Molding/casting?
Say one wants to make a guitar body out of acrylic resin..What would be the best thing to make the mold out of? SWIM hears plaster of paris is a bit bittle, and can easily break. It has to be something able to capture fine detail, be not brittle, and not chemically reactive with acrylic resin. Any ideas?
Comments
You'll likely have to build up multiple layers and rout/sand the interior to make it work properly.
Do some research on that one first, as I'm not 100% on it.
Past that, if you have any questions on guitar building, feel free to pm me. Building and repair is where I make a good chunk of my income.
Good luck!
Go chippy.
Thought wax paper beneath might work, but that'd create some...interesting textures on the resin itself.
Best of luck with it.
Be sure to post pictures when you're done!
With any luck, it will be an exact replica of the JEM Im copying, complete with monkey grip and cool trem cavity. Also, I think you're thinking of Steve Vai, not Stevie Ray Vaughan.
So I am.
Son of a bitch.
I should probably stop responding to these things when I'm fucking exhausted.
Very cool project, regardless.
Im pretty excited to start working with acrylic. Lots of stuff I want to experiment with. I would also like to build an electric cello, as I think one monolithic casting of acrylic could constitute the entire instrument, save for the tuning pegs and electronics.
Also want to try making an acrylic ice scraper:
This is supposedly a CIA crafted weapon. 13 grams of metal-detector evading, vertebrae-detaching, bone-crunching, flesh lacerating polymer. Oh-so-easy to conceal, and easily extracted from the back pocket. It's already a stealthy implement, but imagine if it were transparent..It's likely under the stress, your enemy, nor bystanders would even see the weapon.
Very sharp looking pieces.
Biggest reason I haven't looked into it is I've been exploring the effects of certain exotic woods and construction techniques on tone and sustain.
Despite the overwhelming amount of tone that comes from your pickups, I am finding some species that I really enjoy the sound of.
Also, I've made a chambered body design that all but eliminates the need for a reverb pedal (for those who need it) without any of the feedback issues some people experience with full or even semi hollow bodies.
The cello seems like it'd be a bitch to mold.
Luckily, if it's solid, you do eliminate the other major grievances with orchestral instruments.
No sides to glue, no back and top to carve, no soundpost to set.
I've seen some violins done in a similar manner.
Very cool shit.
If you're feeling experimental enough, check around for transparent dyes.
Think you'd have some fun with those.
I've never actually heard a synthetic guitar being played. I think it's a bit rash to assume that it will sound sterile, just because it's a synthetic material and not made from the flesh of another lifeform. It may be possible to change the resonant characteristics by embedding certain objects in the acrylic, or by forming resonant cavities..
I'd think you could add some natural reverb by carefully adding air pockets, as well.
I'm just having my own fun with wild woods.
Whatever lights your creative fire, and all that, man.
Didn't even think of casting a cello like that.
Very streamlined look. I dig it.
There is definitely a wide avenue to explore as far as design for the instrument goes with the acrylic.
Also, food for design thought.
Inject phosphorescent/fluorescent pinstripes.
Whatever design, imagine a dark stage where the only thing you can see is a solid, glowing portion of your guitar.
It would definitely turn heads.
You could even make a hologram of sorts..Like one of those shapeshifting multilayer holograms. Could look like some sort of psychedelic hallucination. But yeah. I wonder if it would be possible to cast an entire guitar out of one piece? Like, neck, fingerboard and all. Hammer the frets directly to the acylic..
You can build your neck as one piece as happens with maple necks with the same fretboard.
You can build the body and neck as one piece as with neck thru designs.
Why not combine them?
From what I've seen, acrylic isn't a great neck material because of its brittle nature, unless you really baby the guitar.
Saw some suggestions to use glass as a truss rod.
On the brittle nature, whenever you're doing casting, make a spare block and test out the fretting capabilities.
Sawing might be doable, but the barbs on the fret tang might cause cracking.
By the way, just happened across a site that's done the same design that you're doing (I think).
LINK
By the way, this whole discussion is making me want to try out acrylic...
That is a silly question. You could probably leave a piece of lubricated allthread/really long screw in there when you cast it. Then unscrew it when the guitar is cured. Then again, who is to say a torsion bar(or at least an adjustable one) would even be necessary?
Either way, Fender figured it out.
Be really cool if the only electronics it had on board was a piezo, and there was a very discreet bridge/tuner. It would practically be an air guitar! Other than weight, of course. Acrylic is apparently 1.2g/cm3. Alder and mahogany drift somewhere around 0.5g/cm3.
You could do it the conventional way..Do an acrylic neck, insert the truss rod, then adhere the acrylic fingerboard..Would the torsion bar need to be adjustable? Why not just use a tempered steel bar or two?
I'm sure chippy could give more insight on the how for this than I, but you could rout the back of the neck fender style and re-fill the cavity with an acrylic strip with a different shading, emulating the rosewood strip.
fag, your tuning will have a lower tension, but I would personally install the truss rod, anyway.
Until you actually string it up, you're not going to know exactly how the neck will bow.
Also, leave yourself open to doing different setups.
If you ever want heavier strings or to go with Standard tuning, you've got an increase in tension.
Straight truss=no adjustment to your action.
If you do cast the neck, don't use allthread.
You'll get a cavity, but it either wont secure your truss rod properly or it just plain wont go in.
To give you an idea, block style adjustable (which is much the same as any non-adjustable you'll use), traditional rod, note the washers/stops used for tension, and a final option for non-adjustable carbon fiber.
You might be able to get away with two smaller CF rods run parallel and not have to worry about future tuning choices.
Best thought, if you want to do one piece, use a squared metal rod you can coat with something that wont adhere.