How to 3D PRINT A GUITAR - the challenges, how it sounds, and how much it costs 

Design your own. That way it looks cool.

Hell yeah 🤠

Don’t you dare screenshot my *schematics*

Orange and blue is a match made in hell. 🤢 Cool build and video though.

I really hope he can make a bass guitar model version of this!

string through would benefit tons

Yeah plus those three barrel telecaster bridges aren't the best

I think this would be a better alternative to a tailpiece, because it would put the stress on the center of the body, effectively preventing any bows or bends, whereas a tailpiece puts the stress on the bottom end of the body, which is still good, but it may not be as effective, as the whole body could potentially bend over time.

it would make it harder to nail the intonation, though. It's a tradeoff

@@Empinada no reason it would, you still have a tailpiece with adjustments

So where's your video then?

@@julianreverse In his "music porn" folder, where it belongs.

I did too. My job has one so big that I did one full body

Anyone know what song he play at 10:36?

@@julianreverse Is uploading a video a requirement? We're not all wanna be youtubers fiending for influence

@@damianmontagner1691 already done lmao

Fender did a very limited run of them a few years ago, but the Squier Paranormal Offset Telecaster is still available!

That's a big brain idea :D Now I wanna make one of these just to see how many secret compartments I can fit in it!

What if you 3d printed it as a headless? Removes the weight of those tuning pegs

@@lossibinks How much weight would you be subtracting though?

@Commander Grub most of the wieght of the headstock is in the machine heads, it takes about 10% of the weight of a strat being just under 4kg, surely this body is far lighter than a strat so the wood and heavy machine heads would take up a larger percentage of that. Headless guitars are mostly near perfectly balanced with no neck dive.

@@lossibinks Putting on a headless sounds pretty simple. That's a good idea.

@@Commander_Grub A lot and from the most distant point actually, so it makes quite a difference actually.

I actually would have never thought about doing this. The reasons I had in mind were: It's plastic, it'll surely bow easily and be junk, and it would sound like crap. I'm pretty sure printing material isn't just plastic, but you'll have to teach me about that. After watching this video, I found it convincing, but not entirely. After reading this, and knowing that they can sound really good, I am convinced this can be a good and practical project!

@YOLOnline how do you find the balance between neck and body weight? Do they neck dive a lot or for example using higher body imprint % solves that?

@@Commander_Grub the bowing problem I solved by basically having a small wooden insert (the width of the neck) that slides into the body from the backside. So thats a little different in my design than this one from the video.

@@lemonbrothers3462 @lemon Brothers my design might be even more lightweight than this one as it's very open and has many holes. Mostly because of strength and to add some weight , I filled it with epoxy resin tho to fill in between the imprint fill structures. It does neckdive slightly but with a nice strap not as much and the lightweight overall feel is pretty nice when playing

@@YOLOnline - they make balancing kits for ceiling fans that add weights onto the fan blades to get a better balance. You could probably borrow some of the ideas they use to help in adding weights to the best places on the body to give a better balance between neck and body.

hehe. Pickup. Good one!!

are u in the US? I would love to buy one of this from any of you

Well, maybe for electrics but definitely not acoustics lol

+​ @rbae Not even for electrics. People just like simple answers even though both of them are wrong. Of course the wood can make a difference in the sound. Is it huge? Maybe not but here comes the twist. So you might have a difference between two guitars in sound depending on the wood they're built of and it logically shows in the overtone spectrum and you will notice the difference when playing the instrument not being plugged in (but who does) now you use a pickup that doesn't pick up these differences and suddenly they sound the "same" ... I will never understand why it is so hard to understand, that from you fingers, the strings, the pick, the wood, the build of the guitar, the electronics, cables, the amplification, the room ... everything has an influence on the sound that is just simple physics. Depending on the constellation some influences can be bigger, some smaller, some can be elevated, some suppressed. To a certain degree you can compensate bad playing techniques, think compressor for bad dynamics, like you can add high frequencies or lower bass and so on ... So stop the blaming/shaming game take all variables into account and try to use them to your advance to create your sound. Even the thing with the fingers depends on which sound your looking for. If your sound is an all compressed and distorted stoner wall of sound you might find that it doesn't make a big difference any more how you "touch" the strings ... Sorry, but there is no "myth of tone wood" just your need for simple answers to complex questions ... BTW: I didn't like the sound of the printed guitar - which can have a lot of reasons, just to name a few: 9 strings, choice of pickups, playing style, plastic body, choice of amp, settings of amp, the recording, my listening variables: speakers, room, me having a cold, my taste vs. the taste of the people involved ... the body being printed only being one! of the possible reasons. I need at least to hear the thomann telecaster build played by the same guy, same amp, settings to make an "informed" decision.

…and a refit of the mediocre neck base (the gap between the neck and the body (11:25) is far too big).

have a peek at crimson guitars...theres a cyberpunk guitar you might like....

@@agn855 It has to be that big because the body wouldn't be able to withstand the tension otherwise, even at 100% infill. The only company which is capable of making a plastic composite guitar which can do that is Aristides and those guitars are not 3D printed.

This might be more visible at time stamp 11:16

That's a good idea!

Not sure if this is the brand you're referring to but Relish Guitars have a really cool system for this, where the pickups pop in and out with magnets

@Fraser Kahl - Just install a hotrail humbucker with a push/pull pot. It's easy. Then you can separate the two rails to get a single coil when you want.

@@asmongoldsmouth9839 push pull coil splits are not a perfect stand in for single coils

Actually this is quite easy. Each humbucker actually has two more wires which are usually just soldered together, but you can rewire it and add a switch to your guitar (there exist potentiometers with built-in switch), so switch from single coil to humbucker. Just google for "humbucker coil split wiring"

There's something called "coil tapping" or "split coil" that does this.

How are you going so far?

@@urielgranados4371 Haven't started yet, troubleshooting my printer. Getting poor adhesion and chronic symptoms typical to partial clogging even after several nozzle changes and cold-pulls, so i think i need a new hot-end. This hobby sure demands patience. Thanks for asking.

@@AudioBombProductions good luck bro, keep it up, solving one barrier at a time, you're almost in there

How can you print a neck on a 3d printer, it's too long!

@joeking433 You have to print in sections and then connect them together. You could also just have a massive printer (but at the time, I had a makerbot replicator 3x, which was quite small)

Violin needs proper building materials that has good tonality There is actually good reason why acoustic instruments has term tone wood because some materials has different properties What comes down to electric instruments, you free to do anything with it As long you have scale lenght in mind, tuners and mics you are running with, you can make almost any material work as guitar base build in the end you are generating electromagnetic signal what you manipulate with effects and amps eq then that is blasted out from speaker If anything that is most important in that signal chain is speaker Anything i would be concerned about 3d printed guitars are can they handle string tension There are already amazing 3d made guitars or carbon fiber guitars in the market so this isnt anything new Just that community is slowly aproving these things in time

That’s the easy part… just practice.

Most of the string tension on a Strat bridge is on the screws or studs at the front of the bridge plate, not to mention the pressure of the knife edge into the body just in front of that.

I would worry about the screws pulling out.

This is 100% something i agree on You would get suprised how many people who still believes that there is term tonewood used in electronic instruments, when they just generate electronic signal that is being manipulated with effects, amps eq and most importantly speaker that blasts that signal back to the physical world There is one yt channel of this very topic where that person makes basic guitars almost from any material he can gets his hands on

@@mozkuthehermit5909 what channel?

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-n02tImce3AE.html

@@aindoria idk which one he means but a few come to mind. My fav is Burls Art who built guitar out of anything ranging from coffee beans to newspapers. And if you're curious about why tonewood doesn't matter in electric guitars, check out Jim Lill.

So basically you believe that everything! but the wood affects the tone? Let me tell you what, that is a stupid believe. In fact, logically and scientifically everything affects the sound, depending on the setup and the final sound everything can be more or less important, can be elevated or suppressed. You can end up with similar sounding recordings of two pretty different sounding acoustics, when suppressing the differences with your choice of mics, recording techniques, eq settings and so on. I used to be a recording guitar player for quite a while and was never happy with the typical sm57 on the speaker, off the middle whatever - approach. It never reflected what I was hearing, when I dialed in my sound. In a recording situation, where I am in the same room with the amp I am usually 1.5m to 3m away from my amp, with my ears being at a height of roughly 1.70m ... I never stick my head into the speaker to adjust my sound - never! So I asked for a mike that is known for its neutral sound to be setup at this distance and height et voila the sound of the recording was suddenly way closer to my sound than before. Just for fun we set up a second mike, pretty close to the first, made it a stereo recording ... That was the closest we got. And, yes I know, that my ideal guitar sound is maybe not the sound that will end up in a final mix, but all the engineers that I worked with agreed, that it is a good idea to capture what is there as close to the reality as possible first. So long story short: everything is influencing the sound, tone wood included. The differences between different woods might be subtle (and sometimes suppressed or altered by other influences e.g. tremolo systems) but because they are standing at the beginning of the sound defining process (go fingers/pick/strings/bridge/saddle and wood, then! pickups ->), if you ignore them you might miss out on some opportunities your setup is offering. Just because you don't care doesn't mean they don't exist ;- )

I didn't expect it to be so good, but honestly, I fell in love with it during the course of building the guitar. Quallity you can feel!

What a scam. Get the boy a real guitar please

The Harley Benton guitar kit shown in the video comes with a wood body. If you and your son are not happy with the look, feel, or sound of the 3D printed body then you can rebuild the guitar using the wood body.

​@@Ottophil this guitar should play just as well as any other, assuming that whoever assembles it knows how to do a proper setup. But a lot of guitars you buy in store aren't set up properly, either, so that's not much of an argument anyway.

Did essentially this with a ukulele as a final group project for my engineering degree. The body was from a donor ukulele, as was the neck. The neck was mounted to a 3D printed plate that slid into the body and locked in place with clasps. It was basically the test piece from this video, with quick-swap bodies. It was acoustic though; didn't sound great tbh and couldn't hold a tuning, but you could theoretically improve the design to enable swapping to a larger body or a different material to get a different sound.

If you don't go with the pre set kit you could probably get away with modeling it off of a travel guitar and making the "body" sections interlock somehow

I've never been into just having different body designs. I do like that every body has it's special function, such as the tremolo bridge and single coils and body cuts of the Strat, the ashtray bridge and twang of the Tele, the maple top and humbuckers of a Les Paul, the fast neck of an Ibanez, etc.

Fender is laughing ATM with their cardboard stratocaster.

One Tony Iommi riff would have put this over the top.

What riffs from 10:36?

Who would you say is current leader though?

@@harusora970125 i sold my prusa to get a bambulabs, 0 regrets only benefits

@@harusora970125 bambu labs and prusa are TIED in my books currently

Anyone know what song he play at 10:36?

A 6 string set exerts around 20-80 Kg of tension on the neck. Even at 100% infill, a printed neck would crack under tension, even with a truss rod or graphite reinforcement rods. If you go for a printed fretboard, how do you attach the frets without destroying the plastic? 3D printed necks are not possible for guitars atm. The only company which does manufacture a neck through guitar made of plastic is Aristides and that's a carbon composite molded body.

@@BrunodeSouzaLino I'm not entirely sure that's true. PLA is like half as stiff as the wood that is normally used for making necks, and necks are more than stiff enough as they are typically made. Adding reinforcement seems like it could plausibly make the neck stiff enough. Maybe not, but I'd like to see tests instead of just going on the internet and telling people it definitely wouldn't work. As for frets, I definitely wouldn't want plastic frets. If nickel frets are already soft enough to dent over time, I'd imagine the printable thermoplastics would go fast.

@@MattMcConaha While that's true, eventually the plastic will bend and start being destroyed over time due to the strong tension. Someone already tried to print a guitar neck and eventually it became impossible for the neck to even hold the tuning.

@@MattMcConaha You can definitely 3d print necks if you add supports to it and are careful with your printing pattern. A buddy of mine has printed a bunch to see if he could make it work. Warping is going to be more of an issue than snapping. And having the neck snap was far less of an issue than the frets. You'll want to still use fret wire as basically no 3d printed material we tested lasts long before the strings grind them down throwing off the tuning. Hell, given enough time metal frets get ground down, so most plastics are just screwed. And getting the fret wire inlayed without compromising stability is tricky. That said, there's another problem that everyone always forgets about... raw 3d printed necks feel awful. If anyone makes one, be prepared to experiment with finishing options because you're not going to want to leave it as the raw print.

Believe me, 3D printed bodies are usually pretty much heavier (my startocaster is like 1,5kg heavier than the wooden one :D )

You can always add weight in various ways. Could use lead weights. Could print solid panels instead of honeycomb. Could use denser infill. Etc.

There are "remixed" files available at the same site as the originals, and one of them has shifted things over a little to better accomodate the strings.

the height can be adjusted as well. If you look closely there are 2 vertical screws oneach bed.

But TBH you want the high E to be less close to the edge than the low E.

I talk about that in the video. While totally reasonable way to stiffen the guitar, I really wanted to avoid using it. It would slightly complicate the build, mainly because people would have to source another specific part. And as I found out, it was not needed in the end at all.

I have actually done this, but with steel rods instead of carbon rods. The problem is that the plastic is still what the neck is attached to, and with enough tension, it will just deform and pull itself away from the rod.

You could perhaps look at an Ovation if you want to hear what a plastic acoustic guitar sounds like - they do sound different (not as nice as wood imo). It would be worth considering that a lot of an Ovation's sound however may be assisted by the shape - I would *imagine* that a flat plastic back would sound markedly worse/barely sustain (in the same fashion as a normal semi-hollow) at all, and printing curvy things on a 3D printer doesn't tend to be easy!

@@Sir83chris I've seen a couple. What you imagine is pretty spot on.

I want to get me a Parker! They are the best!

I printed a fender precision bass that I got free on thingiverse, came out great

A 4-string bass with fairly light gauge strings is going to be about 70kg, which is almost twice what they suggested here. It's also going to be over a longer distance of 3D-printed body. This might be ameliorated somewhat by using a short-scale bass.

Bass strings put an unbelievable tension on the strings!

I'll be happy to include it. I actually have a test XL unit here in the office, but I figured it would be better to primarily target people will more common printer size. Easier to connect pieces back together then splitting them in the first place. :)

Blender was involved. :)

@@TheMikolasZuza my guess is slice the model, export toolpath as obj, then import that into blender, and finally: keyframe a boolean to recreate the look of an ocotoprint timelapse

@@Zubbbz You nailed it! That's it. Of course, quite a few steps in that process. Perfectly aligning the digital camera with the real shot. And also I captured 360 HDRI of the studio, so the rendered model is lit exactly the same as the real one. For that, I had to create a workflow of creating equrectangular 360 HDRI pictures, but now that I have it, it should be easier to do again. :)

That's hardly a brag. You may own 14 but you have to practice more than the pentatonic box you probably learned when we were kids. I'm 44, highly educated but I've practiced getting better at guitar more than I've ever slept. We are our hobbies sir we have one passion though