Guitar Display / Storage - Plans / Ideas?

[Shawn Pixley]

I am looking for Plans and/or Ideas for storing / displaying my guitars. I need to get them out of the open air since I live on the ocean. The environment needs to seal reasonably well and have UV resistant glass. The house is very modern so shaker style is right out. It would need to hold 10-12 Guitars in combination of electric, archtop and acoustic. They all get played, so shadowboxing them is also excluded.

I am vacillating between:

1.) Attached to wall with all in full frontal display under glass doors. Two rows stacked above each other.
2.) Attached to wall with Top row in frontal display under glass doors. Lower level would combination of enclosed behind solid doors (deeper with guitars hung at 45 degrees to the wall) and enclosure for Amp and accessories. (Case storage may or may not be incorporated)
3.) Two freestanding units, each with Glass display (Guitars at 45 degrees) at the top with drawers and case storage below. (This seems clunky to have two identical units might incorporate desk / soundboard between them)

The room it will be in is a combination of Office and home studio. Wall is 12 feet long and 7 foot six inches high. currently seven guitars either hung on wall or on guitar stands. The wood will likely be a combination of maple and walnut. I will build it over the winter.

Any ideas or feedback?

[Sam Yerardi]

One thought that comes to mind since you have a lot of guitars, and if you are like me, there will be more on the way ... is the following

Perhaps build the wall in sections, each section being like a curio cabinet. The difference is that there are no shelves, but there are lazy-susan type supports at the bottom and at the middle such that you could set maybe 4 guitars (or more if set at 45 deg) face-out on each lazy susan. Thus each cabinet would be showing two tiers of guitars. Open the door, rotate the lazy susan around to the desired guitar. With the wall as wide as you described, and as tall as you described, and considering the width of a large guitar (say an archtop or a Gretsch), you could probably set up 7 or more cabinets side-by-side. This would allow you to store at minimum, 8 guitars in each cabinet... 8 x 7...

[Shawn Pixley]

Thanks,

I think I got hung up on the symmetry aspect. My cuurent thinking is that it should attach to the wall and might incorporate a desk / soundboard area. I need to sketch it up and will post rough concept,

S

[Jonathan Baker]

I wish I had that problem... I only have 4 and a bass to display. I am curious to see what you come up with though. Have you thought about inverting some of them to save horizontal space? i.e.

T _L T _L T

Sorry, best I could do on my phone at the moment, but I think you get the idea. Good luck!

[Shawn Pixley]

Interesting idea, I'll have to think about that. Intuitively it just seems wrong but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

I have narrowed the design solutions down a bit. I will attach it to the wall, but it will be designed to read as furniture. We live in earthquake country and I'd hate to lose all do to the piece falling over. I am leaning to displaying 1-2 face out (electric and acostic) and standing the others like books (either 90 or 45 degrees to the wall). I am leaning also to sliding doors. to maximize interior access. It is still a design in progress. I am currently working on my gate project.

[Barry Richardson]

I've made a couple of cabs like this. It will hold 6 acoustics, or 12 elcetrics, or a combination of both. I got the idea from searching online. I doubt if you will find 'plans' for exactly what you want, but making them is pretty straingt forward cabinetry.

[Shawn Pixley]

Thanks Barry,

Nice work. I especially like the modular peg system. Could you tell me what the side to side dimension is? I might stack this on a non Glass fronted Cabinet to store the cases.

I'm not really looking for plans merely trying to garner the experience an wisdom of the group.

S