Ronciswall Headless - New Vapor Model

[GabeR]

Hey guys! i'm the owner of a little boutique guitar company and i'm developing an updated model for my headless guitar. Someone may already know my company or bough from me but with this post i would like some opinions on what i'm preparing for this fall/next year.

Basically i did some upgrades based on customer reviews and experience on my headless model, and added some unique features.

The model it's pretty the same but there are some noticeable things to discuss. First is a detachable arm rest made with composite material; it's a polimer charged with 15% carbon with an honeycomb grill screwed with threaded inserts and a very light aluminum bolts. I wanted to push the weight a little bit so generally using a korina body the weight of a full guitar it's around 1.8kg for a 7 strings.

Other stuff are about paiting, most of the available finish are textured and materic, so you can feel the odd surface in order to make them more 3d/realistic then printed like they would be using a satin or gloss standard finish.

The fretboard will be richlite, had some issue with fret sproute, especially on very different climated and humidity, so richlite can fix that. THe same honeycomb pattern is aslo on the electronic cavity cover. Neck is hardrock maple with carbon fiber reinforce..
What do you guys think? Any comment will be much appreciated!

View attachment IMG_0483.jpg

 

[gunch]

Looks cool man

 

[Alberto7]

Been seeing your builds on Pyramid Guitars for a while, they look cool!

So what is driving the move to a composite, detachable arm rest? It's not meant to be played with the armrest detached, right? And depending on the weight of the new composite, I wonder how it will affect balance though, as it seems like it would move the center of gravity of the instrument towards the neck if the new material is lighter than the wood used. Otherwise I think it looks cool!

 

[ExMachina]

I like it. Feel like this allows for more efficient wood use or something.

This is kinda off topic. But it would be cool if you made composite lowers that had all the electronics integrated and you could hot swap in lowers with different pickups.

 

[Xykhron]

The idea of removing weight is good, but, what's the purpose of the arm rest to be detachable?. I mean, if you remove that part, the arm rest will no longer exist so the playability will be affected.

My 3 Vapors, all 7s, were all below 2.7kg, which is a comfortable weight

The rich lite fretboard is good idea. Almost all my recent builds include it.

 

[GabeR]

Been seeing your builds on Pyramid Guitars for a while, they look cool!

So what is driving the move to a composite, detachable arm rest? It's not meant to be played with the armrest detached, right? And depending on the weight of the new composite, I wonder how it will affect balance though, as it seems like it would move the center of gravity of the instrument towards the neck if the new material is lighter than the wood used. Otherwise I think it looks cool!

Thanks! the idea comes basically to reduce the weight, enhancing the balance, the arm rest is lighter then the wood of course but not in the way that will affect the balance. With an headless if you use medium weight woods for the body (an ash body + maple top is enough) may have a body diving due to the fact that headstock counter balance the weight. Only if you use very light woods (swamp ash, redwood ,burls in general) you have a better balancing, and this is what i experienced on the latest 40 builds in the latest year. So the use of composite material comes to solve this little issue trying to add some more aggressive and modern look

 

[GabeR]

I like it. Feel like this allows for more efficient wood use or something.

This is kinda off topic. But it would be cool if you made composite lowers that had all the electronics integrated and you could hot swap in lowers with different pickups.

Yes this is exact, in the last 2 years sourcing high quality woods is becoming more and more difficult also due to price increase anywhere, so i though it could be cool to still have something unique basically replacing woods with textures and work on them like an action painting process. The textures are going to be almost all very 3D and materic, so you can feel them at a level they will not be annoying

The idea of a plug and play cavity controll and pickup it's very cool but not really alligned with the projects right now

 

[GabeR]

The idea of removing weight is good, but, what's the purpose of the arm rest to be detachable?. I mean, if you remove that part, the arm rest will no longer exist so the playability will be affected.

My 3 Vapors, all 7s, were all below 2.7kg, which is a comfortable weight

The rich lite fretboard is good idea. Almost all my recent builds include it.

True, the arm rest needs to be attached. They can be changed (other colors), but other then chambering (more working hours) i saw no other alternatives to improve balance and weight. I also wanted to completly redo the belly cut design on the back of the guitar, and add more "futuristic" features on the design. The arm rest shaped like that also provide some grip for the guitar, you can litterally grab the guitar from the arm rest, like a monkey grip would do, and it works also as a wall hanger, with a common one you can hang the guitar on a wall very quickly, safe and easy way

 

[Xykhron]

That's cool Gabriele, and the pickguard looks great. About monkey grip...I always use the upper horn for that matter....it suits my hand very well

 

[Pietjepieter]

Man that looks serious sick!! I did never really like the "original" one, but this looks so cool.

Kind of futuristic or something like that, love is!! (make a 8 )

 

[GabeR]

Man that looks serious sick!! I did never really like the "original" one, but this looks so cool.

Kind of futuristic or something like that, love is!! (make a 8 )

Thanks Mate! 8 will be available too

 

[ixlramp]

@GabeR

3 things i appreciate about the Vapor:
1. The tuners do not overhang the edge of the guitar, where they can be damaged, knocked out of tune, or uncomfortably contact a leg.
2. Lower horn has a good downwards angle, securely hooking over the leg. (It is shocking how many guitars are so badly designed that they will slide off your right leg at playing angle.)
3. Long top horn reaching to 12th fret.

This is my thread about the science of guitar balance https://www.sevenstring.org/threads/determining-guitar-balance-through-simple-visualisation.333311/

This post (post 21) explains how to use a simple visualisation method to calculate the scientific balance of a guitar https://www.sevenstring.org/threads...ough-simple-visualisation.333311/post-4961062

This post (post 32) explains how to approximately judge where the 'Centre Of Mass' is for a guitar you do not own https://www.sevenstring.org/threads...ough-simple-visualisation.333311/post-4979060

Thanks! the idea comes basically to reduce the weight, enhancing the balance,

With an headless if you use medium weight woods for the body (an ash body + maple top is enough) may have a body diving due to the fact that headstock counter balance the weight. Only if you use very light woods (swamp ash, redwood ,burls in general) you have a better balancing, and this is what i experienced on the latest 40 builds in the latest year.

Your designs must be unusually body-heavy (a good thing), because your statements above do not apply generally

Applying the visualisation method, the result is that most headless designs are a little unbalanced and neck-heavy, a common primary cause of that is the designer choosing to reduce body weight instead of creating a 'scientifically perfectly balanced' guitar.
(Also, strangely, headless designs often have shorter top horns, not reaching to the 12th/13th fret like a typical superstrat. This also makes the guitar more imbalanced and neck-heavy.)

Generally speaking, a headstock is not a desirable counterbalance to the body weight that results in better balance. Generally the opposite is true, the prescence of a headstock is the primary cause of imbalance and neck-heaviness.

 

[sojorel]

I like the design a lot. The upper and lower horns look a bit blocky though. It could use some carves on those to match the rest of the guitar.

 

[spudmunkey]

The upper and lower horns look a bit blocky though. It could use some carves on those to match the rest of the guitar.

I agree. I wonder how it would look if that chamfered edge on the composite part were to continue along the top edge of the horn. Even if it were to taper to nothing by the tip of the horn, I think it would alleviate some of the "chunkiness" of the upper horn.

 

[JDB123]

I really dig it! My wife said "it looks tactical".

I appreciate the shape/lines and how they interact with the detachable arm rest. I want an 8-string version too! Would appreciate some passive pickups as well, I'm tired of worrying about batteries in guitars.

 

[GabeR]

@GabeR

3 things i appreciate about the Vapor:
1. The tuners do not overhang the edge of the guitar, where they can be damaged, knocked out of tune, or uncomfortably contact a leg.
2. Lower horn has a good downwards angle, securely hooking over the leg. (It is shocking how many guitars are so badly designed that they will slide off your right leg at playing angle.)
3. Long top horn reaching to 12th fret.

This is my thread about the science of guitar balance https://www.sevenstring.org/threads/determining-guitar-balance-through-simple-visualisation.333311/

This post (post 21) explains how to use a simple visualisation method to calculate the scientific balance of a guitar https://www.sevenstring.org/threads...ough-simple-visualisation.333311/post-4961062

This post (post 32) explains how to approximately judge where the 'Centre Of Mass' is for a guitar you do not own https://www.sevenstring.org/threads...ough-simple-visualisation.333311/post-4979060





Your designs must be unusually body-heavy (a good thing), because your statements above do not apply generally

Applying the visualisation method, the result is that most headless designs are a little unbalanced and neck-heavy, a common primary cause of that is the designer choosing to reduce body weight instead of creating a 'scientifically perfectly balanced' guitar.
(Also, strangely, headless designs often have shorter top horns, not reaching to the 12th/13th fret like a typical superstrat. This also makes the guitar more imbalanced and neck-heavy.)

Generally speaking, a headstock is not a desirable counterbalance to the body weight that results in better balance. Generally the opposite is true, the prescence of a headstock is the primary cause of imbalance and neck-heaviness.

Hey there i appreciated your posts about the balance, what i experienced is that generally my headless are not too heavy (from 2.1 to 2.7 kg) but what i noticed is that if i use a very heavy weight wood for the body (can sometimes happen with some cuts of black limba or ash) it creates a body diving togheter with a top and hardware (here i say that in this case a headsock could be usefull to counterbalance the body but of course not always ) also different hardware puts in the game different weights. I'm installing now some sophia 7 strings tremolos and they are heavy enough to start barely playing the body diving with common woods, so the general idea was to reduce weight in that zone to have a much more balanced guitars without the issues of putting different hardware on it,( the sophia tremolo weights around 466gr, my headless bridge weights 240gr, the saddles are 27gr sophia, 26gr mine)(of course the tremolo have much more parts), the composite arm rest weights 110gr unpainted, 120gr painted, the same part made with wood weights 650gr! (in this case for the experiment i used mahogany and flamed maple so could be more or less with different materials) the result with the prototypes i'm doing right now for the 8 strings is 1.7kg. Now i'm doing set in guitars and of course less material due to the carve but the response is still good. again this is my personal experience with guitar building

 

[GabeR]

I really dig it! My wife said "it looks tactical".

I appreciate the shape/lines and how they interact with the detachable arm rest. I want an 8-string version too! Would appreciate some passive pickups as well, I'm tired of worrying about batteries in guitars.

i think tactical is the right word ahaha, yes the base pickups will be passive, on the prototype i'm installing gorilla pickups, but on the options there will be choises for pickups.

Am i already said that there is also an interacive configurator for it? still in alpha XD

 

[fookite]

I think it looks dope. Are you considering doing a six string or just 7+8?

 

[Lemonbaby]

View attachment 129304

That would look awesome with white pickups and white Richlite fretboard. Not sure about the ergonomics of the sharp forearm edge though.

 

[GabeR]

I think it looks dope. Are you considering doing a six string or just 7+8?

6 7 and 8, the first two 25 26.5, the 8 26 28