Big things are afoot in the world of Sonic Mountain Guitars. I had possibly the most exciting step forward arrive today so I figure it's time to share. I've been working on this since I finished my first build. The Flying V build was an early iteration of this idea before I really knew what I was doing.
Introducing the SMG Deluxester Prototype project.
I originally started this intending to do a neck through, but various factors kept pushing me back to making a bolt on. There are good reasons Fender does it that way. Building a bunch of guitars and also having people bring me instruments to work on has really made me aware of what I do and don't like in a guitar and by and large, I prefer F style guitars. The seemed little point in trying to build something I didn't love so this is the culmination, both in design and a practical sense, of the last years thinking and drawing up ideas. The shape is a little bit of a lot of differnt guitars smooshed together. It's roughly the same size as a les paul body (I'll put some comparison shots against the template up later)
I'm hoping to eventually use reclaimed timber, particularly mahogany for the bodies, but at the moment I haven't done any timber sourcing. I figure I can wreck some more pine first
After a lot of messing around and trying different things I finally took the plunge and had a bunch of templates cut. These are 4mm mild steel for durability. My hope is that I will be able to build and sell a number of these guitars over the next couple of years. This was $170 for ten pieces delivered to my door - so hit me up if you'd like a contact. I provided all the files and turn around was less than a week.
The design is deliberately flexible in terms of bridge/pickups and electrics. At the moment I'm focusing on getting hard tails right, but I have templates drawn up for a Strat style tremelo as well. While waiting for funds to accumulate for machinery, I've been having plenty of fun doodling some options.
Anyway, I have to keep reminding myself not to get ahead of myself. First task after this will be building a neck using these templates. You may notice a couple of odd looking things amongst the templates some of them are to help me build this machine for cutting fret slots quickly and accurately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcaat2YNKJ8
All going well this should cut frets to an extremely tight tolerance.
This along with about a million other things is still on the to-do list, so this is going to take a while to realise. I've given myself a goal of having the prototype completed this year. It takes me about 2 months to do a kit, so I think that's a reasonable time frame, given I am building equipment as I go as well. Then assuming I don't find any glaring issues in my process's I'm hoping to be able to churn out a couple a month. We will see.
I never actually thought I would ever build a guitar (despite wanting to since I was a kid) let alone several and be in a position to design my own from scratch. This is thanks in no small part to Pitbull guitars and this forum. I've absorbed an enormous amount of information from here and really pushed myself in several builds to see just what was possible.
So I really hope you all enjoy following along, I'm sure I'm going to need input and advice along the way. Happy to answer any questions, I've been thinking about this post for a while and I'm sure I haven't covered nearly everything I intended to.
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Originally Posted by Dedman
. Neck is already setup for ferrules as I'm going to shape the heel, same for rear rout control cavity. The 22 fret mod and offset dots could be achieved with current templates as well and the HSS wouldn't be hard to sort out either. Gotta love modular systems...