Luthier

Sonically Driven, Aesthetically Tailored

Personality In Audible Form

Guitars feel unique in their stature, for they don’t just variate in their visual elements, but their sonic elements too. I believe each guitar reflects the personality of it’s owner, it’s visual and audible properties presenting it’s own character. I wanted to explore this, and so began designing my guitars based on my aspects of my character.

The Process

Currently, I have built two guitars. Each guitar was built and finished with hand tools, excluding the necks. I am partaking in a Luthier course at Crimson Guitars, training through November to create high quality necks and improve my skills. I have also modified a number of guitars, from small finishing alterations to hardware changes.

 

Kasper

Tomahawk

Helios

Kasper

In Novermber 2022 I spent two weeks in Dorset with Crimson Guitars building my dream guitar.

 The guitar was based after my dog who suddenly passed away a week after I had finished the build.

The Huge Helios Build VLOG

I decided to record my second build, the Helios, across each “day” that I worked on the guitar. After 53 Days and over an hour of fully edited clips on all recorded on my phone. On your left is a preview of the full video. The rest are avaliable in the highlights section of my Instagram, linked below:

The Design Process

Mood Board

I looked at many different guitars and slowly defined what shapes stood out to me, as well as what features I liked across each guitar. The comfort carve at the top of the body, the pickguards, and the colours all stood out to me.

The Stormbender

I was also heavily inspired by this Devin Townsend signature guitar, the stormbender, due to it’s carve at the bottom. Devin discussed the praticality behind this carve in an interview. The carve allows for the guitar to sit up on it’s own without a stand, making it useful to rest when needing to other things.

Prototyping

I prototyped shapes by altering an already existing shape. I believe guitars need to feel familiar while looking different enough to stand out. To completely design a shape with no inspiration would look too out of character. I drew a few designs based off the Fender Jazzmaster body before deciding on a particular shape

Unique Elements

The wood grain can define how a guitar looks and must be considered when designing a shape and finish. I took the maple provided to me by my grandfather as a birthday present and edited a shape over the top to see how the grain would look. I used the heartwood across the guitar to add to the visuals of the guitar

Further Digital Prototyping

I further edited the wood and neck I had bought in to create multiple concepts

Voting

I also used my Instagram to get an idea for what people found visually pleasing.

Photoshopping

I roughly photoshopped the colour and pickguard to get a rough idea of how the guitar would look during the construction

End Result

The final result reflects my design, yet also contains variations. For example, the blue finish lines up with the heart wood and connection of the two pieces of wood

The Tomahawk In Action:

Here’s a snippet of my playing, a self edited video playing along to Master Of Puppets by Metallica. This is of the Tomahawk, the first guitar I built.

Recorded via direct input into a Neural DSP Quad Cortex.

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