Building the Ergonomic Guitar

You are browsing the archives of Rob Irizarry.

Get started building guitars with these 10 key resources covering everything you’ll need to know and then some.

The Cybercaster electric guitar contains a subtle but significant improvement to fretting hand ergonomics – a 10.8 degree neck twist at its lowest fret which straightens out as you go up the neck. Similar in concept to the Xavier Padilla ergonomic bass guitar from Little Guitar Works, this twist reduces the amount of wrist flexion […]

With guitar build #1 almost complete and the new Blogger functionality out of beta, the time is right to make a number of changes and improvements to the blog format. I have Blogcrowds to thank for the base template I’ve now heavily modified. The most obvious change is the new look of the blog. In […]

As Thomas Heck states in his article, A New ABC for Holding the Guitar: Aguado + Bassoonist strap = Comfort, “guitarists have wrestled for a long time with the question of how best to hold the guitar when one is seated.” The issue of how to best hold the guitar was a primary concern of […]

Headless guitars lend themselves to ergonomic design through their potential to improve instrument balance and centralize weight closer to the guitarist’s body where it is more easily carried. Unfortunately, headless guitar parts are limited in choice, tend to be expensive and even hard to source. (Read more about some options at Headless Guitar Resources.) For […]

With the electric guitar body finished, it was time to begin my guitar project’s final assembly. While I was at it, I loaded in the guitar’s switch, volume and output jack to see how the guitar will look in its final state. As you can see, I kept the guitar’s electronics simple. Gold Lace Sensor […]

With the final bit of routing complete on my guitar project, I turned to finishing the guitar. After researching the subject, I decided to go with a simple DIY solution – Watco Danish Oil. Before starting the finish, I had a few small dents in the guitar body that I wanted to address. I used […]

Continuing with my electric guitar project, I completed the pickup cavities and control cavity after deciding against the combination of rear routing and front routing that the original Klein guitar uses. I decided rear routing was preferable. I did a quick test fit of the controls and everything looked good. For the pickup cavities, I […]

Here is another YouTube video of fingerstyle guitarist Adrian Legg playing his custom ergonomic guitar – this one from his instructional video How To Become a More Creative Guitarist-An Insider’s Tips for Fingerstyle Players. For more of Adrian Legg check out these DVD’s: Adrian Legg: Fingerpicking And Open Tunings A Fingerstyle Summit with Adrian Legg, […]

The electric guitar build is proceeding well – the forearm cut and belly contour are complete. In addition, the angled lower strap button area is done. For the belly contour I used a combination of an 80 grit sanding disc on an electric drill to take away the bulk of the material followed by hand […]