Yeah, I'll have for one of those please!

I knew there was something missing off Gibson's FirebirdX spec.

Andy

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Pending Greatness

What is your point?If its to make things cheeper well then it's crap!If it's to make it better playing and better sounding well then I hope it works out for you!!!

P.S. What ever you do STAY AWAY FROM CHINA!!!!!!!!!!

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I LIKE PIE!!!!!

IF I DO SOMETHING STUPID,DON'T SAY A WORD...

Why? He's an electronics guy. If his idea is electronics-based and can improve existing instruments why would it have to fail?

Fascinating. I'm on my toes so bad they're starting to hurt.

Nevin mate, could Leo Fender build /set up / play a guitar all on his own? He was an electronics guy as well... or am I madly mistaken?

Cheers

Nutter

Small thinking, nevin.

You are likely correct tho, failure is always more likely than success, with innovative ideas and efforts.

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07 mahogany strat 05 white mim strat, black schecter c1 blackjack, 00 larrivee dv05e

Hey guys, thanks for all the comments and for not bashing me with threats of removal and what not. I'm not the devil and not trying to take over the world, I promise

Unfortunately, I can't actually show what the idea is for now. Provision patent isn't good enough until we can get the actual patent down and we have less than a year to do that. If we don't make it in time, well, the idea is out in the public so that's no good.

We have built a prototype and we actually have it working. I ended up steaming the fretboard off the DYK electrical guitar kit and we had to build a new fretboard from scratch. We could saw it off, but that's a pain. Technically, we can just buy regular guitars and take the fretboards off regardless of the method, but it'd be a lot easier if the same guitar came without the attached fretboard.

Hopefully, we'll need larger quantities with time and need a supplier to be able to support the demand. Taking a fretboard off from 10-20 guitars a day is a full time job.

By the suggestion, I have contacted Fender directly and hopefully we'll get some feedback - positive or negative.



Ceri: That's a pretty cool idea. When we did patent search, I don't think I came across anything like that.

I'm not sure how much force one of those plastics can exert, though, and what current draw would be necessary to make it exert said force. Interesting concept, though, if the numbers line up, but do you really trust guitarists not to just crank it to 10 like everything else?

lol

Hi gentlemen: you like that one, huh?

I'm not a product developer but I know someone who is and the idea came from him, over a beer or three. He's certainly not going to do anything with it so I'll throw it out for everyone's enjoyment.

We were talking about how the level of physical rigidity of the material guitars are made from affects the tone. There are engineering methods for quantifying rigidity, so it is a knowable characteristic. My friend mentioned a certain hi-tech plastic that changes its tensile strength when a small current is run through it - a bit like LCDs changing their properties dependent on very small amounts of electricity.

So his idea was that you could make a guitar neck or the whole instrument out of such a plastic and then have a knob that controlled a current and so changed the entire tonal character of the guitar. In real life I don't think it would be possible to harden that plastic enough to change the bow of the neck, but you could affect the way the guitar sounds. (See, I'm not quite such a tonewood sceptic as people round here might think... )

And you could do more interesting things too. For example, you could make the current oscillate to introduce an effect that was neither tremolo nor vibrato but something related yet never before heard. A genuinely new guitar effect. Perhaps you could choose whether that would be a square or saw shaped wave - in fact as soon as you start to think about it all sorts of possibilities suggest themselves.



Hee-hee - yes, I'm pretty sure that touches on the crucial point, as far as a marketable product is concerned. My friend was starting to get excited about the idea (several beers, remember), but I pointed out that electric guitarists, contrary to what outsiders might imagine, are a fantastically conservative lot. Just for example, only in the world of guitars could a completely outdated, outmoded thing as nitrocellulose lacquer be clung onto and actually prized as a premium feature. Weird people, guitarists: and numerous manufacturers over the decades have learnt to their dismay that the guitar community simply won't accept plastic guitars. No matter what.

Now bassists are a different thing entirely. Far more open-minded...

Anyway. Now you have the concept, and I just happen to know that there's no patent on it. So go forth and develop it, anyone who wishes. Though as far as Intellectual Property Rights are concerned, I've just placed the idea into the public realm, so I doubt you're going to get rich off it...

Cheers guys - C

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