Hi,
Designing your own guitar is Kool, Even when the design is a copy of a classic like a Tele (like mine).
When you are doing guitar stuff there is always a balance between stuff that MUST be right and stuff that SHOULD
be in certain places - and then there is the rest where your imagination can take you anywhere.
The first decision is - do you want a completely unique guitar you are only going to build once or do you want the
newest Axe that Heroes all around the World will play. It makes a difference in the way you do things. Leo Fender
designed his guitars to look good but also easy to manufacture. Once you know that you can work out how to go
about things.
While you can use geometric curves and angles and such, most sexy looking guitars have curves. The best way to get
good curves is with splines. My design above is an early attempt and has way too many points on my splines but it
also looks exactly like a Tele. Your design above could probably be done with about four or five points for the top
curve. With splines - less is more. The Tele here has so many points because I had an outline on graph paper that I
used to get the shape right. I also could have used a canvas and eyballed it and it probably would have worked out
better. As I said it was a very early attempt, I would do it different now.
Once you have the outline you simply extrude the shape and then start working on the cutouts. Telecasters don't
have shaped cutouts, Stratocasters do. The trick is to sculpt the cutouts the way you want them. They could be a
simple plane that slices off a section or a swept or lofted shape used with combine-cut.
Try out these techniques and see what you can come up with. Parametric modelling is good with guitars because
there are important things like Scale Length; String Spacing; Fretboard Curve and String Lengths that are critical.
The Body "could" be Form modeled but it might be a lot of work. Stick with easy stuff first and once you get the
basics happening go for the Special.
Cheers
Andrew
