Heels finally, added a ton of guide curves, network curve kept adding issues to joint, still have to clean it up a little bit after final network curve. Major fun time tomorrow creating volute. I’m committed to the 7.5″ radius. The PRS SE has it I think. I play a lot of chords and diads. Don’t really shred anymore but I have my moments that’s why the paf in bridge is so nice.
Definitely going to stain the Birdseye maple I have. Gotta stop trying to make everything perfect. I know I’m just learning rhino. Once I learn how to draw curves in it, think I’m going to ditch illustrator.
Should have my hardware modeled and being able to make a neck and body templates that I can easily create new designs.
Really want to keep the prices low. I don’t think I have much competition in this niche market, most multiscales are aimed toward progressive metal players, and that’s totally saturated atm. And I don’t care. I am making a guitar that I can’t afford now. The ormsby genesis is super nice but I can’t afford one. Same with Deimel Guitarworks, amazing innovative stuff that people can’t play. I want poor ass mofos to buy this and be inspired to play.

Updated the UI in Rhino, it was so cluttered. So many redundant things. Workflow way faster now and matched the colors in my illustrator/photoshop. Learned a ton from the helix video, divide command really helpful setting guide curves, section tool is super easy. Never thought I’d use so many guide points. Can easily use select tool to delete. I’m really excited, so many things you can do in Rhino. Ideas are flowing, can really design and check things and tweak everything. Great thing about this is I can keep the prices down, with a lot of the hard cutting labor and contouring down on CNC. Finishing is always going to take a lot of time. There is no way around the cure time of the clearcoats. The turbine spray system is really easy to work with. The amount of sanding that the CNC saves so much time. I can start sanding at 220 grit.

View from top of the headstock, thicker bass side at first fret, levels toward middle and thicker treble at heel. Heel was too close to last profile, have to redo that if I want to network surface the whole thing. May tweak the heel further down and move the last profile up a bit to give it more room to blend. Helix’s tutorial is pretty spot on for this. I tried network surfacing the whole thing, and noticed why he added more curves to first surface, deleted and then ran it again.

Wanted to roast my own maple but don’t really have the setup yet, Love the looks and added stability. Experimenting with Keda turned out decent.
1/2 cup water, 1 smidge Golden brown, 1 smidge Sunflower Yellow= Gold finish

1/2 cup water, 2 smidges Golden brown show above = Roasted finish

Need to try 1/2 cup water ,1 smidge Golden Brown, 1 smidge Black to make a little more darker

Redoing my work to add G2 continuity. Importing from illustrator has it’s drawbacks. Illustrator doesn’t have curve analysis tools. Editing my previous just wasn’t practical, the curves were not smooth to begin. Easier to start with a good foundation first. This will help with extrudes, fillets, zebra and ultimately the cutting process. The smoothness will help with the finish and cutting, especially fine point endmills that can easily break. Hoping the smoothness will help in cutting the fretslots. Can’t be a dinosaur must learn to design properly. Pain in the ass at first, rather learn to do it the right way first then break the rules later.

Tested out the “Glory Box” It can hold a dummy coil, preamp and 9 volt, a tight fit, may have to enlarge the cavity a little bit. Can easily drill a hole for bridge ground or piezo under bridge saddle, or run piezo disc line from main cavity. May keep piezo circuit separate from passive electronics, can get stereo sound, separate output jack, can run stereo. Think I’m leaning towards this way, may need to order some dpdt input jacks to turn on/off. I think that is more practical than an off switch push pull.

Fillet struggle when adding larger .5 fillet to bottom. Had to “Explode””Rebuild Surface””Fillet Edge””Join Edge” Didn’t need to use “RemoveAllNakedMicroEdges” Weight down to 4.281 lbs. Modeled strat pickup, … Read the rest

Some more rendering of hardtail bridge. It’s really helpful to be able to design, especially the tremolo bridge cavity. Because I’m using hard ash, which is super dense, I really have to keep the weight in check. Ordered a ton of fretting tools. Got a Japanese fret saw, hopefully I don’t need to use it I heard the thin endmills are a pain. Jescar was sold out of their fretcutter, hopefully the stewmac works well. I’m praying the Richlite fretboards are easy to mill. Thinking about adding a back cavity. “Hidden Stash” to hide a dummy pickup coil, 9v battery, preamp pcb. This can future proof my guitars, in case users want to upgrade my future endeavors.

Block command is great in Rhino3d, pretty much like the symbols used in Illustrator.

Seen a lot of people spend a lot time trying to blend surfaces on guitar instead of just using “FilletEdge” on the whole closed polysurface. Keep edges clean, Before extrude, definitely keep curve edit points down and delete redundant points before extruding. You should be able to cap the extrude successfully, if it doesn’t cap, clean it up.

Also same principles for fillet edge. Make sure it is closed polysurface. If not closed use “ShowEdges” and show “Naked Edges” and join anything together. If doesn’t work then explode and delete extrusion and “MergeAllEdges” and try again. If still doesn’t work, may need to lower the radius in the fillet edge settings. If still an issue try modifying the cutting objects.

Can be frustrating but it is still way quicker then trying “BlendSrf” each edge separately, find that extremely tedious and can easily be cleaned up with sandpaper. Just make sure nothing is too janky. CAM program will try to cut everything and can lead to damaging your machine. I’ve worked tech support and have seen so many people struggle to understand this. Seen countless time where toolpaths were corrupt due to laziness. Measure Measure cut also applies to CNC.

Paraboloid tool in Rhino is great for belly cuts, can use “Crash” command to make sure it isn’t conflicting with body pockets. Again I had to redo the paraboloid so the fillet would work.

Modelled body, down to 4.35lbs

6.536965824 weight of body
4.6890747648 weight with body cavity
4.4788461936 weight with arm contour
4.3598839776 weight with belly contour

24 or 22 fanfret won’t fit, redesign. They do have 27″ bass one but only available in 2 colors unfortunately, really wanted to try their other styles, dayum back to 21 frets. I already ordered 9 of the 20 inch boards. Maybe a good thing, the bridge pickup tone would suffer. I do have a 26″ bass fretboard to use for this project saving for my doubleneck. Leaves 8 boards for my first builds. Can keep this design for now. They also have maple 27″

Redesign, 2D, Enlarged pckguard, bigger toolpath, 21 fret version, trying different pickguard, not sure how it will look later, used toolpath as a border. Trim the main body a little bit for more weight relief. Will calculate when I model in 3d.

Lost .5 pounds cutting belly fat and arm cut. Weighss 5.126877984 lbs now. Will lose a hair more with horn contours.

Extrude then cap, sometimes wont cap or Extrude
try adjusting geometry in photoshop, try extrude through gumball, then solid>”Cap Planar Holes”planer

Filet command,
may need to lower value or change geometry, works better with sharper edges/corners,

“Show Edges” command if filet doesn’t work, check “Nake Edges”, it will highlight issues, select and join them to fix

Boolean Difference, cut out pocket, select first object then cutting pocket, cuts it out.
Gotta buy a router bit for 1 1/4 cut depth.

volume
1 board foot = 144 cubic inches = 1/12 cubic foot
3.0lbs +/bf
3X144 = 432 inches3
3X 1/12=.25 ft3
density
48 lb/ft3 =
0.027777777129494 lb/in3

Volume = 0.115295701 (+/- 6.2e-09) cubic feet x 49= 5.534193648 lbs, not bad, gonna put an f hole to lower it more, Want this guitar to look big but be light

Bought a bunch of wilkinson ceramic p90s, thought I would have to upgrade the magnets to alnico. After I swapped the pickups in my Tagima TG61. It sounded much better. Less muddy but still has that low end. Fucking marketing bullshit. Sticking with ceramic. I tested with the diode clipping path. The cermamics have enough treble. The bass doesn’t need to get cut with a 68nf capacitor. It actually sounds better without tone shaping at all, which lowers the output, since it is cutting lower frequencies. Thanks Darrell!

Was a little more crunchier, purchased some 1n341 diodes to make better.

https://www.instructables.com/Passive-Guitar-Overdrive-Black-Ice/

Changed the orientation of the diodes, now it’s a lot dirtier.

This circuit works with a normally closed switch. Used a 2Mohm resistor and 2 10M max ohm LDR resistor as a shunt that kills the click sound. The audio does not get cut off. When the Normally closed button the audio goes through the 2M ohm resistor. The volume is dropped and toggle between the two. Sort of like how Tom Morello mutes one pickup and toggles between the two. The 2M resistor can be tweaked lower, some sound leaks . It sound great on clean guitar but may need to be tweaked a bit to make the volume a little lower. Through hi gain amp, it sounds a bit muddy.

Trimmed top half a bit, redid pickguard

Success! LDR Resistors do work with SPST switch in series. Only caveat is that it’s need a normally closed switch. The normally open switch does work but guitar is muted and turned on when switch is pressed. Will order some normally closed switches. Unfortunately high quality ones are rare. Either way I’m pretty happy. Found 2 methods that work with an SPST normally closed switch and a SPDT on/on/common switch. I was also lucky to find some 10 spdt switch nos

LDR Resistors do work switch in series. Only caveat is that it’s need a normally close switch. The normally open switch I had does work but the sound is muted and turned on when switch is pressed. Will order some normally closed switches. Unfortunately they are rare. Either way I’m pretty happy. Found 2 methods that work with an SPST normally closed switch and a SPDT on on common switch. I was also lucky to find some 10 spdt switch Switchcraft 963 1A nos on ebay for a steal. If they I’ll buy more. The only spst normally closed look pretty frail.

http://beavisaudio.com/projects/LooperSwitcher/

Edit- looks like I’ve been using a normally closed switch for testing. I ordered some cheap no and nc switch from amazon. Also found some cool steel ones on wish.com https://www.wish.com/product/5f5b504e25ce70190b644640?

Unfortunately popping on SPST switch failed. Can’t have a common on in those switches causes it to pop. Must use a SPDT throw , connect main out to common and then the resistors/main/ground on both on. Looking for metal pushbutton spdt may have to look overseas

Simplified some of the controls a bit. Removed extra volume, klled the piezo disc in neck pocket idea, would need a powered preamp, the volume is just too damn low. Really want to make this passive. I have guitars with active electronics but I never play them because I’m too lazy to drive and buy some 9 volts, just kills the inspiration. Need to sell my active electronics guitars lol.

Removed 3rd cap switch up top. Added a push/pull bourns volume that acts as a blower switch aka, fender passing lane that acts kind of like a channel selector footswitch. User can set desired distortion on amp, and set a lowered volume to roll off distortion to sound cleaner. User doesn’t have to tap dance to change channel. Easier to thumb dance. Blower switch can also act as a kill switch when volume set all the way down. So there are technically 3 kill switches now. Added a tesi 16mm stainless steel, no popping kill switch. Tesi also had other colors I was tempted to buy but they were zinc coated. They looked amazing but I feel the stainless steel will last longer. May add a killswitch latching mode button to toggle switch to normally off and so sound only comes out when pressed. But it’s getting crammed in there.

I do like this electronics setup. Very expressive. Can blend different sounds with the cap switch and the volume switches. The passive distortion switch may need tweaking I ordered 100 schottky low voltage ones from mouser. This guy on instructables used four to get better gain. He got into it with an EE sounding, at least sound like one. https://www.instructables.com/Passive-Guitar-Overdrive-Black-Ice/

Volume switch will have tone bleed mod also. Kind believe no guitar company has put a killswitch in their guitars. From my research. The switches sell like hotcakes. I know fender used the passing lane on higher end models. But why not put these tools in lower end models, It really isn’t that expensive. I bought 10 bourns push/pull pots from The Art of Tone.

Success! No popping found on squier-talk forum from Jim Baritone. https://www.squier-talk.com/threads/kill-switch-question.49709/page-2

Removed the volume switch I had. The test has input output jack , kinda like a breadboard so don’t have solder on my guitar while testing.

Right now I have it wired with about 12M total resistance, will try 4.7M resistor next time, also will try on a spst because that is what is most common. An arcade switch just looks perfet, need something smaller than 20mm.

This thing does clean tremolo effects no popping sound. Will feature 2 killswitchs on my guitar . Tom Morello style latching with two volume controls. 1 volume turned down. His style is much harder to master but has the most versatility. The Intro to “Know your Enemy” is prime example. Really impossible to do with the momentary switch. You have to press the momentary switch first to turn off, hammer on, then release the momentary switch to turn sound on. Tom uses the killswitch to control the attack of the note and make it synth like. It’s almost impossible to do on the momentary switch. The speed is much slower. I will probably include a toggle to flip the momentary to always off. So that you can hammer on and click switch at the same time. The only issue is that you guitar is set to always off. This is why the old school toggle method is the best. It just gets really tiring on your arm. Tom is a true artist.

To do try Jim’s spst method, try cap method and lower resistance to 4.7M.

Tried both methods and added a resistor on the switch. All Failed, still get noise on click.

What I learned from watching this.

Designs must serve a purpose. Yeah I removed the idea of the piezo under on the neck pocket. It sounded like heaven but I had to blast it. I hate batteries in my guitar. And If I did I would to a motor inside like Deimal guitar’s did. My purpose is not to annoy my customers.

The Led Blacklit killswitch that would glow and activate the blacklit paint would look awesome, It serves no purpose.

A Darth Vader, R2D2 and steampunk guitar, serve no purpose.

But godamn Ben all my other ideas do. Silent Kill switch, passive distortion Chambered body. Straight through strings. Ditching the use of tone control in favor of tone caps switches. Just realized PRS are not completely straight.

I don’t care Ben if you don’t like my multiscale neck. You can suck my perpendicular nut. The purpose is because of the floating tremolo. There aren’t many available for multiscale guitars. Seriously what’s the purpose of your 90 hours build other than showing off? I love you Ben but you walk a line of hypocrisy, and you admit it at times. Which is hilarious. I love you a lot just wish you had an American supplier for your out of stock tools.

I vow to be the Amerikkkan version of you Ben. When I make Videos. I will shave my head and put tattoos on my head as an homage. I think it’ll be funny maybe not.

V2 semi hollow design. Piezo circular pickup inside or in neck pocket. Added toolpaths, Must be careful when cutting the chamber and not go too deep. Good thing about heavy ash is that it is strong. I will be able to cut a lot out.

Much progress on Silent kill switch. Bishop Vogue created a silent box using LDR resistors. Its so quiet, no popping, I will try with some ldr’s I bought from Amazon. Should come in soo.

Here’s another I found using regular resistors http://www.muzique.com/news/simple-kill-switch/

Imperial Burns Japanese guitar from 60’s multiscale, Needs tweaks, but one crazy design. Need a better headstock, also crammed by output jack. Needs more tweaks.

Updated TG64 multiscale, with stainless steel jescar frets and new headstock. Need to fix neck pocket a bit. May contour headstock a little bit. Edit- fixed neck pocket

Added reverse headstock 6 inline, needs a zero fret nut so people can try different tunings without having to fuck with a new nut. Added 6 red switchcraft dpdt BXE016, black and green colors also. Top 3 control on/off and bottom 3 for hi pass filter caps. Added more detail. My other headstock design just didn’t look right. Also tried switchcraft illuminated switches but were too big. BXE016, black and green also https://switchcraft.com/Product.aspx?ID=3181

Modified the body and pickguard quite a bit. Blue color is the original ural design. Offset the bottom and altered pickguard to not be in way of tremolo. Offset the neck joint and gave more room for upper fret access. Will add switchcraft square dpdt switches. Think about contouring the whole body like the spectrum.