My guitar design has its roots back when I was a teenager when, for my 18th birthday, I persuaded my mum to finance a self-build project. I didn\u2019t actually build it completely from scratch, just from parts, painting the body, lacquering the neck, bolting it all together, attaching the hardware and wiring up the pickups etc. But despite not actually carving any wood, I learned a lot about how guitars are built (expanding on my previous experience a few years before of putting together a Strat-style guitar) and was very happy with the result – a lovely metallic British Racing Green Telecaster-style guitar, loaded with Seymour Duncan humbuckers, locking machine-heads, the works\u2026 Plus it had my name on the headstock, instead of that other one beginning with the letter F\u2026<\/p>\n
Some months later, I flew to the States to visit my dad and decided to take the guitar to show him (he is also a guitarist). Knowing that I probably wouldn\u2019t be allowed to take it on board with me \u2013 and not wanting to risk trying and then having to check it into the hold in a gig bag \u2013 I went out and bought a proper hard-shell flight case.<\/p>\n
The outbound flight went without a hitch and my guitar arrived safe and sound. No such luck on the way back\u2026 Having retrieved my suitcase from the baggage carousel, I waited for my guitar\u2026<\/p>\n
And waited\u2026 and\u2026 waited\u2026<\/p>\n
Starting to get a little worried at this point\u2026 A little bit longer\u2026<\/p>\n
Ah, here it comes\u2026<\/p>\n
Oh.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just the flight case lid.<\/p>\n
O\u2026. K\u2026.<\/p>\n
Panicking just slightly now.<\/p>\n
Something else coming out\u2026 Great\u2026 Just great. It\u2019s the other half of the flight case.<\/p>\n
No sign of the guitar\u2026 You can imagine what\u2019s going through my mind at this point.<\/p>\n
And then\u2026 finally! Here it comes \u2013 I see the headstock slowly emerging up the conveyor belt onto the carousel, followed by the neck\u2026 Minor heart attack while I wait to see if the body is still attached\u2026 Yes, it is. Phew!<\/p>\n
Any damage? Hmmm\u2026 looks like just a few scratches \u2013 annoying, but nothing serious.<\/p>\n
So thankfully my guitar survived its ordeal (and the airline did at least eventually pay for a new flight case, though no compensation for the damaged paintwork, never mind emotional distress \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
But the experience got me thinking \u2013 it must be possible to design a guitar that\u2019s small enough to take in an aircraft cabin but doesn\u2019t require any compromise in playing style, sound, aesthetics or quality. I started looking into what was out there \u2013 for example, the Steinberger headless guitars and the cheaper Hohner copies looked like a promising option \u2013 but I struggled to find anything that did not involve at least some compromise.<\/p>\n
Headless guitars require a change of approach since the tuners are at the other end of the guitar \u2013 not necessarily a problem, but not what I wanted. Plus the \u2018cricket bat\u2019 ones were, in my opinion, just plain ugly. Another option involved either shrinking everything, notably the scale length, to create a \u2018baby\u2019 guitar \u2013 fine for young kids, maybe, but I didn\u2019t want to have to adjust my fretting style whenever I switched between a \u2018travel\u2019 guitar and a \u2018proper\u2019 guitar. On top of that, everything marketed as a travel guitar seemed to be cheap and cheerful, with pretty basic quality or gimmicks like built-in speakers that, while good for practicing on the road, wouldn\u2019t make the guitar much use on stage or in the studio. And, while I acknowledge that this is entirely subjective, most of what I saw was, to be honest, pretty ugly\u2026<\/p>\n
So I decided I\u2019d have a go at designing one myself. I started thinking about how a guitar could be made to be as short as possible while still keeping a \u2018full-size\u2019 scale length and regular tuning pegs, and while still looking like a traditional electric guitar.<\/p>\n
The obvious starting point was to get rid of all that wood behind the bridge. It\u2019s a holdover from acoustic guitars, where the body shape is a fundamental part of the guitar\u2019s sound; on an electric guitar, in my view, it doesn\u2019t really do a whole lot in terms of the sound and only really serves to provide balance \u2013 something that is easily fixed by adjusting the length of the top horn.<\/p>\n
So that, pretty much, is how I came up with the body shape \u2013 lose everything behind the bridge and extend the top horn forward to provide the balance. The cutaways came about simply to provide full access to the upper frets. The rest was just a case of smoothing out the curves so that the lower bout would fit neatly over my leg if I wanted to play seated and the upper bout would tuck in under my ribs.<\/p>\n
The two-plus-four headstock arrangement was the result of wanting to keep the headstock as small as possible and have the strings run in a straight line from bridge saddle to nut to tuning peg. I reversed the headstock because I wanted slightly less tension on the upper strings. The decision not to go with a three-plus-three arrangement was really just aesthetic \u2013 I didn\u2019t want an arrow-shaped headstock\u2026<\/p>\n
Over the course of a summer, while back at my mum\u2019s for the holiday before going back to university, with drawings spread out all over her kitchen table, the design started to take shape, culminating in an actual-size blueprint, that spent the rest of the year pinned to my bedroom wall. It would be another five years before I was in a position to actually get it built\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My guitar design has its roots back when I was a teenager when, for my 18th birthday, I persuaded my mum to finance a self-build project. I didn\u2019t actually build it completely from scratch, just from parts, painting the body, … Continue reading