| Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs |
| Folding Electric Guitar |
| (1/11) > >> |
| Bogstandard:
Early on last year, I started a project that at the time had to be kept a bit of a secret. Even now I can't go into full details, but I have been given permission to show these few pics as a taster and maybe I can answer a few questions, as long as they don't go into too technical details. I was approached by a gentleman (my man), to see if I could make a folding electric guitar. The reason being, if it could be made short enough, it could be carried as hand luggage rather than into the freight hold, where they sometimes get damaged. There were a few criteria, the main one being that it remains in tune, or very close when it is reassembled. There are folding guitars on the market, and fairly cheap, around the 200 squid and upwards mark, but they all usually suffer from the same problem, going out of tune easily, plus of course, most of them look absolutely grotesque, some just looking like a plank of wood with a piano hinge in the middle. This one isn't aimed at the mass market, but the more 'up market' kind of guitarist. I was in fact talking to a new aquaintance of mine last week, an old school rock guitarist from Thin Lizzie, Pilot and Bad finger fame, and he wants to give it a good try out. That just might open a few more doors for us. I met him because he had heard thru my friends that I do a bit of precision machining work, and because he had an on stage accident which stopped him performing live, he has gone back to his old profession of a camera lens wizard, and wants me to do a bit of R&D plus make a few parts for him. So anyway, enough of the life history, lets get to telling you what happened. My 'man' had a few ideas, but basically, I had free reign to do the job, so I did. Planning and measuring came well before cutting. Rather than waste a perfectly good 'banjo', as Peter (HS93) called it, one was purchased off eblag for less than 40 squid, and I duly set to work. It was stripped down to the last nut, bolt and bit of brown stuff. This one shows the first stage, the back with the sticky out bit folded down. Notice also, even at this early stage, I realised that the string tweakers wouldn't be needed, so I just cut them off. That got rid of 6" in one easy action. A front view. This was well within my man's specification, so I just carried on cutting and making. There are well over 100 shots that I took of the complete build, but unfortunately those are the ones you don't get to see. This is the finished banjo, showing the amount of work that needed to be done to keep the plonky string things under control, just so that when it was finally assembled, it stayed in tune. It is tuned by the row of knobs on the bottom of the body. This is the front view, looking just like a normal guitar, except there is no tuning mechanism at the top of the neck and the sticky out thing that shakes the strings is missing. Just a few bits of info. Nothing could be made or fitted that would be attracted by a magnet, so it was all made from aluminium, brass, bronze and stainless steel, the fasteners as well. All the woodcutting was done on my mill using razor sharp brand new tungsten tooling. The finishes came out perfect. There is a lot more highly detailed work that is hidden, hence the lack of any more photos, plus it protects a few of my little secrets. The things some of us get up to beggars belief. Bogs |
| ieezitin:
Well done John!. Goes to show what the old grey matter can do when necessity comes a knocking. Alas I think the sex pistols had you beat by thirty years. They flung there rigs around and made collapsible units on stage in front of your eyes I seem to remember….. but they had a tuning problem too after they were finished. Hope the venture works out for you both. Again a nice job looks real pleasing to the eye. Happy days….. Anthony. |
| Bogstandard:
I forgot to mention, ten months spare time work. Bogs |
| spuddevans:
Well done that man!! A few years ago I built a couple of guitars from itch scratch, but I didnt have the machinery then to build the metal hardware, had to buy those bits. Knowing the tensions that are involved in a guitar, I am impressed with the engineering involved in making a folding version. May I ask if the customer (your 'man') is happy with the tone of the instrument? and also did you keep the original electronics/pickups? Tim |
| Bogstandard:
Tim, All the electriconical bits and electric string that came off, went back on, and he says that the tone has changed a little, he reckons for the better. I don't understand things like that, he just says it is not as harsh as it used to be. It started life as a reasonably price Yamaha jobbie. But to me that means nothing, I just modded it using well known engineering practices and a little basic guitar knowledge that I picked up. The only things that didn't go back on were the string tensioners. BTW, it is almost the same weight as the original, only a few ounces heavier. It has been back and forwards to the continent a few times now, always in the cabin as hand luggage, and he uses it when living in hotel rooms, to save him having to go out drinking, just practising for a couple of hours each evening. He has had one fine string break in all that time, but he reckons it was something to do with how it was twisted around the ferrule that is on the end of each string. I had great difficulty working out how to hold all the string stresses in check. Eventually, every screw that should have gone into wood had a dedicated brass bush epoxied into the brown stuff, and the wood screws replaced with metric threaded SS ones. You can see some of the top hat ones in the recess in second picture, they were for taking screws that came from the other side from the tensioning plates, hence the big top hat flanges, to spread the load over a larger area. I hope that explained it OK. John |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |