Building the Ergonomic Guitar

Building The Ergonomic Guitar Blog, with its focus on guitar building and guitar design in service of human factors, officially turned a year old on March 1rst! It’s a belated birthday for my guitar blog but better late than never.

It’s been a very exciting year for me on many levels. Making an electric guitar based on the Guild of American Luthiers plan of a Klein electric guitar seemed a bit daunting back in February 2006 when I first started to consider the idea. Fortunately, the idea took root with March 1rst, 2006 marking the first day of the blog. My intent was to use it as a means of documenting my guitar build and the ideas surrounding it.

The research began and I started consuming everything and anything about making guitars, building guitars, designing guitars – well you get the picture. With no background whatsoever in these areas, I was starting from scratch. I compensated by reading everything I could about the subject and asking many questions of guitar builders and luthiers over at Project Guitar Forum. Their input was invaluable and I started to formulate an approach.

Unfortunately, I was barely a month into the process when I was struck with a terrible bout of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). This lasted for several months and the blog and my guitar build lay dormant and frustratingly out of reach. Finally, in August I was able to begin working again.

From this point on, my first guitar build went rather quickly given outside demands on my time. By December, I was able to report that the guitar was nearly complete. BTW, for all intents and purposes, it is essentially done as seen above. I will post an official “I’m done” article soon enough and share some additional thoughts on it.

Along the way, I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying the support of my readers – many of whom come here for the guitar building aspects as well as the odd and unique guitars I feature. Hopefully, they come away with a heightened awareness of ergonomics and the possibilities of addressing deficiencies around these areas. Guitarists too often suffer for their art without knowledge that there may be better ways or at least different approaches to their physical ailments.

Finally, I want to take a moment to thank everyone for their support. There are my blog readers who comment both on and off the blog. Your feedback and comments have helped me throughout. Please keep the comments and questions coming! Similarly, I appreciate all the helpful comments and questions that have arisen from conversations in various guitar forums. And, last but not least, I have had the privilege of my wife’s unwavering support throughout. Without her support and encouragement, my first guitar build and this blog would not have been possible. Thanks, babe!

Now it’s on to year two with more featured guitars, more discussion of design elements and at least another guitar build. Stay tuned!