I am currently seeing a physical therapist who is helping me with my RSI. She says my Les Paul has got to go. Can you recommend any quality guitars for playing Jazz under a thousand dollars that won’t kill my back?

My PT says that my heavy guitar has caused me to hold my guitar improperly causing strain in my wrists, hands, and shoulders.

Thank you!

David

From a purely statics point of view, just chamber the areas that would add to the torque from the neck and not chamber areas that would counteract that torque. How to do that without negatively affecting the playability or tone of the guitar requires the “holistics” that Robert mentions.

To me, that just begs the question: How would moving the controls from the traditional “six o’clock” position to the “two o’clock” position affect the tone? That would move one body cavity that adds to the neck torque to a position that would reduce this torque. So far, the only disadvantages I’ve thought of would be the additional long route for the cable socket and that it’s just “different”. One’s real and the other is “real enough” because people may have a problem with the controls being someplace different.

Thank you so much for starting and maintaining this blog. I’m recovering from a low-back injury myself and have found the info to be very useful.

To accomplish this, we have to challenge ourselves to look beyond convention which is an underlying theme of my blog. Headless designs, for example, lend themselves very well to improving overall balance. The Klein design, already two decades old, went even further to address ergonomics. Yet when we think about guitars, designs that are a half century old come to mind – the Strat and the Les Paul, in particular.

However, I am not suggesting that headless designs are the only solution. New visions of the shape of the guitar can improve balance while still retaining the headstock that many prefer. Take a look at my article on Adrian Legg’s guitar for one such example. Although it is in many ways a variation of the Klein theme which in turn is a variation on the Ovation Breadwinner, it retains the conventional headstock but in a smaller format. This, in turn, reduces some of the lever effect of the neck.

A natural follow up to this article, btw, is a discussion of considerations for improving instrument balance. Keep an eye out for it.

Thanks for the comment and welcome!