Dystopian Guitar Design

Sanded the Hamilton body smooth and then hit a scrap piece with Tung oil to see how the grain of the Bubinga is going to pop once the entire build is. Also did some more dry layup of the Mahogany piece I’ll be using for the face of the body which will be stained and accessorized accordingly. 🤘

I’m on a kick of revisiting old guitar designs I kind of abandoned in previous years. The Hamilton guitar was one I had solid designs for back in 2020, but then after Wandavision sent me mad for the Scarlet Witch designs, I never really moved the ball forward.

Yesterday I got on a Hamilton soundtrack kick and made the executive decision to CNC out the body. This will be my first semi-hollow design - the body is made from African Bubinga, an exotic hardwood, and the body top will be made from mahogany.

The left half will resemble Hamilton’s coat with a dueling pistol F-hole cutout, the right half Eliza’s dress with ribbon / lace to match. I also plan to have the Hamilton logo CNC’d as a brass inlay below the bridge.

“I am the one thing in life I can control
I am inimitable, I am an original”

One of the earliest themed guitar build ideas I wanted to pursue was a Tron Legacy guitar. An idea I played around with back in 2017 (when I started Dystopian) and then abandoned for other projects. The Demon body shape shown was NEVER the intent, it was honestly just the first CNC CAD model I had after building my personal Red Demon so I cut out a scrap body for proof of concept prototype.

I did an offset groove that followed the contoured body outline so that I could embed electroluminescent wire into and verify the bend ability and aesthetics when it was turned on. My intent was to then make a set of twins (like I usually build my guitars in); one orange / one blue. Or a design with interwebbing light cycle paths of both colors to mimic the “grid.”

9 years later here we are full circle to the original test piece. Though I proved out the concept, I never invested the time to design the true body shape; something more appropriate to the Tron aesthetic. Something with cyberpunk geometric body lines that mimic the vehicle designs in the movies, also incorporating the light discs somewhere in the guitar.

I waited so long to design these damn guitars that Tron Ares came out… so I watched it and took screenshots of body shape inspirations. I was specifically drawn to the design of the light jetpacks and the very triangular / geometric wings that I think would translate well into a guitar body shape of sorts.

More to come… at some point at least. 🧡🩵❤️🤘

To celebrate International Puzzle Day, I look back at one of the earliest guitar designs that helped me launch Dystopian in 2017, a long term dream of mine to venture into guitar building.

Why did I start with Puzzle guitars? True story - I did not have the woodworking skills or knowledge of where to even purchase high quality wood the size of a guitar body, nor the tools to process the blanks, so I started purchasing red oak, walnut, and cherry scrap pieces from a local lumber yard just to cut puzzle pieces out of and assemble into a body blank.

I started with the most basic guitar shape possible to machine and finish too - a Flying V. Then, to pay homage to Gibson and achieve a more sculpted body, the SGs. Gibsons law team (during their warpath against NUMEROUS luthiers and companies) ended up kicking me off Etsy and Reverb for using their guitar shapes… 😑🖕

I’ve come a long way since those first 2 Puzzle-V’s followed by the 3 Puzzle SG’s and most recently the aquamarine Puzzle Strat (screw Gibson 🤣). Piece by piece I built my guitar design dream from the ground up. 🧩🤘🎸