Photo: DRAMM Guitars, www.DRAMM.de
Design examples
The Botar
This example of innovative guitar design was created by the German guitar maker Thomas Dramm. His electric guitar can be successfully played with a bow.
The idea to play the electric guitar with a bow is not new but players have always used standard electric guitars which have their limitations: you can not play single notes with the bow on a normal guitar and the bowed notes are faint compared to the plucked sounds. The latter is due to the construction of conventional electric guitar pickups.
Only few parts of the conventional electric guitar could be left unchanged; the neck and the fingerboard, the body, the bridge, the pickups and the electronics had to be redesigned. The fingerboard is much more curved than on a standard guitar and the radius of the bridge has to be accordingly curved. The curved fingerboard and
bridge allows playing every single string separately. The body is specially shaped to give room for the bow when the outer strings are played and the pickups and electronics have to work with strings that are played with a bow.
The guitar has a swamp ash body and a glued-in hard rock maple neck with ebony fingerboard.
The scale length of the Botar is 25.5 inches.The fingerboard sports 22 frets of which the first fret is a zero fret which in conjunction with the ebony string guide replaces the otherwise commonly used nut. All strings run straight to their respective tuning machines.The pickups are handwound and their covers are made from the same wood as the body. Together with the likewise special active electronics this gives a good balance between the volumes of the bowed and the plucked sounds.
Solid-body guitar
Scale length: 24.75" (628.65mm) Neck: mahogany
Fingerboard: rosewood, 12" radius Body: alder, one piece
The entire guitar is oiled with
Danish Oil and waxed. Wilkinson tremolo
Electronics: 2 humbuckers wired in a PRS-circuit.
I also offer a blueprint of this guitar (see additional materials).
My first-ever electric guitar (1990)
Scale length: 34" (863.6mm) Total length: 1040mm (40.9") Neck: straight-through, maple/ mahogany
Fingerboard: stained maple Body wings: maple
Body depth: only 35mm
The entire instrument is finished with satin nitrocellulose lacquer.
This fretand headless bass with its extremely thick straight-through neck made up of three strips of maple and two thin strips of mahogany has no truss rod.The maple fingerboard was stained in a darker color.The body wings are made from maple.
Because the strings are clamped at the head end, it is possible to use normal strings. However, I would now use special headless bass strings, which I had not yet heard of at the time of making this bass guitar. The bridge and the tuners are made of brass. The strings are tensioned with 6mm-diameter allen screws. Using thinner, 3mmdia- meter bolts with finer thread would, however, also be sufficient and would allow twice-as-fine tuning. Since the fingerboard surface is only 6mm higher than the body surface, the entire tuning unit had to be lowered into the body.
As for the electronics, this bass has a DiMarzio bass humbucker, one tone control and one volume control.
My latest electric bass (2000)
Scale length: 34" (863.60mm) Neck: maple, one piece, straightthrough, headless. Fingerboard: ebony, 16" radius,
fretted up to the 12th fret, rest is fretless.
Body wings: cherry Finished with Danish Oil. ABM tuning unit.
Electronics: 1 MusicMan-style pickup wired to an active filter circuit.
Headless bass
Scale length: 34" (863.6mm) Total length: only 960mm (37.8")!
Neck: bolt-on, maple finished with clear nitrocellulose lacquer Fingerboard: ebony, untreated Body: ash, finished in black
This bass has a special and rather expensive tuning unit manufactured by the German company ABM. When you compare prices, bear in mind that this unit includes the bridge as well as the tuners. It is possible to use special strings with two ball ends.
The split Precision Bass pickup is connected to an active filter circuit. The controls allow the adjustment of frequency, impact volume and volume level.
A headless guitar is undoubtedly the easiest type of guitar to build, saving you work as, for instance, no peghead is needed on the neck. Further advantages of a headless instrument: the strings run in a totally straight line; due to the absence of windings on tuner shafts the instrument is perfectly stable in its tuning; because of its zero-fret no lengthy nut-filing is required; the instrument is a com– pact whole, and the risk of making the peghead too heavy simply does not exist.With all these advantages, why aren't all guitars built like this? Well, guitarists are a fairly conservative lot after all (aren't they?), and maybe headless guitars are just not as “sexy” as conventional ones.
Hollow-body guitar
Scale length: 24.75" (628.65mm) Neck: bolt-on, ash, clear nitrocellulose lacquer
Fingerboard: plum wood Body: 6mm-thick spruce top on
alder body. The alder body is, its lengthwise middle strip excepted, hollow.
The two halves of the split, handwound pickup are linked in series and act as a humbucker due to the opposite magnetic poles of the coils.The neck is angled back slightly.
Solid-body guitar
with Stratocaster pickguard
Scale length: 25.5" (647,7mm) One-piece neck: maple, vintage amber stain, clear nitrocellulose lacquer, peghead with staggered tuners
Body: alder (two pieces), one can of primer, one of blue color Electronics: standard Stratocaster wiring, one single-coil and two single-coil-format humbuckers; fingerboard is longer than the neck.
Solid-body bass
with Jazz Bass pickguard
Scale length: 34" (863.6mm) One-piece neck: maple, vintage amber stain, clear lacquer Body: birchwood (three pieces);
color: green (two spray cans); Jazz Bass electronics.
Due to the shape and position of the pickguard the end of the neck of the two Fender-style guitars has to be around the 22nd fret.
Solid-body guitar with P-90 pickups
Scale length: 24.75" (628.65mm) Angled-back neck: mahogany, angled-back peghead Fingerboard: rosewood, untreated Body: alder (two pieces), clear nitrocellulose lacquer Electronics: two self-wound P-90 pickups with opposite magnetic
poles.This gives a humbucker when the switch is in the middle position.
Semi-acoustic vs. hollow-body
The term semi-acoustic guitar is used specifically for guitars like the one shown on the left. The body consists of a thin top and back plate and the sides are bent from thin strips of wood. A solid block of wood runs down the center of the body. Building a semi-acoustic guitar has more in common with building an acoustic guitar than building an electric.
I use the term hollow-body guitar for a solid-body guitar with hol- lowed-out body and glued-on top.
Semi-acoustic guitar
Scale length: 24.75" (628.65mm) Neck: glued-in, angled head, maple, clear lacquer
Fingerboard: rosewood, untreated Body: 5mm-thick maple plywood, clear lacquer
Greatest body width: 410mm (16.1") Body length: 490mm (19.3")
Body depth: 45mm to 55mm (13/4" to 25/32")
This Washburn semi-acoustic guitar is the only electric guitar I ever bought. Each of its two humbuckers has one volume and one tone control. A toggle switch allows selection of the following pickup combinations: 1, 1+2, 2. The head is angled back. The depth of the body is approximately 55mm (25/32") at its deepest part in the middle and 45mm (13/4") at the edges. The sustain block is glued to the top and the bottom and becomes thinner towards the edges.
Hollow-body bass
Scale length: 34" (863.6 mm) Neck: mahogany, oiled Fingerboard: ebony, untreated Body: mahogany top on ash, lower part of the body hollowed out, oiled, top French-polished Electronics: self-wound Precision Bass-style pickup