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Thoughts on my rough design

Luckie

Luckie

Jan 1, 2010
1,446
28
Northfield MN
#1
Rough copy is right.
001-1.gif

Thanks to being trapped on an airplane, I had a couple hours to doodle. I'm no artist, but I thought the design turned out pretty well.
I got lazy on the MOP bird inlays, and the pickups are darkstars.
Thought I'd share my little drawing and see what people think of the design...

Oh, the stripes on the body are ebonized mahogany, zebra wood, and a thin strip of ebony (left to right)
The main body and neck is supposed to be quilted maple. Ebony fb.
 
#7
mikeyswood said:
Your lower bout is out of balance and the upper horn is too large for the lower. The headstock accents will annoy the user while tuning. Are those asymmetrical body lines?
Click to expand...

There are defenitely some design flaws, it's a prelim design.
Feel free to rework the design and show the changes, I'd love to see them. I'll make an attempt to formalize/ rework it sometime this week.
 
#9
I like the looks of the headstock, but in practice it may be a little difficult to navigate. Maybe with different tuners.

The lower half of the body definitely seems out of balance with the top half. Maybe shrink the lower right slightly, of bring the lower left down and out a little more. I think the upper horn could work, but not with the current lower area.

Overall I like the concept, the body just lacks flow at the moment.
 
#10
Man, that thing ain't gonna play worth a damn..... frets are all mis-placed ;)

But seriously, The more that you do this, the better you'll get at it. When I start with a concept, it usually get re-drawn 3 or 4 times.

Example (redrawn twice)............... well, once by the customer, twice by me.
 

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#11
For the forum's knowledge, I've never built or designed an instrument before.
I just sketched this little bass and wondered what the experienced folks would think.
I have a different design for the headstock in actuality. The sketch one turned out all strange.
002-1.gif

I figured that the headstock shape would be a bit impractical, but I think it's cool.
 
#12
Luckie said:
For the forum's knowledge, I've never built or designed an instrument before.
I just sketched this little bass and wondered what the experienced folks would think.
I have a different design for the headstock in actuality. The sketch one turned out all strange.
002-1.gif

I figured that the headstock shape would be a bit impractical, but I think it's cool.
Click to expand...

It's a little too much for my personal taste. The top portion looks like a chef's hat or a cup cake gone haywire. I'm also not big on 'pointy' features on instruments short of the way uprights, violins and such handle their body curves.

As was mentioned earlier, that design looks like it would get bothersome after a few dozen knuckle-bumps when tuning.

Now if you went with 'upright-style' tuners that pointed to the back instead of out to the sides, that could change things.

Please note - this is my opinion and it's based solely on my personal taste. There are plenty of other folks here who are attracted to the BC Rich world of instruments that look like they could also kill you. Let's see what they have to say.

Also know that at one point years ago I posted some of my early designs and received equally non-flattering feedback that was very useful and kept me from building a bass that "Looked like an alien head with googly eyes".
 
#13
I think the design could be made into something really cool, but currently needs work
I actually kind of like the headstock, but as previously stated, it would get in the way of tuning. You could maybe cut off the little round parts at the top of the headstock so it doesn't looks so chef hat-y. But like I said, I think this could be a really cool bass
Maybe I'll draw up a version I think would be nice
 
#16
The Nutsack headstock from BC Rich is notorious for breaking tips. If you put this much work into your instrument are you going to play it or hang it on a wall? How will you feel when one of these ears breaks?
 
#17
mikeyswood said:
The Nutsack headstock from BC Rich is notorious for breaking tips. If you put this much work into your instrument are you going to play it or hang it on a wall? How will you feel when one of these ears breaks?
Click to expand...


I understand your concern, but I've had no problems with breaking tips after having owned pointy instruments in the past.
If it breaks, I'll fix it. It's just wood.
 
#19
Headstock aside, consider a couple of design points regarding "balance" to which mikey was alluding. I've found that drawing a centreline through the entire bass from tip to tail and then designing along that yields nicely balanced designs.

For example, decide how wide you want the bass to be at the bouts, the horns and the scoops, draw those lines parallel to the centreline and then work from there. So you might decide you want the bass to be about 14 inches wide, then make each bout about 7 inches from the centreline. Regardless of where they are located fore and aft, the balance will be better established.

Make the upper horn extend at least to the 12th fret (or half of the entire scale length if you don't want to draw all the frets in place) to improve balance. Make the lower horn extend out from the centreline about the same as the upper horn to improve balance. Keep the scoops approximately the same distance from the centreline on the treble side and bass side.

Most basses/guitars are designed this way. It improves ergonomics and improves the visual balance, which in turn improves visual appeal. Humans are drawn to symmetry, and in the absence of symmetry, balance...

Edit: Please excuse my brutal photochop, but this is an approximation of what I was getting at in my ramblings above:

Original drawing:
001-1.gif


Photochopped edit:
2hxoh6p.jpg


I've added a centreline for reference and then adjusted the upper bout and lower bout to make them more balanced in reference to the centreline. I also brought the bass side body scoop closer to the same distance from the centreline as the treble side body scoop and adjusted the shapes of the bouts just slightly trying to enhance their symmetry. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this is my interpretation of attending to the "balance" that mikey was talking about...
 

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