YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/user/VonMirMedia

New Pintail Bass Prototype

Specifications: Ash body, maple/rosewood neck, Gotoh tuners, Bassline vintage style pickups, Schaller adjustable bridge, Rotosound strings. Revisions: the output jack hole will be moved to the side. The strap button placement and string retainer type are still being worked out.

Hybrid Acoustic, Prototype #1 (a.k.a. The Double-Wide): Progress Report

(Top) before sound hole changes, (bottom) after. See notes in previous post.

Hybrid Acoustic Update: The modified Boxtail "floating" neck is working out nicely. What looks like a pickup is actually the movable saddle plug of the VM Acoustic Bridge System, held down by string pressure and contacting the guitar's top. The stop tailpiece, being attached to the neck end, takes the string pull stress off of the body. The sound hole arrangement is subject to change (note the plugged holes from previous configurations), but the present results are encouraging. With the longer-than-average distance from the bridge to the guitar's tail end, a spruce resonator keel was installed just inside of the big hole at the 12:00 position (visible at the beginning of the video), bringing more tone to the lower bout. The prototype shown is made of bending plywood, so the true sound isn't there yet. Prototype #2 will be made of proper guitar woods – spruce top, etc. That will be where the real adventure begins. This instrument isn't really about trying to be the loudest; rather, it's about using a bigger chamber to shape tone. With this project there has been the constant feeling of building a vessel, partly because of its size, and partly due to its experimental nature, like an old-world sailing ship outfitted for exploration. (Cont'd).
Hybrid Acoustic Video:

Welcome all! The story of this project begins with a deep yearning for something I had lost. Having bought high quality guitars since high school, I always traded one in, bought another, over and over. If I'd kept all of them, I'd have cashed them in for a retirement fund, since the only safe place for them now would be, sadly, a vault!  Years after I sold my last one, I sat around lamenting the fact that I had zero guitars, so I decided to build one. Before I began, I took time to ponder the following question: if I could commission a dream guitar, what would it be like? There was a lot of information gathering to do.

After several more intensive years of loitering in music stores, sketching, computer drafting, patent searching, tooling and prototype building, the result is the Von Mir. The first model, the Boxtail, is inspired by the timeless hourglass shape of the mountain dulcimer. The second model, the Pintail, has an aesthetic mix that recalls surfboards and exotic car fenders (I fantasize regularly over 30's Bugattis). Von Mirs are not boutique guitars, however. They are built to be sweated on, shaken, jerked, squeezed, scratched, even dropped (guitar repair shops need work too).

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