For reasons I can’t quite remember (besides the fact that I like the TV show), we decided on a Rainbow Dash (“My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic“) inspired design. I should mention that we came up with this a while back, before I knew I was getting guitar parts for my birthday. After successfully creating the template, I scoured the internet for Rainbow Dash Guitar (you’d be surprised how many images of Rainbow Dash with a guitar comes up) and found some images we liked that resulted in some promising results.

Rainbow Dash has a lightning bolt as her “cutie mark” which we decided would look neat on the headstock. How awesome is a lightning bolt for the headstock detail. Pretty epic.

I then had to some up with placement for the knobs and switch, which I was definitely overlooking until Ryan pointed it out. Because the hardware is put in from the front, we’ll have to install a plastic bit (with or without a pickguard under the strings) which will have some bearing on the final design. It is still a work in progress, but at the very least, I came up with an initial placement plan, which will undoubtedly change once we purchase the hardware, and we still have the issue of the pick guard. From the sketches, you can see I tried to come up with a lightning bolt pattern for the knob area, which would take up too much of the guitar, so we scrapped that. Ryan researched custom guitar design and recommended looking into painting over the pickboard to keep the flow of the design or a clear pickboard. Either way, the paint job will look slightly altered, so we’ll have to practice on crap wood and plastic before we get to the real thing. What I do know: we will be able to cut our own pickboard. Rock.

Listening To: The Faceless