Thursday, 21 July 2011

Truly headless

After postponing it a number of times, I cut off the strat headstock of my very fine Warmoth neck. That took a bit of self persuation, but I needed it headless. A brass angle bracket is holding the strings. I also made a new acrylic body. This time, I tried to make it really fit my torso. I tried too hard: Most of the curves and shapes are too pronounced and it's actually too tight on the body.

Bridge and tuners are the same as in last post. I plan to make an improved version of the tuner bracket (or perhaps abandon it in favour of one using my plunger type tuners).

The pickup is a P90 mounted above the strings. I plan on experimenting with a couple of experimental pickups using primary coils with few windings and a current transformer, but I haven't gotten around to that.

It still needs a strap to be really comfortable.

Things I might do next:
  • Make a steam bent plywood body in the style of the acrylic ones.
  • Make a new and more ergonomic acrylic body.
  • Make a proper wooden body for the neck and ditch the rectangular steel tube for a while.
  • Test and develop my pickups.
  • Get back and properly finish the two-string bass. This involves adding a slidable pickup and a piezo-pickup with preamp.

3 comments:

Kåre said...

Nice! I feel better and better about the acrylic. Can you get it in colored versions? Have you ever considered a tuning-system that pulls (or pushes) the strings perpindicular to the string. Wonder how the ratio would work, but theres a strong mechanical force advantage working that way!

Unknown said...

You can get acrylic sheets in lots of colours, but it is not cheap. I'd like to get my hands on some scrap pieces from a factory nearby.

The perpendicular thing is fascinating. Some violin fine tuners work that way (gripping the string at two points a couple of centimeters apart and pushing down the middle of the string with a screw). I've though of that principle a couple of times, but my designs end being so complicated that I prefer my plunger type tuners instead.

bertram said...

the steam bent plywood body is something I would like to see...