Does anyone here create/invent their own instruments?
What? How?
Any Advice?
>>942312
Building resonant bodies out of wood is a high art, you won't pick it up from a YT tutorial. It takes the material to the extreme and requires a lot of experience in selecting the right woods, carefully shaping them without disturbing their structure, connecting them with incredible precision, and doing it all while keeping track of the sound characteristics. It requires years of apprenticeship and mastery.
Recorders are easier. Electric guitars are very easy, there's very few parameters to control. But an acoustic guitar? Or any string really - it's very very difficult to get passable results.
Since the 90s there's been physical modeling software to experiment with different combinations of sound generation and resonance. It lets you put a giant sax reed on a double bass body with a trumpet mute, etc.
>>942312
Yes. There are really two ways to go about lutherie. The first is to expect the instruments you built to be on the same level as professionally made lutes, violins, harps, etc. But here's the thing about that. All modern instruments have undergone hundreds, if not thousands, of years of evolution. Improvements and crafting techniques passed from master to master for generations. If you're trying to build an instrument that has never been built before, you will be disappointed if you want it to work as well as a violin made in 2016. And that's why the key to experimental lutherie, from my experience, is to change your expectations. You've seen pictures of prototypes before (think the infamous wooden Mackintosh prototype). The violin, for example, wasn't invented from some epiphany in a dream or something. It evolved over centuries. The instruments that preceeded the violin (pic related) actually sounded terrible and were nearly fucking impossible to play. But at the time, it was the best thing they had come up with. So here is my advice to you: start shitty. Seriously. When you build your first instrument, just build something simple, like a banjo or a spike fiddle or a box lute of some sort. Don't worry about what kind of wood to use. Don't worry about sound mapping the soundboard with sand and a micrometer. Don't worry about tuning peg taper ratios and finger board curve circumferences and scale lengths and string diameters and scale lengths. Just build a shitty little instrument out of whatever you can afford. If you really love building instruments, you will be so happy the first time you pluck those strings that you'll never look back.
>>942992
>The instruments that preceeded the violin (pic related) actually sounded terrible and were nearly fucking impossible to play.
Hell, Strads that are unmodified are almost impossible to play.
>>943094
>stradivarius
>impossible to play
relative to what?
my point is that this >>942322 "lutherie is teh 1337 craftmanship" is the wrong attitude of approach and leads nowhere
>>942992
have you made anything?
bumperino
I saw a company online that sells kits and the ready-built ones they sold were pretty pricey, so I'm guessing they were good. Being that they probably turn out thousands of decent stringed instruments a day in the world, I'm not sure all that mystique is warranted. I'm just bumpin that op might have a decent shot of being seen.
I've made a few banjos. Its really not that hard, its not a resonating wood body like a guitar. Its like making a small drum but going many steps further
I made a cigar box mountain dulcimer, its nice I play it a lot.
I REALLY want to make a large key instrument like a marimba.
>>942312
I wanted to build violins after watching Whisper of the Heart when I was a kid.
Never happened. I've made a few banjos out of various things, though. Seems like something you need to be a lifelong apprentice of to really succeed at, in terms of violins anyway.
I remember seeing somebody on another board post a harpsichord that they spent over a year building and it was fucking gorgeous.
>>946466
Good luck. I started a xylophone a year ago -- a lot of tedious repetitive steps. Got mostly done when life threw up some obstacles and I haven't gone back to finish it.
>>942312
Take a gay guitar, a gay bass and eventually they'll just adopt something like this.
Working on a Tahitian ukulele during my spare time
>>942322
>Electric guitars are very easy
To a point. Easy to pick up, hard to truly master. The devil is in the fine details.
Believe it or not, people even screw up parts-off-the-shelf snap bolt on Warmoth kits... mainly by choosing to build something completely fucking retarded. They end up with something high quality, esoteric, and completely fucking useless.
>>948840
Is making a Fender Jazzmaster retarded or doable?
>>942312
Yes I have been designing and building electronic instruments for ~15 years! I have learned many lessons.
One of the wisest lessons I've learned the hard way is this: Design your instruments to match the playing range of existing instruments. That way you're compatible with all the existing music out there. It's 100x easier for players to pick them up and use them!
Also, I agree with the sentiment that it's better to start simple, get something that makes sound and is playable, then gradually increase the quality. It can take a lifetime.
Ask me more questions!
>>949174
I would like to do a jaguar or a jagstang
>>947680
PLAY FREEBIRD MAAAAN
>>949174
Unless you're Fender, it's completely impossible.
>>950638
I had a Jagstang bass built for me but now one of the pups is loose and im poor and dont know what to do.
>>950630
That's the oldest joke on the books but when I looked at the pic I laughed
>>950777
add springs or surgical tubing
