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I'm a VISUAL person. I'm in the very early stages of designing my 4th guitar to build, but I get overwhelmed easily by a blank slate. Wouldn't it be great if there was a software package that let you input different appointments / woods / body sizes and gave a visual of to what you'd end up with.

Am I the only person that ends up with too many different dynamics and the end product ends up being a garbled mess?!

Perhaps as I build more I'll develop the eye I need


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For solid bodies I use an HB pencil and a piece of paper, and some masking tape-
But I like to have the wood first to get the inspiration, sometimes drawing directly on it with the
masking tape to do all the lines, shaping, running it in parrallel strips and writing the specifics like lengths etc, right on the wood.
There are several websites which allow you to custom build with CGI-but they are very limited with things such as shapes etc.

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You just pick up a chord, go twang, and you're got music. -Sid Vicious

Funny that you mention this. I struggle with the visualization, too, particularly when it comes to the fine details like purfling widths and schemes. Kevin Ansbury used to have a side business called Guitar Pics in the early 2000's. He was a graphic designer and did illustrations of guitars people were having commissioned. I think the best bet is a mechanical pencil, compass, and some velum unless you want to devote the time to learning a vector graphics program.

I use illustrator and Corel draw.
However I was thinking of something more photo realistic.. kind of what Martin has at their custom area webpage


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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Interesting. Will check it out at work tomorrow as I don't have a windows machine at my personal lair


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I've never had this problem, I can see the whole thing in my mind. But I guess that many do.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

I think my mind is full of too many other things haha


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Early on I identified a problem with my own design eye and that was also a penchant to want to incorporate too many different types of wood in my designs. I was new to woodworking and had never made anything before beyond reservations.... Being new to woodworking made me also new to exotic wood and I fell in love with many of the woods that we use. I even took Mario P. advice and carried around a polished 1" square of BRW in my pocket for around three years.....

It was around my 6th guitar that I built to be a personal guitar that when all was said and done had eight different types of wood on it, a sunburst..... and inlay. It is... so busy that this is the guitar that opened my eyes to letting understated have a place at the table too.

Since then my rule was no more than four different types of wood on a single guitar and that served me well for all the guitars built and sold after that.

Not being critical of anyone else here, just looking inward and design elements can get you in trouble too for the same reasons IMHO. For example to me a burst with a sound port, busy rosette, custom inlay on the fret board, peg head, etc. and maybe flamed hog or maple can get busy too. Again no offense intended to anyone.

As I matured as a builder not to be confused with as a person since I carry an app on my iPhone that makes fart sounds... my designs got way simpler and that's what needed to happen.

This is not software I understand but it was and is "guiding principals" for me and served me very well. You are very welcome to it!

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I agree w the limited woods aspect. Back sides and top with binding... already 3. Aesthetically it makes more sense to me to be able to have a sort of flow... for the back and sides to be represented around on the front and so forth.
As a very new builder ( barely into #4) I'm starting to realize I enjoy letting the wood talk. I'm not even certain I like super high gloss finishes .... just personally I mean. It will be interesting to see where my taste goes over the next few instruments .
Here is my current build. It is Chechen back and sides.



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Depending on the audience -- there can be a fine line between "art" and "odd", I'd say usually, if one is compelled to ask another what they think about a wood combo or an adornment etc. the idea tends to lean toward odd. Think refined and elegant -- what's gaudy will surely jump out at you. $.02

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

I don't struggle (too much anyway) to see in my mind's eye what it will look like but I do have trouble developing and artistic eye. I can recognize a good design when I see it but can't always know what I need to do to make my design good. Software that allows for mock-up and changes would help there too. Trial and error could not only help with the project at hand but also allow you brain to develop a sense of what does work and why.

I too try to keep my stuff on the simple side. I'd like to say elegant instead of simple but I'm nowhere near there yet. It is, of course, a matter of taste but I sometimes see the over use of figured woods. Not every different wood element has to be curly, especially so if they are different woods with varying degrees of curl. Again, a matter of taste. If I am using one wood with a lot of figure, I am probably going to steer towards more tame wood in the other elements.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

One easy, fast, and cheap way to help visualize different combinations of woods, binding, rosettes, etc. is to do a Google image search. The guitar I'm finishing now has ziricote back and sides and I was thinking that curly koa binding could look pretty good with it. I did an image search for " acoustic guitar ziricote koa" and found a bunch of photos of guitars configured that way which confirmed what I had thought. For comparison, I also did a search which substituted other woods for the term "koa" and found I liked the look of the koa best and I'm very happy with how the actual guitar came out.

For me, this approach is much faster than trying to render a photo-realistic image would ever be. It won't work for all combos of features you might imagine, but it's still pretty good. As a bonus, you may stumble across an idea you hadn't thought of. As another bonus, you get to see some pretty cool guitars.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Agreed, Jay. I do image searches all the time for just about everything. If I'm thinking of a part or tool or something I know I've seen before but don't know the name, usually an image search of some terms will get me where I need to be.

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