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As a neophyte to this addiction, I am curious about what constitues a custom design and how do you go about it?
By this I mean should design flow freely or do you merely tweak a known design to fit your ideas? If you truly do make a new design (reads shape and size) how do you finally decide on bracing,bracing placement, plate contours, etc?
If I have opened up ther proverbial Pandora's box...sorry but I am a curious sort.
Last but not least, can you recommend any reading matter along this line of thought.

Wow where to start??

It really depends on your knowledge base. How many guitars you have built, how well you kept notes, what you have learned from your builds. The list can go on and on. I would not atempt to design a new guitar if I had only built 10 guitars. Rather I would start with a known design and tweak it. Same with bracing designs. Point as example, My X-braced backs on OMs and SJs. Neither body shapes are original, nor is X-bracing the lower bout of the back. But I played with the bracing on several builds for myself till I came up with a bracing pattern that worked well. It will be real hard to find a body shape, bracing pattern or much of anything that has not been tried before. But that does not discount the design as being innovative

I guess my main point is, that until you have a wealth of knowledge to draw from. You would be better building successful designs, while playing around with controlable things like the bracing and such as you build. Keep careful notes and in a few years then you will have some data to derive a new design from. But with out the knowledge base you are just taking a shoot in the dark. Some times that will work. But more often not.
MichaelP38775.4581597222

I get most of my good ideas in the shower...all three of them.

And I'm not kidding..

_________________
John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

[QUOTE=John Mayes] I get most of my good ideas in the shower...all three of them.[/QUOTE]

All three showers or all three good ideas?

Here is an approach of how you can design something new but yet confined in parameters of a proven design. Body shape is a perfect example.

I have been playing around for two years with the idea of eliminating all none pure radius curves on an OM. i.e. no interpolated arcs, elliptical segments or straight lines, but rather all pure radius joined only at tangents. My goal was to maintain the outer constraints of the Martin OM shape and total internal volume in both the upper bout and lower bout, and maintaining the waist in the same area.

I finally started drawings about 6 weeks ago and now have the shape. Every segment of the shape is pure radius connecting to other tangent pure radius. A total of eight tangent radius make up the shape. The volume and external dimensions are maintained

Anyway my point is this is an example of how you can design within the parameters of a proven design.


MichaelP38775.5785185185

I go off in a different direction from Michael P: most of my shapes are worked out using a computer program that calculates them based on elliptical and hyperbolic curves, with a couple of 'fudge factors' that can be added in. You can generate something that is as close as you want to a almost any 'standard' shape this way, given some time to fool with it. Since the sides are continuous curves, it would, in theory, take an infinite number of circular arcs to generate them. The only shape I make now that was not worked out this way is my 'OM', and it's just that I wasn't using the program at the time I made the forms for that.

The closer you stick to a 'standard' design, the more likely you are to make a staisfactory guitar, at least, at first. As you get more experience, and figure out what effects the different design parameters have you will be better able to make changes that will work out.

There was an article in a recent 'American Lutherie' magazine about one of my heros; Fred Carlson. There's a guy who routinely builds stuff that is both 'weird' and wonderful, and he makes them work as instruments. He went through some of the methods he uses to develop and build a new design, but, of course, there's no way he could get across in print the ways he gets them to work well. He's been doing this for a long time, and knows what he's about at a 'bone' level, without a lot of the sort of 'scientific' analysis that I usually do. There sure is more than one way to go about this, but there is probably no substitute for experience and knowlege of one sort or another.

Still, the sort of brain picking you can do on a list like this, and by reading articles like that one of Fred's, can keep you from many of the more obvious pitfalls. That still leaves plenty of ways to fail, but what the heck....

Tom, Although I`m only nearing the end of my first build, I have to chime in on this one, as I have the same thing going on in my head, too. I`ve found that without one set direction to get started off on, one finds theirself taking all those forks in the road only to return to the same place they started out at. I`ll drive you mad, I tell ya! Designs, bracing schemes, jigs and fixtures, finishes, customers, marketing, AARGH! My take on this so far is to sit down and make a personal plan of action and stick with it. That`ll give you a foundation to build on. Ever hear of the saying about not being able to see the tree because the forest is in the way? Oh, yeah, a whole forest of tonewood! Hmmm...

_________________
Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

Good one Jay.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

Personally, I've been taking the basic dimensions (lower bout width, upper bout width, waist width, body length, thickness) of isntruments I like the sound of, and designing the precise shapes I like around them, which tend to be more curvy than most Martin shapes (no flat or almost flat area at the tail or at the heel), matter of personal preference. The bracing I'm using right now is fairly 'vanilla'; I'll get experimental when I get a better feel for it.

Basically, the body countour, the bridge contour, the headstock shape, the binding, the rosette, the end graft, inlay, those are the 'basic' places to customize. Then you can add an armrest, a Wedge body, maybe a soundport or two, and play around with different soundhole locations, alternative bracing schemes, cantilevered necks, adjustable necks...and so on and so forth. Remember than 1/8" there and a 1/4" there can create a significantly 'different' look; the difficulty is making something that's unique enough, yet familiar enough. Too close, and it looks like you didn't get the design right. Too far, and you're on your own in terms of parameters, but there's a big margin available for effective, aesthetically pleasing designs.

So, yeah, I tend to add little bits and pieces, but try to keep in mind the instrument has to work as a whole as a musical instrument, as well as as an aesthetic statement.

This is interesting stuff. First of all, I'm not a complete newbie and have a few builds under my belt. I am an avid woodworker for the last 30+ years and build purely for my own pleasure. I have not kept what I previously built (burn them) but I figure that in another few builds I'll have an instrument, that in my mind, will be worthy of keeping.
I agree completely that experience rules here (just like most of life ventures)and that time will tell what design considerations work and which ones won't but to be honest, I love to push the envelope. Although I can accept the old tried and true designs, I do not necessarily like the cookie cutter approach and from what I've seen from others in this forum, the same seems to apply. IMHO, that's why so many try to set themselves apart with wood combinations/variations, rosette design, etc. Also from what I have seen and read here, creative talent abounds and I want to learn from not only my own blunders but from others successes as well.
Thanks for the advice thus far.

A lot of good thoughts so far.

I agree that the best thing to do is satrt with proven designs and work from there. Learn what you are doing. If you want to make a design slightly more or less curvy than the original, fine...but don't start reinventing the wheel just yet.
Stick to traditional bracing designs, figure out over several instruments how it works for you and then start adjusting as an experiment.

Learning WHY the traditional designs work is important, then if you can get consistant results with the design, and if you wish to get more treble or more base etc, then play with adjusting things like size of braces, scalloping, selective thinning of the top, and all the tricks a lot of builders use to get "their" sound.

Now, if you really want a challenge down the road, start learning about the Chaldni pattern stuff. Nobody has better info on that than Al Carruth, and there is much to be learned from the subject. Some of it is Greek to me, but there are plenty of folks who are getting some real good understanding of things and getting great results. Some names that come to mind are John Osthoff and Mark Blanchard.

But, I'll repeat myself. Learn the basics first. Start with proven designs, get a taste of success with them, and once your knowledge base is built up, you can start winging it.


Don Williams38775.6486111111

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

[quote]All three showers or all three good ideas? [/quote]

Or both?

Evolution before revolution. Late archtop master James D'Aquisto spent most of his career making small improvements in his mentor John D'Angelico's designs, then, in his prime, he gave the world something completely new. We were robbed when he died.

[QUOTE=Gasawdust] I have not kept what I previously built (burn them)...[/QUOTE]

Seriously? Burn them?

[QUOTE=ATaylor] [QUOTE=Gasawdust] I have not kept what I previously built (burn them)...[/QUOTE]

Seriously? Burn them?[/QUOTE]
yep...a little extreme to be sure but that's me.

Wow and I gripe at paying $150 for a cord of oak fire wood

It's turning into spring here in the south so my current build may be spared the fireplace.

[QUOTE=Gasawdust] [QUOTE=ATaylor] [QUOTE=Gasawdust] I have not kept what I previously built (burn them)...[/QUOTE]

Seriously? Burn them?[/QUOTE]
yep...a little extreme to be sure but that's me. [/QUOTE]

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