3d printing

With bodies that are 3D printed, rather than carved, Professor Olaf Diegel’s ODD Guitars are truly like nothing you’ve seen or played before.

The perfect axe for an Independence Day gig, ODD's 25 1/2"-scale Americana is a Les Paul-style looker. Its Duraform PA body surrounds a mahogany inner core and features a flag design that is both dyed and airbrushed. A rosewood fretboard tops the maple Warmoth neck, and the chrome tuners, bridge, and strap locks are all Schaller-made. The star-spangled Americana is loaded up with a pair of TV Jones Classics.

Ever since the world’s very first guitar was strung up, the folks that build everyone’s favorite instrument have continued the never-ending quest to deliver the next greatest thing in guitar design. Though significant changes to the tried-and-true foundation don’t happen as often these days (for good reason), once in a while something incredibly new, unique and actually functional comes along. The “3-D” instruments coming from Professor Olaf Diegel’s ODD Guitars certainly fit this category. With bodies that are printed, rather than carved, they’re truly like nothing you’ve seen or played before.

Diegel is a design engineer by trade and a professor of mechatronics at Massey University in New Zealand. Fittingly enough, 3-D plays an important role in the curriculum he teaches—a combination of mechanical, electronic, and software engineering—which allows for creating quick prototypes for testing in product-development applications. So as both an expert in this printing technology and a long-time musician, it made sense that he’d find a way combine the two.

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