Saturday 10 May 2008

Curious Homemade guitar from France

French homemade thingThis guitar being sold by a French seller on eBay does look rather... shall we say... rustic. It's obviously a homemade effort, and despite being acoustic the maker has tried to make it look modern with an offset double-cutaway shape, a la the Fender Strat and others.

I really am undecided whether to point and laugh at this guitar or whether to admire the guitar building spirit on display here. Yes, it's crude but it appears to me that someone has done their utmost to create this guitar with the limited resources available to them.

The body shape is adventurous - I'm amazed it was attempted (if it were me I think I'd have choosen the rectangular "cigar box" option as an easier shape to manage) whilst the neck is a very rough affair which appears to have been whittled with a knife, and reminds me of the fretless bass neck that my friend Dog made out of a plank of wood for his Precision copy one night after having had a few beers (see here).

As we can see, there is no separate fingerboard; the eleven frets (yes, eleven) are set straight into the top of the neck which appears to be flush with the top of the guitar body. Another touch I like is the use of a steel rule complete with metric measurements as the bridge saddle. Hey, that's one way of making sure you have the correct string spacing.

Just think of the story this guitar could tell. Who made it? Who played it? What did it sound like? We can only guess.

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