Guitar top - the CMS puzzle

And here it is. This is what will hopefully be the guitar top artwork:

Its... a puzzle. The idea is to glue the pieces to the top and seal that with clearcoat lacquer. Since there is no official "CMS puzzle" I ordered a 600 piece one based on the photo here. Whether this will work - I don't know. So step one will be taking a part of the puzzle that's not going to be used (its oversized on purpose) and test the process on a scrap piece of wood.

I anyway have time, since I still have to find the guitar that will be the base for this project.

Body top design

One thing to mention - I will not be building the guitar from scratch. For this I have no knowledge, no skills, no tools, no time... and the list goes on. What I'm planning to do is to buy a used instrument that fits my idea and then heavily modify it. The extent of the modifications will depend of the base guitar of course, but I'm planning at least to refinish the body top and headstock and modify (presumably replace) the fingerboard. Plus do a number of CERN-themed hardware and electronics modifications. We'll see.

For now, I'm starting on the top design. Here's the plan, at least part of it:

The picture is a photo of the CMS detector taken by Michael Hoch, and featured - among other places - in the CMS Photo Book.

How exactly the image will end up on the guitar body... I'm planning something fun for that. Not sure if it will work, but its worth a try. More next week, when I should get the pieces.

The Idea

The idea of building a "CMS guitar" has been floating around my head since some time. But its taken enough shape now that I can consider it to be entering "production phase" now. Not that I've actually built anything yet, but I've started making concrete plans, writing down ideas... I will share them as I go.