So this is the second "original" guitar design I did (the first was the MadRite - which was a bit less original in that it was "inspired heavily" by the Mosrite Mark V/Gospel guitars Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Ricky Wilson of the B-52's were using). While I can't say the influences were all that original - just look at it, it's kinda' obvious if you know me what I"m up to here - at least when it comes to the body shape. But here's where this one started...

So at some point over the pandemic I amassed a metric f***ton of cardboard, which I squirreled away in my "man cave" closet for awhile with the plans to finally make some original body designs and the initial templates thereof using them.

The problem was, I wanted to make a body design that could APPEAL to a lot of people, and not be tethered to one genre or another. Something that looked modern, but did not look like a direct rip-off of another company or person's design. Something that might incorporate elements of guitars I liked, but without it being THOSE guitars.

My top 5 guitar body designs I like are - in no particular order: Fender Jaguar, Fender Jag-Stang, Odyssey/Hondo/Kramer Paul Dean, Kramer Baretta/Pacer, and the Fender Mustang. Basically, I like Kramers and Offsets a lot, with a little Loverboy DNA thrown in. And I've been combining the two since middle-school. Also, my wife was thinking I should look at designing guitars designed to not irritate the female form. See, women have these, uhm...upper parts that us guys REALLY REALLY like...and umm, well, those sometimes get in the way. St. Vincent did great with her MusicMan model. But I did not want my designs to soley be a "girls guitar" thing - that never works - just ask Daisy Rock, and I'm a guy, so I understand I can't get ALL the design parameters.

So I started skething up a variety of designs by mixing various guitars. And one of them I got this weird idea to take the Hondo Paul Dean's upper horns, and offset them by 10 degrees - and what resulted looked really cool - sleek, and modern...and I thought - yeah, now we're going somewhere - but what do i do for the bottom half. So I took my Fender Jaguar, laid it up against the bottom half, did a light pencil trace, and thought - "Ah yes, here we are". The result looks kind of like a Fender Katana, but not. Honestly, one cool elements of this design, is the neck heel has a solid wall locked to the body on the bass side, and that means, cutting the body horns out won't be challenging, and I have a more solid piece of wood to butt the high part of the neck to - meaning neck shifting could be practically eliminated. It's almost like if Fender had made the performer not look ridiculous, lol.

The body blank was a use-up of various scrap wood blanks I had left-over from the pallets - so it was the last body to get made using the pallet/epoxy treatment. One piece in particular, tapers off in all dimensions, and leads to the dge of the body - almost giving a beveled look like the tailpiece part of a Rickenbacker Capri. Anyway, this one is getting a unique color - Purple. And it might feature some of the most high tech electronics. Yes, this is being built for myself. To continue with the mixed pedigree, I'm thinking a 24" scale 24 fret Paul Dean profile neck, but with custom inlays and binding, with resonance slots, 10 degree tilt, but some kind of cool, original headstock style of my own design. The headstock has been the trickiest, because I want something that looks cool, and original, but not outright wacky or weird (like the old key-headstock I made in high school).

As I said on the StallionLXT page, I have a neck design now in the works. I have not decided on the headstock. Honestly, designing a unique, striking headstock that looks cool but does not look like someone else's headstock, is a VERY hard thing today. I toyed with redoing my old "Key" headstock from highschool, but I detect some weak links in it struturally so I bid a "no" to that one. I think I could come up with something better.

I'll do that on this page, because I think this is the first "original" design I'm starting with. I don't know anyone else with something like this.

Banana Headstocks - I always LOVED the classic Gibson Explorer "naner" headstock as used by Kramer, Robin, and others. It looks cool, but I don't see it as phallic, it just looks right, and kind of space-agey really in contrast to the Explorer's right-angle shaped body. My ONLY issue with the Explorer shape, is that Gibson would sue my ass off, and the string path is not STRAIGHT! I'm looking for a straight string path to the machine heads - this is something I learned from Paul Dean's interviews about his Dean Machine guitars - and one reason they have VERY stable tuning (and why Most Fenders can be made so as well). Fanning strings out like Dean or Gibson often does, tends to not fare well with non-locking tremolo systems, and if I'm going to design a guitar headstock, it's going to damn well stay in tune even if I build it with a Vibrato made out of random hardware and metal stock from the Lowes metal-stock dept.

The Dean Machine Headstock - Basically, a re-take on the Telecaster Design, that's a little more boxy and fit's his guitar design. Thing is, Paul still uses and intends to use this headstock on any guitar he designs/comes up with because it's a huge part of the whole "Dean Machine" functionality. The headstock tilts to pull the strings over the nut more taughtly, and to allow to skip string trees so the tuning is more stable (the less crap you have between the nut and bridge for the string to hang up on, the better). There IS one guitar that's getting this - the PDX90 - because it's basically a clone of his P-90 equipped axe from the "Get Lucky" tour in 1981-1982, which is never a guitar that will see production, it's m ore like what Bullock did with his design. That said, I always liked the look of this headstock.

So where we are now, I'm thinking, tilt headstock, straight string path, six on a side, and looks great with a multitude of body designs. Right now as it stands, I have 3-4 strat variants, a few student models, this, some offsets (most of my designs are offsets actually), and I just finished work on a new "V" type design of my own idea that makes upper fretboard access good, and adds some drama to the shape to make it look neat, but not make it "metal only".

The Fender Jazzmaster - I know what Leo's intent with this was, to make the Strat headstock into a more dramatic, sweeping, elegant thing. But it lacks the tilt, and the string path I've seen on SOME six a side headstocks is not straight. Particularly imports. BUT what this DOES have that I like, is split shaft H-mount or F-Mount Kluson tuners! And my guitars, if I start selling any, should all come with standard Kluson Revolution split-shaft Fender-style machine heads. No prikles at the headstock, no gimmicks, just a sealed gear machine head with a split shaft.

A lot of attempts to make a great looking headstock have ended up with me either coming up with somethign that looks like Hondo, Samick, Cort, Fernandez, or some other company. I might play around a bit with designs. Maybe something like a PD and a Jazzmaster crossed over each other? I dunno, I'll experiment around a little more and get back to ya' on that one.

For this first "departure" build, I'm thinking about doing a full electronic switching system with active pickups and a sustainer - going full tilt with this one - think something like the Bond Electroglide guitar had. The verdict is out on the bridge, I'm half tempted to use a Fender Mustang whammy....or even take the parts I have for one, and combine those with a Transposing tailpiece of my own design as a prototype. Maybe even design my own whammy entirely. I want this guitar to stand out and scream "this is what CreepingNet/whatever-the-name-could-end-up-being guitars is about".