Building the Ergonomic Guitar

Wanting to “contribute a little something back to the amateur guitar building community”, Romano Zambon forwarded a 3 page electric guitar plan of his recent ergonomic guitar build.

The full size plan drawings are in a single Acrobat PDF file and contain plenty of detail for anyone interested in building Romano’s guitar body. It “assumes a 1 and 3/4″ thick blank and is currently designed for a Telecaster heel on the neck. If a strat type neck is used the pocket would need to be modified.”

To download the plans, right click on the link below and choose to save:

Romano Zambon Electric Guitar Plan – 46 KB

For those who’ve seen my first guitar project, you’ll see a similar approach in that Romano focuses on building the guitar body rather than adding the complication of building a neck. I think this is a great approach for first time guitar builders. It provides plenty of opportunity for creativity while eliminating the most complex part of making a guitar – the neck. And by opting for a Tele heeled neck rather than a Steinberger neck, Romano greatly expanded his choices.

Romano’s other departure from a Steinberger based solution is in the tuning department. Inspired by Scott French’s alternative headless guitar tuning approach, Romano used Steinberger tuners mounted in the guitar body mated with a small stub “headstock” and a tune-o-matic or TOM style bridge. Again, this opens up additional alternatives for the guitar builder. Steinberger tuners could be replaced with banjo style tuners, a tune-o-matic bridge could easily include piezo pickups, etc.

Overall, it’s a wonderful project and an approach with a lot of advantages – particularly for the guitar builder looking to experiment. Thanks Romano!