Got some spare filament and looking to build a guitar you can truly call your own? [The 3D Print Zone] has created a modular 3D printable guitar system that lets you easily mix and match different components for the ultimate in customization.
The build is based around a central core, which combines the pickups, bridge, and neck into one solid unit. This is really the heart of the guitar, containing all the pieces that need to be in precise alignment to get those strings vibrating precisely in tune. The core then mounts to a printed outer body via mating slots and rails, which in the main demo is made to look like a Les Paul-style design. This outer body also hosts the volume, tone, and pickup controls. Output from the pickups travels to the controls in the outer body via a set of metallic contacts.
What’s cool about this build is that the sky really is the limit for your creativity. As the video below demonstrates, the main build looks like a Les Paul. But, armed with the right CAD software, you can really make a guitar that looks like whatever you want, while the 3D printer does all the hard work of making it a reality. The files to print the guitar, along with the pickups and other components, are available as kits—but there’s also nothing stopping you from working up your own printed guitar design from scratch, either.
We’ve seen some other great 3D printed guitars before, too.
I want one! But.
In no universe is this either a Les Paul, Telecaster or any other style guitar. Because, and here’s the kicker Danno, the neck doesn’t change. The pickups are too close together so the bridge pickup and the actual bridge need to move tailward, i.e. away from the neck and neck pickup.
One common thread is all the illustrations show a Telecaster style pickup selector, volume and tone plate. And a crap neck, more on that later. HaD always says “after the break” but there is no break! Show me break! So still not a Les Paul, more a Less Paul, amirite? I really have trouble getting past the pickup disaster.
Where is the sustain? Show me sustain! Might as well build the body out of styrofoam(spelling?). But wait what’s this? The kit includes A DOWEL and Super Glue? Heck, African American! That’s all you had to say!
Narrator flaunts like it’s modular but once Super Glue enters the chat ain’ nothin’ modula’ no mo’. I’d sooner buy an aftermarket neck, pickups, wiring harness and hardware and handcarve the various handcarved bodies out of hobos. Oh, don’t fret, we call driftwood “hobos” in these parts. Auto parts are another good resource.
The concept is good, the body material and just about everything else is less so.
As I rarely do, I watched the video. It did not demonstrate the guitar’s sound but we got a good introduction to the pedals. Why not just modify a Selectric II? You could wear it like a accordion.
Not my scene but if you enjoy it, a chacusn son goust.
Challenge: No body at all, just neck, pickups, bridge and wiring harness stuff. Perhaps a metal block or something for sustain. Does anybody remember laughter? I mean, uh, sustain?
p.s. When you care enough to send the very best you…do…not…use…anything… “SQUIRE”.
Les Paul would like a word:
https://guitar.com/features/opinion-analysis/how-les-pauls-log-guitar-changed-everything/
The log (Les Paul’s first electric guitar) was made pretty much like this 3D printed version.
Sounds like someone needs to go to remedial school to learn the difference between trees and 3d filament. Sad.
Ok is a printing exercise. Like the Prusacaster. I printed it and after few months started bowing so I bough an unfinished wood poplar body on AliExpress for something like $10 (£7) and now I have practice Tele for less then £100 complete
You wouldn’t download a car!
You wouldn’t flush XXL-size styrofoam cup.
I thought the body of the guitar was supposed to be one piece with the pickups and the neck for it to have any acoustic purpose. Otherwise you basically have an air gap between the parts, which kills any resonances.
If it doesn’t change the acoustic qualities, how the guitar plays, then there’s no functional point in having different interchangeable bodies. If it’s just cosmetics, then it’s just a plastic toy guitar.
You thought wrong, the body is for ergonomics (and looks), not acoustic purposes. See Les Paul’s Log guitar.
Dude is right, you are GDMFCSing wrong. It was called “The Log” for a reason, and that reason is why Dude is right, you are GDMFCSing wrong. The reason, since apparently you did not “See Les Paul’s Log guitar” and why Dude is right, you are GDMFCSing wrong is a BIG HONKING BLOCK OF PINE INTEGRAL TO THE GUITAR’S CONSTRUCTION. M’kay?
GPT2, calm down.
Two words: Alembic, aluminum. Actually four words and the fourth word is “you”.
You certainly can build a guitar without a body at all, but whether that is going to be a good sounding guitar is another matter entirely.
Well, I do hope it’s made from tone plastic
Everyone knows that you have to use pure tone PET-G filament from the Amazon river basin….
Some say there’s no such thing as toneplastic but this proves the opposite.
On a more serious note, a wooden guitar with a 3D printed top (or veneer or something) could be cool.
This is true on acoustic guitars, but on electric guitars, it is only the pickups, their placement, strings, and how the neck tensions the strings that matters really.
And the reason is you don’t need much resonance on an electric guitar as the electromagnets (pickups) just need to sense the vibration of the string itself.
There’s a cool YouTube video where a guy actually compared a normal electric guitar with one made over open air to show there is no such thing as “tone wood” for electric guitars.
“… it is only the pickups, their placement, strings, and how the neck tensions the strings that matters really.”
I beg to differ.
Materials and geometry does matter… maybe not as much as in an acoustic guitar, but they matter just the same. Moving strat pickups into a 335 doesn’t turn the 335 into a strat (or vice versa).
Source: Me, longtime guitar player and owner of many different guitars over several decades.
I don’t see a way in which the body would not affect the sound – because it’s a coupled resonator with the strings – that is unless you de-couple it by having it loosely bound to the neck so the vibrations are damped by the impedance mismatch at the interface.
Of course if you’re going to put your guitar through distortion pedals and flangers and whatever effects, then the original sound hardly matters at all. It all sounds the same.
not a guitar.
it will not stay in tune and be playable.
worse, much much worse, is that an infinite number of vastly better looking embelishments, can be accomplished, with paint, partscaster,
partspaul, bodys are availble cheap, and free used, snd the simplest to tools will reshape the wood.
save the 3d priniting for things a cave man cant do, right.
you can change anything about it except what you actually want to change??
i feel like almost every music-adjacent hack here is made by someone who is doing the hack instead of learning the music. it rubs me the wrong way, of course, because that’s something i’ve outgrown. i learned it’s kind of a dead end. yes, i have a 2×4 gathering dust with tuners and pickups mounted to it. and a couple guitars i actually play.
real musicians hack their instruments, of course, but i don’t think a single one of the music hacks i’ve seen on here has any similarity to what a real musician does. i don’t mean to gatekeep but there’s simply no substitute for actually learning how to play the instrument, and when someone hasn’t done that, it really shows
Ha like all the rad aero mods on a boyracer car around town that maybe look cool but just add drag, catch on speed bumps or drag when pulling out of the driveway. Probably a good number of them track the car but I’m guessing most don’t. Source: me who wanted hood quick release pins on my car and my dad who (rightly) laughed and said no way.
The hack being more interesting than the job it does is how you get most open source software as well.
Everyone here seems to hate it, so it must have something going for it.