Official Luthiers Forum!

Nice work all. It's cool see.

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Todd Lunneborg
http://www.tlguitars.com/
http://www.fretboardjournal.com/

I'm new to this forum. This is the first (and only) guitar I've sold to date. Walnut body and maple neck.

Multiscale 8-string guitar (25.5" to 28"). Black limba back & neck, bookmatched flamed Mac ebony carve-top & headstock lam, birdseye maple bound fretboard & pickup covers. The whole theme is mac ebony on black limba (inverse color patterns) with birdseye maple appointments. Controls are hidden behind the upper bout.

EMG 40TW splittable active humbuckers
Ghost system piezo

Gloss pre-cat conversion varnish finish






The horizontal reflections in the last photo is the siding on my house.

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....

Are they still showing me as attending Montreal? This year I got accepted to Healdsburg as well. It's hard to be on both coasts with 2 sets of instruments!~ Since Healdsburg is every other year I might go to Montreal next year.

I will be bringing a new acoustic design, a new semi-hollow, and a couple electrics.

~David

Wow, the original designs you folks have come up with are really nice! I'm planning on a tele for my first then if the tele turns out playable I'll hopefully build something original after that. Hope you guys dont mind if I borrow some inspiration from this thread.

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John S.

Eric,
my friend, that guitar is inspiring. classical elements, revised theme...Just enough to make it spectacular. The pickups look so soft against the body - just beautiful stuff.

Stephen

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www.ziegenfussguitars.com

Thanks Stephen - I appreciate that coming from a guy who has built some fine instruments himself.

It has been a challenge to play both because of the extra strings and the multiscale, but it has forced me to change my thinking about the fretboard - and it is getting more natural every day. It is tuned just like a regular guitar except the two bass strings are B & E - drop-E if you will (same low-note as a 4-string bass). Until I played this, I hadn't realized how much I leaned on the upper most string to orient myself - drop-E has helped.

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....

Erik, that is a great looking guitar, very nice! I like how soft everything is, and the control placement is way cool. It is a little bit hard to see, what is going on up at the nut, is there a normal nut, just slanted, or a straight nut and zero fret? (i think its a slanty nut set in to the fingerboard, but i can't tell) That area is always a bit weird to do on a fanned fret. Yours looks great.

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Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY

There are some mighty fine guitars here! Here are some shots of my recent Tele-style for a jazz player:



He didn't want a pick guard or any control knobs. Originally I was going to wire in fixed resistors and capacitors, but we eventually came up with this compromise by recessing the controls into the lower bout. (The funny lines below are from my softbox grid.)



He wanted split parallelogram paua inlays too. Inlaying in maple really scares me, but it turned out pretty decent.

here is my most recent guitar, she's my metal playin baby.

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~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

A couple recently finished.
The Skull Guitar has a Mahogany back, Maple top, Mahogany neck, and a Bloodwood fingerboard with gold frets, Alnico II pro's in the neck and bridge positions with coil splitting and a tone pro's wraparound bridge.

The Dragon guitar has a Mahogany back, Maple top, Curly Maple neck, Ebony fingerboard. It has Seymour Duncan 59's in the bridge and neck positions, and a Tone Pro's wraparound bridge.

This was built by one of my students last semester. I've been meaning to post a picture of this for a while. I'm not hip to the Harry Potter thing, but apparently all of this relates to the books. The top is marquetry. We came up with a way to put the controls on the side too, which was pretty much exactly like in Chris' pic of the Myka guitar, except on the bottom side. She really did a great job on the whole thing, as she has done with all of her work at Red Rocks. She doesn't play guitar either, by the way. She just made it as a gift for someone. She's had offers of $2500 and up for it too!

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

Said builder, Bessie:

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

Les Paul Mexico-style!

Body: Mahogany

Top: Maple ( cello neck mtrl, low flame. I bought it cheap a long time ago)

Neck: Don´t know, It´s heavy, closegrained and smells like cedar (wooden packages from my work)

Fingerboard: Rio jacaranda

Ropebinding: Santos/white/black veneer/maple (leftovers from an earlier build, a cuban tres guitar)

It´s routed for a sustainiac and a P90

Erik,

I ask this out of ignorance, but did you make the bridge?

Mike

Hi Chris,

After reading your reply....I googled!

Eric has an ftp site that you can download the build tut from, but it is large.

I found what I needed to know about the bridge. He screwed it to the top. I could not see screws in any of the pics and thought he had glued it on, and I really didn't want to do that. Now I get to design a new bridge, and build!

Mike

I am new to this board and I must say that I am extremely impressed with the amazing Luthiers we have on this site. I look forward to seeing more builds in the future.

I love the headstock design! It is one of the more unique designs I have seen in awhile. How do you create it? I like the varying thickness of it. What did you use to get that effect?

Sorry if my question was not clear

I understand its a Ken Lawrence design and I am familier with the original guitar used for the inspiration for his project. As well as all of the guitars James uses for both recording and touring.

Since I can't ask the original creator (Ken Lawrence) personally how it was created, I can ask the next best person. The one who created the copy. I have loved that design since I first saw it. Did some research to see who designed it and so on. James has a couple of his Guitars.

I was just asking what "he" used to get the varying thickness on the headstock.

It might be obvious to someone who has more experience in this field. But to me it's not. That is why I asked.

No worries

I think it was my use of the word "create" that threw you off.
As he was not the creator of the headstock. He was the crafter of the headstock.

But I still want to know how he did it. I just like that the headstock has more then one thickness to it. Since the bottom thickness does not run parallel to the top one I'm wondering what tool he used to remove the material from the top of the headstock.

Or it could just be an added layer glued on top to create the 2 different thicknesses of the headstock. Which if that is the case then that makes more sense.

Very nice. I am really liking the multi level look on the headstock. Thanks for posting your design. It is a great help! I'm trying to come up with my own design so I'm looking for something totally unique. Who knew that would be so difficult. Now that you mention the wedge on the template that explains it. Or at least makes sense. That was the part I couldn't figure out.

Coming up with my own body design seems to be no problem problem for me. But Coming up with my own headstock design is driving me crazy. The multi thickness is one part of the design that I don't see much of. So it is unique. That is one way I can think of to come up with a truly unique design of my own.

Thank you for posting your design. I will be using it as inspiration for come up with my own design

Thanks!

It doesn't seem to matter how many headstock designs I draw out. Whatever I come up with always seems to be done before. Or something so close to what I come up with that I wouldn't be able to call mine an original design.

Is there an archive somewhere that shows all the patented body and headstock designs that are already out there? That would make coming up with a design that has not been done before so much more easy

Scot,
Sorry for not seeing your reply. I replied to your pm.

Here is a better one. What i did ( for everyone else) Is just take a 3/16" dowel, and wrap it in 80 grit sandpaper. Then just run it up and down the edge, pressing in towards the tuners. I just do this until the bevel reaches where the headcap is glued on.

No problem

You answered my questions which is what I was looking for

Thank you