Being a life-long professional musician, I wanted to express my love for music through my work in design. Out of that passion rose a project like no other. I present to you my customized 8-string electric guitar design, known as - THE SOUL COLLECTOR.

Given that 8-string electric guitars are a very recently developed product, I wanted to access that fresh market while designing a concept that had something new and innovative with the form and stage presence of a guitar, giving LED color change features to enhance theatrical appeal.

My design was inspired by science fiction/horror based movie and video game aesthetics.

I definitely had fun with this design. I wanted to make something as wild and interesting as possible, so I played with some very futuristic sketches based on my inspirations.

This exploded view shows some better details, including the carbon fiber neck shell, separate wood fretboard, and layers of the body which consist of CNC machined wood, clear cast resin to allow for LED lighting to shine through, and an acrylic layer of armor which would be vacuum formed.

This concept includes alien glyphs across the surface of the guitar body. These would be transparent and appear to pulse with light/color with the programming of the LED's shining through clear resin.

Here is my model of the body of the guitar in Solidworks. It is a composite of the wood layer as well as the resin layer which would be cast in resin from a negative mold.

I also included CAD style schematics to ensure precise measurements during fabrication.

Here is a concept for the guitar case, looking like an artifact found on mars and shipped back to Earth for research. The inside shows details of possible cable/pick/strap/effect pedal compartment layout.

With such a customized form in a guitar, as well as color changing LED's being used, I wanted to explore as many color options as possible, including a brushed metallic finish that looked like real heavy metal but without the weight.