Build Vision:

The goal with this project is to make a headless guitar, which I have never done before. To preface, the style of this guitar is heavily inspired by the Strandberg headless guitar. Starting off, I wanted to make this relatively portable and lightweight while still being a full fledged guitar. With my previous experience of building a 3D printed telecaster of my own design, I wanted to implement what I learned previously and improve on what I learned from that project. 

What did I learn?

• This time around I want to use thicker linear rods for a more sturdy guitar frame.

  • In my telecaster, I used one main 12 mm rod running down the middle of the guitar frame and two smaller 8 mm rods for additional strength. This was not enough.

  • I will be using either four or five 12 - 14 mm rods for this project. 

• Use more perimeter layers and higher density infill.

  • In my telecaster, I used 4 perimeter layers and 20% infill, but this was not rigid enough for my liking. The guitar would easily flex and go out of tune.

  • I will be using 8 perimeter layers and 50% infill this time around.

Build Process and Design Choices:

Printing Parameters: 

• Printed in PETG so that you can put the guitar in a car without it warping.

• Upper Main Body and Lower Main Body - 50% gyroid infill, 8 Perimeter Layers

• Upper Right Body and Lower Right Body - 25% gyroid infill, 4 Perimeter Layers

• Upper Left Body and Lower Left Body - 25% gyroid infill, 4 Perimeter Layers

Main Body:

The Guitar comprises primarily of 6 main body parts and 6 cover pieces. The cover pieces rest on top of the main body components and will be securely attached with alignment pegs and magnets

Drop Top/Swappable Face Plates:

The Drop Top will be removable and swappable with any filament color the user wants. The plates will have magnets embedded in them for easy swapping.

Pickup System:

Looking at other Headless Guitars, I noticed that all the guitars without pickguards would have their pickups directly screwed into the body of the guitar. I personally don't find this aesthetically pleasing. For this build, I have the idea of using the Drop Top to cover the screws and pickup cavity. The pickups can be mounted to the body or to the Drop Top.

Electronics Cavity:

I've always used screws for any electronics cavity, however I wanted to try using neodynium magnets. It will make accessing the control cavity much faster and pleasant.

Headless Guitar Components:

Main Body Components:

• 3D printed Guitar Body

• 25 fret Wenge Neck (24 frets and zero fret)

• Adjustable Titanium Nut

• Fender Strap Buttons

• String Lock

• Neodynium Magnets

• 6 Linear Rods

Electronics:

• Alnico 5 Double Coil Humbucker Pickups - Bridge and Neck 

• CTS  450 G 500k Potentiometers

• Fender 3 - Way Switch

• Orange Drop Capacitors - 0.022uF

• Pure Tone Multi-Contact 1/4 inch  Output Jack

• Bullet Case Guitar Knobs - 6 mm diameter

• Copper Tape

Basic Necessary Tools: 

• Soldering Iron, Soldering Wire, Soldering Tip Cleaner

• Hookup Wire

• Wire Strippers

Designing the Headless Guitar:

Results:

The headless guitar turned out very nicely: The 6 linear rods and 50% infill of the middle main pieces ended up being much heavier than I anticipated, but resolved the flexing issues that I had with my Telecaster build. However, there is one main issue that I am still trying to find the solution to. The G string slips when locked into the Floyd Rose system. I believe this is due to the fact that the string its locked down with a much thicker string - the D string. The G string is very smooth and slippery; I don't think the Locking Nut can clamp the string down. In contrast, the D string is much coarser and has ridges, which allows the Floyd Rose locking nut to hold the guitar string much better. 

Problems with the Current Design:

After having played with the instrument for a while, I've come to find a few issues with my design. The cheap individual bridges hold up perfectly fine and look beautiful with the guitar. The problem stems from the locking nut. The Floyd Rose style locking nut was not designed to hold strings in place - they provide better intonation along with standard tuners - and because of this, the strings slip due to being different roughnesses and diameters. To improve the design, I will need to find individual string locks. 

Future Upgrades/Updates:

Improved String Lock Mechanism:

• I can use the string locks that came with the individual bridges, but I would like to find a more elegant solution.

Improved Individual Bridges:

• I can try to source Ibanez Q headless guitar bridges. These are very difficult to find. 

• I can try hipshot solo headless guitar bridges if I'm unable to source the Ibanez ones.