My search for the ideal guitar

When I browse through magazines about guitars and basses, or occasionally try which of the guitars on display in Soundland would "fit in my hand" and delight my ear, there will be a dozen chosen ones. But at home there is room for only a maximum of four guitars and one piano. Of this dozen chosen guitars, of course, I could hardly buy and pay for all of them. And that's why I started long ago as an amateur, building inaccessible guitar models with my own hands. Everything in the world has its time, I stopped working a long time ago and I don't need other guitars for myself. But I am all the more interested in the construction and technology of guitar production. Drawings, sketches, texts with parameters, specifications on paper are increasing and I am slowly losing overview.

When asked why I don't have a properly equipped workshop and I don't make guitars or templates for sale, I answer:

One must know when it is time to adapt to increasing years and declining physical and mental freshness. Be able to estimate the effects of competition, advertising, and technological advances. And that's why I don't want to produce anything that has been more than enough on the market for a long time. What I offer, such as a book, an e-book, a website, fills my purpose in life and I hope that it also supports the educational use of the free time of young people.

There is talk of digitization everywhere, therefore, all of these "blueprints" of mine should be saved as graphic files, on the hard drive or in the cloud. I can't imagine how I should scan it all so that it has a useful format for a hard drive. Knowing that much of the detail repeats itself, it occurred to me to simplify the entire system to graphics in the coordinate system and a table of selected control points. As many as needed, so that we can visually recognize and identify each guitar model. Of course, there are also the main specifications ("specs"), such as the length of the scale, the number of frets, the width of the fingerboard, a reference to the hardware manufacturer and the like.

Why Navigator?

Navigation, in general, is an activity that allows you to determine your location anywhere in the world and safely find your way to a selected destination.

Finding the note or chord positions quickly and safely on the fingerboard of a guitar or bass is also called navigation.

Both books "E-Gitarren (German) / Guitar Shapes (English) Navigator", on the other hand, deal with the determination of the positions of characteristic points, lines, distances and shapes of parts of the guitar as a whole. In contrast to technical drawings, "Navigator" does not use classic dimensions, but mainly the coordinates of the positions of the end points, center points, etc. Everything takes place in the X and Y coordinates of the normal Cartesian system. The third dimension, the Z coordinate, is used as needed.

And the main role is played by the origin,

the   Z E R O   P O I N T

actually invisible under the bridge.

The "Navigator" system does not claim the absolute accuracy of its coordinates. Its aim is to offer a new method by which shapes and their dimensions are clearly documented with reasonable (optional) accuracy.

Maybe as a beginner you may be excited to see that you can build an electric guitar yourself, you are looking for a detailed construction plan or drawing, and you don't want to waste time measuring the shapes of other guitars unnecessarily. Feel free to take the first step, take a sheet of paper measuring 40 x 60 cm (or sit down at a computer with the appropriate 2D software) and draw a grid of 24 squares of 10 x 10 cm. In the book you will find almost 30 grid templates of guitar bodies and instructions on how to easily and accurately enlarge them to the original 1: 1

Guitar DIY by eye

Perhaps everyone who started playing the electric guitar came to the opinion that they absolutely needed a different, more perfect guitar, or they had to remodel, improve or at least somehow decorate the existing one themselves.

The first thought is: Do I need a lot of hand and power tools and a properly large workshop? Or tinkering everything just with a planer, chisel and drill in a small chamber, in the basement, in the garage, etc.?

I started to "improve" the first two guitars I bought, but it didn't help the sound much. I was only 16 at the time. After two years, I came to the conclusion that making an electric guitar with my own hands would not be a problem if I can cut, drill, dig, glue, planer and grind wood. And soon, surprisingly, the finished guitar sounded almost like Hank Marvin's Stratocaster (Apache-Shadows). Probably because she weighed almost 7 kg.

The question is how this was possible when I did not know the physical laws of string oscillation, calculation of fret and bridge positions, etc. The careful transfer of the dimensions of the Neoton semi-acoustic guitar, its fingerboard and fret positions contributed to its success. Especially thanks to its sliding bridge.

Learn simply by imitating!