Conrad and 20th century industrial design...

guitarz.blogspot.com

I'm afraid that this Conrad will never make music again, but maybe it can still toast bread, provide air conditioning,  vacuum clean... 

Bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Motorized remote-controlled guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Présentation from Gryphée on Vimeo.

Here's an email from Gyphée:

Hi there,

A friend of mine make me discover your web-site, it's really great!

You maybe be interested in my project. I'm a french musician and I start a new project during the summer, called Gryphée. It's a motorized and remote controled guitar, tunned in 450Hz, with 5 stings in B and one in Fb.

It's done big drones, with stranges overtone.

You can watch a video here: http://vimeo.com/17466126 (see above)

I have a Myspace even if it's became a very bad place: http://www.myspace.com/gryphee

I have a mini-album here: http://www.archive.org/details/isor025LesRondesAbiment

Right now, a friend do the mastering of the second called "The Rotations Project" with 10 other european musicians who used the same sample of motorized guitare to do something new. And I will record another one in January.

I hopes you will like it.

Regards from France.

Gyphée.

Thanks for that. As well as weird, wonderful, beautiful, strange and outrageous guitars, we always enjoy seeing guitars used in art installations and in experimental music.

G L Wilson.

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Kawai Aquarius, blogs and stuff

Hi, this is Bertram.

As GLW pointed out in the previous post, I've been posting regularly here in the last weeks and it's been a very interesting experience, full of learning, sharing, exchange and - well - discipline; finding something interesting to post everyday is not always easy!

Anyway, I will keep posting once in a while when I find something worthwhile...

But I also have my own blogs, and I take the opportunity to advertise them to the Guitarz many readers.

First (and you will now understand why there is this bizarre picture on the right), I just started a blog about Kawai Aquarius guitars. This is not the greatest or most famous guitar, but I have a soft spot for it and it's very difficult to find information about it on the Web. So I call for contribution and invite players and owners of Kawai Aquarius guitars (and bass) to send me pictures, stories, tracks, videos... to feed this blog.

But my main blog stays gUitarREN (it's a mix of German, French and English for guitar - of course), a blog about guitar design and projects. From my background as a musician and a visual artist, I started one year ago to study thoroughly about guitars, first to master new aspects of guitar playing, then in the idea that I want to make guitars myself, then I got really involved (I mean even more than before) and went into drawing guitars every day as a creative design process and post them on my blog. I also started building my projects, but I have to learn everything while doing it, and have not so much time and will never have enough to actualize all my ideas...

So I'd love to meet a guitar maker who needs a designer and try a collaboration, if you are interested you can contact me via my profile (you know what? I contacted some companies already and Fender answered, they do have an office to receive suggestions from people like me, interesting, isn't it?).

Thank you for your attention.

My Third Electric Guitar Project

[Ben writes...]

My Third Electric Guitar Project
I rebuilt 90's "Maison" made in Korea electric guitar.
This one is for my little brother that just learning to play on guitar.

Guitar Body: Sandvich.
Guitar Neck: Maple.
Bridge: Vintage style.
Guitar Tuning Machines: Plain.
Pickups: H-S-H Maison.

Pictures of the guitar:






for more visit: All About Guitars & Guitars 110

My second electric guitar project

[Ben writes...]

This guitar was a 70's "Harmony" made in U.S.A "strat" style electric guitar
Almost A year I had work on this one!
Body: Alder.
Neck: Maple.
Bridge: Gotoh.
Tuners: Gotoh.
Pickups: Seymour Duncan Jazz, SSL1 - Middle/Neck.




The idea for this shape came to me from the funk rock band "The Offspring" Sign:



For videos and more pics: http://guitars.110mb.com/index.php?p=1_11_Second-Guitar-Project

My first electric guitar project

Hey there, I'm Ben from All About Guitars and Im gonna keep this blog rocking!
First I'll introduce u to my website: Guitars 110 .

lets begin...
my first electric guitar project:
I started from an unknown 70's japanese "strat" style guitar, named "Stiefel".
And here are the features:
Guitar Body: Many pieces of different woods.
Guitar Neck: Maple.
Fretboard: Rosewood Scalloped.
Pickups: Fender Made In Mexico.
and here are the pictures of the guitar:




After a week, I'd made a pickguard from wood:




sound check: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=71RPJR7Y

Another Yamaha Pacifica project

I've just bought this carcass (i.e. body and neck) of another Yamaha Pacifica 112. I've not decided if I want to re-finish it yet. The body does have a fair amount of knocks and dings in it but I'm not convinced that they are a problem seeing as relic guitars are supposed to be so cool. However, if I do re-finish it, it won't end up looking like a deck chair this time!

For this project I want to equip the guitar with a pair of Danelectro lipstick pickups that I've had lying about in my box of bits for ages. Now, I'm not quite sure how these should be installed as yet, because if you look at a Danelectro guitar you'll see that the pickups are attached via long screws from the back of the guitar. This shouldn't be too much of a problem for the neck position of the Pacifica - all I'd need to do is drill screw holes in the required positions - but the bridge pickup location puts it over the tremolo spring cavity. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to approach this yet, but I'm thinking on it. If anyone has any bright ideas, let me know!

Yamaha Pacifica 112 Guitar Project, Part 4

I thought it was high time I blew the cobwebs off this long-forgotten guitar project from a few years ago. The damn thing just needed assembling and wiring up and in theory it should be ready to go. However, I had a small mishap when I dropped the replacement loaded scratchplate and broke off the lower horn. Fortunately, I still had the original guitar scratchplate, so I transferred the pickups, 5-way switch and volume pot to this plate. ("What about the tone pot?", I hear you cry. Well, somewhere along the way over the last couple of years it had detached itself, and I'd lost it. Then I decided that I didn't really want it anyway as I never use tone controls, so I figured I'd just leave it as it is).

As a plus point, I noticed that the original scratcplate had faded over the years to a pleasing deep cream colour. You can see the orignal colour in the area previously covered up by the now missing tone control.

So, I put all the parts together, soldered the output wires to a jack socket and attached this to the edge of the guitar using a football-shaped (American football) plate. Then I strung her up.

Uh-oh! The string tension was tipping the tremolo bridge up at an alarming angle. Quick - add more springs!

Now that was a good idea! As has often been said of Strat-style guitars, the springs in the tremolo cavity give the guitar a kind of built-in reverb. It turns out that this guitar now has a really nice tone. It has this ringing reasonance to it that is lacking in many other much more expensive guitars, and this was built up from bits and pieces that I'd bought from eBay! I've got to say that I'm really happy with this guitar and am surprised that it turned out to be so playable.

No doubt the guys over at the forum on GuitarSite.com would happily nominate this guitar as a candidate to their on-going Worst Colour/Finish/Detail on a guitar thread, but Hey! - it was an experiment, and I secretly quite like the "deckchair" stripes. They make the guitar individual and add to its personality. Perhaps if I was starting this project anew, I wouldn't go down the stripey route again; I'd probably experiment with some other unique look and it could end up looking even more disasterous!

For sale on ebay.co.uk: Parts-ocaster Strat, hardtail conversion, Squier etc...

(item 7343434490 end time 21-Aug-05 15:12:03 BST)   SOLD

The return of Frankie 2

I was never happy with this project as it was. The left-handed neck wasn't really working for me and the roller nut I'd installed made the action too high at the head end of the neck. Tonight, I replaced the neck for a more ordinary Stratocaster neck - a Squier Strat neck with 22-fret rosewood fingerbaord. I also removed the tremolo bridge, the springs, etc, and have installed one of these fab Hot Rod hardtail bridges from Custom Shop Parts. It now plays beautifully!

As for the parts that I removed, I may keep them for a future project or else I might have a clear out and sell them on eBay.

(Click on the photo to enlarge it).