The Atom 3D printed guitar: A guitar inspired by the patterns of oil coalescing on water, with an internal atom with spinning electrons. The bodies are printed, using Selective Laser Sintering, by 3D Systems in the USA, on an sPro 230 SLS system. The material being used for these guitars is Duraform PA which is a very strong form of Nylon. The resolution for the prints was 0.1mm (which means that each layer that makes up the guitar body is 0.1mm thick). The guitars feature a wooden inner core (choices of Mahogany or Maple, etc.) that links the neck to the bridge, which allows us to customize the sustain and tone of the instrument to suit the musician, and a number of options for hardware, etc.

Price: US$3500, incl hard case, excl shipping.

This includes the following example specifications:

	Neck	Warmoth Pro Angled maple neck with rosewood fret board, 22 frets, 25 1/2" scale, 42.86mm (1 11/16") width Corian nut, 6150 sized jumbo frets, 10-16" compound radius fret board, mother of pearl inlay dots
	Body	3D printed Duraform PA outer body, with mahogany inner core, Dyed to your choice of available dye colours, and sprayed with clear satin lacquer
	Bridge	Schaller 475, 6 String Flat Mount Bridge, Gold
	Pickups	Neck: Seymour Duncan Jazz SH2, Bridge: Seymour Duncan JB model SH4 (Seymour Duncan's favorite pickup combination).
	Tuning heads	Schaller Mini Locking Tuners, Gold
	Controls	Pickup select switch, 2 x Volume knob, 2 x Tone knob
	Other	Schaller Strap Locks, D'Addario strings (usually EXL-120 unless other specified), low-cost hard case for safe shipping (we can, however, also offer you a high quality case as an optional extra)
	Weight	3.2Kg
Each guitar is custom made to order to suit your needs. Click HERE to email us and discuss your requirements.

Below are pictures of some of the details of the guitar:

And, to show the historical progression of our designs, below are pictures of a few different early iterations:

Atom Black - Green

And our new 'fingerprint' logo, designed by Ryan Butler:

And a shot of the back showing access to electronics, etc.:

The pre-production prototypes, shown here, had the following specifications:

And, here is what they sound like when an awesome musician is playing them:

Here is my first attempt at posting a little video clip to demonstrate the sound of the 3D printed guitars. My apologies, first of all, for the quality of my playing but, I hasten to add, I make no claims about being a wizard guitar player. Give me a bass and we'll talk... :-)

The two in the clip are the pre-production prototype designs shown above and have fairly decent hardware on them. I still have a way to go in learning how to set the action properly, but am getting better at it every day. But, it will be hopefully be enough to show you that the guitars sound like electric guitars, and the quite obvious differences in sound one gets by changing the pickups and/or neck. I, personally, really like the incredibly clean sound produced by the Langacaster active pickups.

At later stage, I will do the same test with 2 identical hardware guitars, and only a different inner wooden core of mahogany and maple to get a true comparison that the material makes to the sound. I will also make sure I have someone who plays better than I do to do the demonstration.

It might also be worth adding that the strings one the two 3D printed guitars were brand new, whereas the ones on the Strat were several months old (I dont change them nearly as often as I should). And new strings tend to have a more metallic sound than older ones.

For those of you who wonder about the strength and durability of the 3D printed bodies, literally 3 minutes before I started the video camera, both the guitars fell off the chairs they were on (I blame the dog) and lived through it quite happily.

Cheers
Olaf

Below are pictures of a few of the earlier prototypes: