MIMF

If I may be allowed to comment: one thing we found with the past challenges (all of which Dave Ackley and I are now preparing for the Library) is that the fewer restrictions there are, the more people are likely to enter, and to finish. I suspect that a "Local Woods" challenge (from your state/province/region?) will allow all participants the most latitude without keeping anyone from entering or getting a good instrument at the end. The only difficulties might be deciding what constitutes "local," and for the participants to ascertain where their wood actually came from.

That's the tough part. Would local be Northeastern, or inndiginous to New York, or even Westchester county?

How about the $50 Acoustic instrument challenge?

I think local woods is a good idea, but would like to suggest that it be interpreted as just that, LOCAL woods, and not nessecarily indigenous woods.
For instance, most of the locally available woods for me are not natives, but plantation timbers such as pine. A lot of the indigenous woods that are desirable for instrument building are protected or expensive. Many popular ones that are still available cheaply are endangered and are in the process of being changed to a protected status.

I am more comfortable using local plantation timbers that substitute for natives that need to be logged.

What do other people think of this interpretation?

Charlie Schultz wrote:Thanks for the input Jon. There do seem to be some automatic photo resizers out there for phpBB, but it may take me a while to look and test them (most of them just shrink the pixel dimensions and don't actually affect the file size). In the meantime, would 150k solve most of your problems?

I think the pictures were around 83K, so 150K would be great for now.

Thanks again.

How about a specific blueprint build (with license to appointments, e.g. Hardware, inlay, personalization items like headstock design.)... no more of the touchy feely, everyone can participate in their own way and everyone's a winner stuff. Luthierie Competition... Best Execution within the parameters kinda thing.

Nathan Noel wrote:How about a specific blueprint build (with license to appointments, e.g. Hardware, inlay, personalization items like headstock design.)... no more of the touchy feely, everyone can participate in their own way and everyone's a winner stuff. Luthierie Competition... Best Execution within the parameters kinda thing.

This would be difficult to judge based on the typical fuzzy cellphone photos. A hands on judging would probably be necessary in order to be fair.

Alternative materials competition? Non-traditional materials must be used for the builds. Engineered wood materials, phenolics, carbon fiber and fiberglass, resins, solid surface materials and plastics, metals (and possibly metal mesh), Nomex(tm)... maybe not the entire instrument, but at least a significant portion of the guitar (soundboard, neck, back/sides, etc...)

These are all such good ideas; enough for a couple years' worth of Challenges. Maybe we just need to keep it broad and let everyone mix and match ideas at will. $100 Acoustic Challenge or $100 Electric Challenge, otherwise we'll never get started! (Well, I'll never get started anyways... maybe we need another Orphaned Instrument Challenge!)

Personally I really like the "Hardware Store Challenge" idea. My two $100 builds have been local wood builds already - thats relatively easy. Restricting one to the hardware store requires some real ingenuity!

Style-wise, I like the idea of adding more restrictions on the choice of what we build - eg Telecaster/Stratocaster/Les Paul etc etc challenge. There is a huge amount of room for self-expression within the zone of a basic body shape, and everybody loves those classic styles!

Jason Rodgers wrote:These are all such good ideas; enough for a couple years' worth of Challenges. Maybe we just need to keep it broad and let everyone mix and match ideas at will. $100 Acoustic Challenge or $100 Electric Challenge, otherwise we'll never get started! (Well, I'll never get started anyways... maybe we need another Orphaned Instrument Challenge!)

I agree - keep it as broad as possible - electric or acoustic instrument has been good in the past, and there has been a good response and some ingenious instruments. I think the more you limit it, the fewer that will participate.

You could do a non-traditional or folk instrument challenge. I know that is a broad category but I think they need to be a popular instrument style or be a broad enough category to bring in several participants.
Having said that, I really think another $100 telecaster/lp/stratocaster(ish) or acoustic challenge is likely to get the most participants and garner the most interest amongst viewers.

I'm slowly starting to remember some of the ideas I posted before. How about A build serving different challenge. Everyone has to build something they have never done before but always wanted to try. A 12 string, an acoustic bass. . . Maybe an electric.

looks like you have enough ideas to maybe throw up a poll. let the voters decide..... tis the season after all

Karl

I like the "local wood" idea. What ever the challenge I think it's fun and creates a lot of activity on the forum.
Just for fun how about "recreate you're very first instrument" challenge. Yes, hard to judge, but a lot of plywood and interesting instruments.

Steven

I don't recall how many challenges there have been in the last few years, but I know there was at least one more than what is listed in this section. I do know that I participated in 3 of them and I recall that there really weren't as many people participating as I thought there would be. So I think when trying to decide what to do, it's important that the rules are open enough to attract as many participants as possible. This could be tough, since this forum covers both acoustic and electric instruments... but it's not impossible. It should be fairly easy to come up with a theme or a component that could be incorporated into any kind of instrument so that the challenge attracts builders of any kind of instrument.

Also, there is usually an entry fee ($10) which helps raise some money for the forum, and this is a good thing. So why not open up the "voting for the best" to anyone who wants to "buy" a vote. Everyone loves to vote for their favourite and I think most would be willing to pay $5 to cast a vote. If just half the membership does that, you've just raised yourself a quick 3 or 4 grand. And then you could even entertain some cool prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

Right now there is a challenge going on at the Tele forum. They have around 100 people participating and people have been chomping at the bit for weeks waiting for it to start. I don't know how many members that forum has but I'm sure it's substantially bigger than the MIMF. I've seen comments on other guitar forums - including the Tele forum - from people who say they don't come around here much because they don't feel welcome or they get snapped at for what they feel is a non-issue. I only mention this because for the forum to be successful it needs members and for the challenges to be successful they need people participating in them. Something needs to be done to get new people here and old people back.

Building an instrument entirely out of a reclaimed piece of furniture.

A few months ago, my fiancee ran across a 100 year old veneered dresser in an alley, which I went back and grabbed for the lumber.

After peeling the veneer off, there were an awful lot of solid woods under there. Even the drawer bottoms, once thicknessed, could be a top and back. The various casework members could easily be repurposed/reglued into blanks for necks, solid bodies, etc. Plenty there for bridges, braces and if you wanted to go totally hard-core, pegs.

I've been threatening to make a guitar out of it for a while, just because the before/after picture of a dresser into a guitar would be pretty cool, but I'm neck deep in projects as it is. Still, might be a good idea for a challenge since it's something anyone could do. Lots of different furniture types would work, local trader forums like Craigslist has plenty of the stuff for dirt cheap, often times, solid woods.

Between the switchover to the new Forum, and the fact that only 6 members actually completed the challenge, I guess the awards got lost in between.

I also missed the deadline of the $100 Local Materials Challenge, but I finished the instrument later and sold it last week. So I consider the challenge quite rewarding even if I didn't make it on time.
I like the idea of an instrument with an arched top. Also a 4-string instrument would be nice challenge theme - it could be a bass or ukulele, or anything with 4 strings.

A recent post here reminded me of this thread. Is there any interest in getting a challenge started here? It seems to have gotten slow around here, perhaps we need something like this. These types of challenge are getting popular on another guitar building forum right now. I recently participated in one, and the section devoted to that challenge got quite a bit of traffic and fostered a good deal of comradery between the participants.

I would propose an acoustic challenge to make something you have not attempted before or to use woods or build techniques that are new to you (basically an excuse to try something you haven't gotten around to doing yet). Or, "local materials," that seems to have been a popular idea in this thread. Admittedly, these suggestions are selfish in that they align with my next project.

I would also propose using a longer time limit and allowing people to jump in any time after the start. This will encourage the newer builders to jump in and start building without too much deadline pressure and anyone who discovers the challenge late will have some time to jump in rather than missing out. I'm sure there are many people who are lurking or gathering info before attempting their first instrument. This could be a good excuse to force themselves to just start.

Yes, we are discussing the theme for the next challenge, look for an announcement soon!

Thanks Charlie! Hopefully it will jive well with my next project and timeline. I very much want to participate in a challenge here. I entered one a few years ago and never came close to the deadline. I impressed myself by being able to finish one elsewhere recently, so I'm itching to avenge myself here!