ! The rest are the dimensions of cheap chinese parts I would be likely to use on a first build. I think I will have to change the tuners for proper slottted headstock tuners, maybe using those 6-on-a-plate from a 12 string set and chopping the excess off. And also adding a locking nut somewhere if I'm using a floyd.
Image

Another flaw to consider : as it is now, the string length needed seems longer than the total length of the standard sets, something else to ponder !

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Sun Sep 05, 2021 1:57 pm

Some weekend updates, I've started working on the side view to figure out how angled the neck should be, and also if I want to have the strings far from the top like on archtop guitars :
Image

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Re: Flurko's guitar design thread

Post by Flurko » Sun Nov 14, 2021 10:21 am

It's been a while !
Is it still "guitar design" if you just steal something existing ? :D
Also, a free Internet point if someone knows where I stole the rick 330 with a through f-hole idea !

Image

Also, I should work on my tracing skills, I thought I had a better grip on correctly drawing vectors !

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