BigRedX

17th March, Nottingham, at The Old Salutation Inn With: X-Superstar (Andy Cousin's new band), Gothzilla and Feather Trade Tickets 18th March, Heckmondwicke, at Westgate 23 With: Gothzilla 25th March, Bathgate, DreadnoughtRock CANCELLED 30th March, London, at The Fidler's Elbow With: X-Superstar, Gothzilla and Feather Trade Tickets 31st March, York, at The Fulford Arms With Gothzilla and Eyrx London Tickets 1st April, Bracknell, The Acoustic Couch (this is not an acoustic gig) With Greymere and Gothzilla Tickets

I used to own this one: Looked great, played and sounded just like a bass guitar. However they were being sold off very cheaply at the end, and IIRC the shops that stocked them and eBay was flooded with them at the time so they are NOT rare. I wouldn't pay more than £100 for one (I definitely paid a lot less than that for mine).

Right now the big problem with 3D printing of instruments appears to be the size that the budget (sub £1k) 3D printers are capable of. The one from the OP can do 21x21x25cm, and the one @Dad3353 has can accommodate a slightly larger volume. The core part of the guitar (neck pocket to bridge) only just fitted with a little bit of lateral thinking, but you couldn't print the equivalent section of a bass guitar or the neck of either a guitar or bass as a single piece. Also if the Ad Astra guitar bodies are anything to go by there are big problems with getting smooth seamless joints between pieces printed separately. Again the guitar body in the OP appears to get around this by making a feature of the different sections, and also by not showing any close-up photos of what the finished joints look like. Also all the temperature resistant materials with a suitable strength are considerable more expensive than the standard 3D printable plastic (around £100/kg as opposed to £20/kg).

I think we have a problem with terminology. So here is the default Blender interface when I load it for the first time: Any application that adheres to the Macintosh way of doing things would allow me to grab the two sections on the right hand side and simply drag them to a more convenient location - in my case this would be another display, then allowing me to open the main workspace to fill the whole central display. Unfortunately they appear to be permanently attached to workspace, and while I can enlarge the workspace to fill the main display, doing so hides these sections completely which is not what I want. Also neither of the two "Window" menus appear to allow access to any of the other display parameters, that I have seen while browsing through the manual, which I where I would normally expect to find them in the Macintosh interface. Contextual menus are all very well for those who only have a single display to work with, but there should also be an option for those of us with plenty of screen real-estate to be able to have all of them permanently visible. I suspect that this method of working has been ported from the application's native environment (Linux?) without any regard for how other graphical Operating Systems work. The whole point using the built-in GUI of a particular OS is that both the writers and users of the application don't have to "re-invent the wheel" in order to be able navigate the application. So not only am I trying to learn a brand new application, I am also having to learn a brand new interface.

For me a consistency of interface is one of the things that makes learning a new application so much easier. If all the interface elements work in the same way irrespective of the application. One of the great things about all the 2D graphics applications I use is that the palettes that provide all the information can be shifted onto a second screen simply by grabbing and moving them. That way I can save my main screen for the "work space" and all the information about the element I am manipulating at any one time is displayed across a range of "mini windows" on a separate one. So far, despite the fact that the screen grabs I have seen confirm that what I want to do is possible within Blender, I have been unable to persuade them to "undock" from the main window, or for that matter found any way of opening up the palette that allows numerical manipulation of the elements in the workspace. If the interface followed standard Macintosh guidelines, I'd have done this by now and could be getting on with learning the details of how the application works, instead of trying the persuade the interface to work in a way that I know is possible.

@Dad3353 I've downloaded Blender and will probably have a go with it the next time I need to do some simple 3D visualisation to ease myself in. However the first impressions aren't very favourable as the interface doesn't follow the Macintosh GUI guidelines, and while I can see from the manual that it supports multiple displays doing something as simple as moving the interface palettes onto a different one to allow more area for the workspace on the main display doesn't appear to work in the standard Mac way of doing things.

Interesting, although for me the guitar in the OP is visually slightly more pleasing (and I appreciate that this is completely subjective). What isn't as pleasing is the $499 price tag for that body which shows a lot of fairly nasty "finishing" marks around where the various pieces join and also what looks to me like printing errors on some the hexagon edges. This would be reasonably acceptable if I had downloaded the model for free and was outputting it on my 3D printer at home. However IMO it's not acceptable on something that is being offered for sale as a finished item, especially at that price. I also note that they are selling complete guitars with what looks like standard ready made necks for $999! The joint edges of the "flying V" are even nastier and if you zoom in on the photo you can see the layer structure of the printing. I'm assuming that this is a limitation of the current technology and for many applications where 3D printing is being used, these print artefacts are either irrelevant or at least acceptable. In this case I don't think that they are. Right now 3D printing seems to win for prototyping or for custom and JIT manufacturing where functionality is more important than finish.

I assume you have posted this because the prosthetic in this photo was made using 3D printed parts? However I doubt it would be possible on sub £1k 3D printer using materials that cost £20/kg. From what I have discovered over the last few days is that 3D printing is capable of many wonderful things, but almost anything really interesting requires access to very expensive equipment and a lot of additional technical know-how. Everything else seems to be the 3D equivalent of using clip-art to make your band poster.

For all of those who take loads of extra spares to a gig. Do you check that they are all working each time?

I'm not being negative, just realistic. 3D printing works fine for standard parts made out of the correct materials for the application. However for me the whole point of being able to 3D print a guitar body is that I can have something unique to me and not simply another Telecaster clone with holes through in it, and which is entirely dependant upon Thomann not changing the specification of any of the donor parts. That means spending time learning the 3D modelling tools and learning about the properties of the various 3D printable materials, and even then a lot of expensive trial and error before I get something close to what I want. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the day when I can 3D print a guitar to my own design for under £100. As I said earlier I don't think we're there yet.

@Dad3353 Thanks for the additional information regarding the 3D printing process. As an ex-printer myself, I don't really see the correlation, screen printing for me was always very hands-on and the "feedback" if something was going wrong was instant. If you want a 2D print analogy, IMO it is where the industry was 50 years ago with off-set litho printing, where it was relatively easy to get ink on the paper but getting really good consistent results that weren't full of hickeys, show-through, and mis-registration etc. took real skill on the part of the press operator (something I never really acquired despite the number of hours I spent at it). I've done basic 3D modelling, mostly box and bag packaging visualisation which is fairly simple stuff, but I also used to work with this person who IMO is one of the masters of 3D modelling, so I know I have so much more to learn before I could even start to create something like the guitar in the OP. Over the last few days I've done quite a bit of reading up regarding 3D printing, and mostly what I've learned is that it is even more complicated than I originally thought. The slicing parameters (which I don't really understand yet) and the fact that you might need different materials that your 3D printer doesn't necessarily support are just two issue that I hadn't even thought of before I started digging deeper. I also looked at the prices of the carbon fibre based material that was recommended in the blog if you wanted a really good, structurally sound, heat resistant core; and you are looking at about £100 just for the core part (and that's if you can get it right first time). Also as soon as you want to print anything other than plastics and carbon-fibre based materials the cost of the machinery rises dramatically. I think there is a mis-guided belief that because it's all done with machines and software that anyone with the machines and software can do it. I know for a fact in the 2D printing world that this simply isn't true, because if it was, I'd be out of job. Yes, it's easier than ever for someone with a good idea to be able to visualise it, but that doesn't mean that the idea will always properly translate into ink on paper without the intervention of people with the appropriate technical know-how, and of course you need a good idea in the first place. In the same way I'm sure lots of people having spent some time with 3D software could come up a basic guitar body design and 3D print it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all the other parts will bolt properly to it, or that the guitar won't fold up under string tension on a hot day. That's where you need the technical knowledge and the time and money to do lots of experimentation. I think the biggest issue I have is that so far all that has been demonstrated is that the simplest part of a solid electric guitar, the body, can be 3D printed by someone with the right 3D printer and technical know-how. When someone works out how to print a neck and fingerboard (including the frets) on a sub £1k 3D printer (for less than £100 worth of materials) than I'll have another look.

Sorry for some reason I missed this when you posted originally. I stand corrected regarding the body. However as I noted in my reply to @Owen there were still structural issues with the first 3D print of core body part which required specialist knowledge of the 3D printing process and materials used to in order to address. I know you do 3D printing so did the fix make sense to you? Also as I noted the degree of customisation available will depend on the end users access to and skill with 3D modelling programs. I suspect that most will simply download the files and print them. Not having done any 3D printing myself is the material to be used embedded within the "print" file or can the end user choose whatever they want?

Looks like another Fender copy to me. What makes this different to all the other Fender copies?

Do you have a suitably large 3D printer? The one that is recommended in the blog/video costs just under £1k and while that can print a single piece big enough to go from the neck pocket to the end of the bridge on a guitar sized instrument, it looks as though it only just fits with a bit of lateral thinking. On a precision bass the distance from the neck pocket to the end of the bridge is approximately 40cm. There's no way that fits within the 25x21x21cm limit of that particular printer. That means a bigger 3D printer or you are back to using a wooden core for the main part of the body. Also there were problems with the structural integrity of core part. I suspect the larger part required for a bass is likely to be less stable. The material works out at around £20 per colour per kg so that's at least £60 for the body of that particular instrument. Also unless you have suitable 3D software and the skill to use it, you are going to be stuck with other people's designs. For me the whole point of being able to print a 3D would be the fact that I can have whatever I want. The application used to create the guitar body in the article costs over £500pa for a licence. Remember that every alteration to the body - even something as trivial is having to change the location of the screw holes - is going to require the ability to edit the 3D model, and you might need to do that for the guitar body that has been made available for free if Thomann change the specifications of any part of the Telecaster kit that it is based on. There are of course places that will do the 3D printing for you, I had a look at a couple but they are all very coy about the actual costs, but I guesstimate you'll pay at least double what the raw materials cost (I'd be happy if someone can prove me wrong on that), so you're looking at over £100 for a guitar body made to someone else's design. I'm sure that one day it will be easy and affordable. I don't think we're quite there yet.

The Terrortones did several gigs travelling with our instruments (in their cases) in roof box without any problems.

If you read the description it's a Harley Benton Telecaster kit with part of the body replaced with 3D printer parts. Hardly very radical. Even Odd Guitars who were doing this sort of thing in a much more interesting way over 10 years ago had a standard wooden neck and a wood body core from neck pocket to bridge. At the moment all the 3D printed bits are cosmetic rather than structural.

If you'd read through all my contributions to this thread from the start you see that I'm a previous drum machine user, and right up to a point about 2 years ago was seriously contemplating buying either an MPC or a Roland TR8S to replace the drummer from one of my bands who had decided to leave. It was a combination of reading others contributions to this thread and the fact that our synth player had invested in a copy of Logic and was doing all of his composing for our new songs using it, they swayed me to forget the idea and stick with using the Mac and Logic for my rhythmic needs. I asked about backups because they have always formed an important part of my work, and it's never been so easy to back up your data as it is on a Mac. I have an on-going Time-Machine backup of all my data both work and music as well a system that also updates my files to a secure cloud location every night, and that's not withstanding the fact that all the files that I use for playing live exist on two different computers. Were may main Mac have a terminal problem I would be back up and running within a day a getting a replacement. IMO anyone who loses data through not having an adequate backup strategy only has themselves to blame. Back when I first started using programmable drum machines in the early 80s the only way to back up your rhythm patterns and sounds was to write them down. Somewhere I still have a huge folder full photocopied sheets with TR808 patterns and voice settings written down for every song we were doing. Back then this kind of back up was essential since the 808 only held a single song at a time , and even if it had been capable of storing more than one song, you'd run out of patterns long before you had a whole set programmed in. Even it's replacement, a Yamaha DX11, was only slightly better and had a cassette interface for storing the data, it still wasn't possible to fit a whole set's worth of drum parts unless you songs were rhythmically very simple. And of course the tape backup was only usable with another identical drum machine. A least with the written down 808 patterns you could use them to get your rhythms into another drum machine even if the sounds weren't the same. The way that I see it with modern drum machines is if your having to use a computer to do your backupstehn you might as well use you computer as a drum machine in the first place.

It does very much depend on how you look at things. From a music PoV my computers are essentially free as I needed them anyway for my day job. Even so, over the past 15 years I think they've only cost me around £3k - thats £200 a year (although that does take into account what I have made selling off the old models when I've upgraded). On top of that I've paid an additional £400 for Logic, a controller keyboard and the Simmons drum plug-in. All the other music hardware is part of my live rig and was bought first and foremost for the purpose of gigging. Because I work "in the box" and have made a decision to stick mainly to what comes free with Logic, my system never becomes obsolete. My current set up will continue to function until the Mac has a terminal problem, at which point I'll probably upgrade to a Mac Studio or similar. The cost of the computer will be absorbed by my business, so by biggest expense will be when I need to buy the next version of Logic. When that happens my current projects will load straight into the new version and continue to sound exactly the same as they did before I upgraded (as has happened the last two times I upgraded). There's an assumption that hardware never become obsolete, which may be true, but unfortunately there will come a point one day when it will cease to function for no apparent reason at which point you will normally find that it has become impossible or too expensive to be worth repairing and that there is no modern equivalent that sounds the same and is able to load your data from your old device. There's nothing more obsolete that that! And I have discovered this the hard way. Out of interest to everyone using a hardware drum machine how are you backing up your user data (sounds and rhythm patterns)? Do you have a strategy for what to do should your current drum machine suffer a terminal fault?

To me that sounds more like a limitation of your chosen DAW and/or computer. I used to have a dedicated home studio full of musical hardware in it's own room, but these days my studio is my Mac on the desk running logic. Everything is done "in the box". Most of the time I monitor on headphones, but the Mac is also connected permanently to a decent amp and speakers via the optical output which I use when I listen to music while doing the less mentally demanding parts of my work. Programming is mostly done with the mouse and QWERTY keyboard, and the MIDI keyboard only comes out when playing something in is quicker (it connects via USB for data and power and is automatically recognised by Logic when plugged in). For the limited amount of audio recording I do everything goes through the Helix which would be set up anyway if I was playing guitar or bass. I've done composing and programming before just using a laptop and a pair of headphones, and for me the main limitation is the small size of the screen rather than the lack of peripherals.

It probably just meads the truss rod adjusting to compensate for this flat would strings.

Boss made one in the mid 80s - the DF-2 Super Feedbacker and Distortion pedal. I had one which I used with my synth to provide guitar-like sounds. IIRC the "feedback" was generated using a pitch detector to drive a simple sine wave oscillator, and you held down the pedal to activate it. However once activated you were stuck with a single tone feedback and none of the instability you get with the interaction between the amp and guitar. Good for what it did, but not as versatile as a guitar and amp working together, which is why guitarists who want feedback tones and sustain still use a small valve combo located in a suitable place on the otherwise "silent" stage to achieve this.

The two circuits are electrically identical. For me the second one is the more logical way of joining everything up, but the net result of both methods is the same. This illustrates why it is useful to be able to understand simple electrical circuits and not just blindly follow wiring guides.

Cocktail sticks.

But the OP was interested in equipment insurance in the first instance, and while the MU is very good for public liability insurance, IIRC their equipment policy is less good value once you need to cover more than £2k worth that come free with membership.

The Reverend Rumblefish basses had a similar construction, although IIRC the central block ran the whole length of the body.