Silent Guitar Scratch build ideas

[dingobass]

Titebond original is fine.
Also, assuming this beast is having an undersaddle piezo pickup you may want to push the string through holes closer to the bridge.
Around the 10mm ish mark is good.
You need to have a decent amount of of downwards pressure on the saddle for the piezo to work correctly, especially on the bottom E string.
Pic shows the distance I have found that works for me.

[Zandit75]

Excellent, thanks for that DB!
Titebond Original it is.
Only one problem, the nearest stockist is over 2hrs away!

[Fretworn]

Gorgeous guitar DB, and a great picture. I now have a new desktop pic on my work computer......

[Simon Barden]

That bottle of Sellys is interior grade PVA glue, so it's not fully waterproof and you could steam it apart if you ever need to. Like Titebond, normal PVA forms a stronger bond than the wood itself, so it will certainly hold the wood together. What I don't know it if the acoustic properties of Titebond are better than normal PVA in transmitting vibrations.

One alternative that you might be able to get locally, is hide glue (which Gibson used to use, and still do for their historically correct high-end guitars). You need to mix the beads with water and then heat it up, so it's a bit messy. But it does form a hard join that is supposedly better at transmitting vibrations than Titebond.

[Zandit75]

Doodling, doodling, doodling!

[Zandit75]

I'm not too sure about this design because of it's width.
I'll do another slimmer version tonight. I also want to play around with the lower part of the cut out.
The more I look at it, the less I like it!

[FrankenWashie]

I'm not too sure about this design because of it's width.
I'll do another slimmer version tonight. I also want to play around with the lower part of the cut out.
The more I look at it, the less I like it!

You might also want to consider how easy it is going to be to tidy up in and around those tight corners. It may be less fiddly to go with a more open radius in there and that may change the whole visual dynamic of the lower curve.
With the angle of the strings to the pegs over the nut, is that curve going to create interference issues?

[Zandit75]

Yep, all of those things are going through my head right now, especially the string interference.
I'll try addressing all of those things with the re-design.
I'll look back at the designs I originally posted for more inspiration!

[FrankenWashie]

Yep, all of those things are going through my head right now, especially the string interference.
I'll try addressing all of those things with the re-design.
I'll look back at the designs I originally posted for more inspiration!

Draw it up on Tracing paper over the top of your Paddle Headstock, you can overlay other sheets of tracing paper and make tweaks to the base design to see what you think.
If you had a 4-5mm radius on those corners and then ran your curve between them it would look pretty schmick I think. You could also look at turning that curve into a bevel, to avoid any string clearance issues. But that might not play well with your pointy design cues.

[Zandit75]

Draw it up on Tracing paper over the top of your Paddle Headstock, you can overlay other sheets of tracing paper and make tweaks to the base design to see what you think.
If you had a 4-5mm radius on those corners and then ran your curve between them it would look pretty schmick I think. You could also look at turning that curve into a bevel, to avoid any string clearance issues. But that might not play well with your pointy design cues.

Yep, understood. I actually have some tracing paper, so I'll give that a shot too!
The bottom curve is going to change completely I think. A bevel would be hard to do on the existing curve shown there, especially around the nut, and getting a smooth transition.
We'll see what tonight brings!!