Blackbird Guitars design decisions and human factors

I figured a bit more info about how we come to our design decisions would be of interest. From a product design and development standpoint, I am aligned with the user-centered design school. This means that every line, feature and detail on a Blackbird is driven by the player's functional needs. This also means that we do not let ourselves be confined by tradition (The exception being the 'traditional' head shape which just seemed to tie the design together and by shifting the tuners around has no real disadvantage regarding the string path)- there are so many 'normal' guitars out there to choose from anyway. Problems we are preoccupied with include: getting a big sound out of a small body (and maximizing responsiveness in general), making a more comfortable playing experience, increasing durability (hello carbon), and portability. The Rider is designed to be the ultimate backpacker/travel guitar so it is 10.5" narrow to fit nicely on the side of a backpack and the length 35.5" with a full scale length and a professional-quality voice and volume. Narrow width has proven to be worthwhile for more than backpackers because the instrument does not look very guitar-like in its soft case- useful when you are say trying to get on the plane. Incidentally Emerald got their short overall length with a full-scale by making the body much shorter and a small head- valid decisions that allows for good fret access but everything is a compromise of course and I wanted a full body length (19") for increased bass but without a full-length guitar. The Cargo of course is not a full-scale which is how they got their 35" length. This is all to say that I am hearing that some folks that they want the overall length shorter so I'll try to cook something up down the road and please more of you chime in if that is something of interest!

I do spend a lot of time thinking about human factors (ergonomics is a subset of this esoteric field) so how come their are no curves with the Riders? Well, first looks are deceiving (darn that perception) and the guitar is balanced 50/50 (Hollow neck and head woot!) around the 16th fret so it actually rests quite well on the leg. By the way, we have no curves because that design makes for a more acoustically efficient sound box. I can understand wanting more support depending on your playing style- enter a guitar support or a strap. A very large percentage of classical players use some kind of guitar support because classical guitars are actually not very ergonomic at all and easily lead to wrist and hand injuries after extended play. Foot stools help but who wants to deal with those. In general, making the guitar easier to play helps avoid injury which is why our nylon string has a radius to the fretboard and lower action than convention. On a side note, guitar supports work particularly well with Blackbird guitars because they are among the lightest guitars available (a wide Neck-up on the Super OM is a sublime playing experience) so they rest comfortably on less surface area. Carbon fiber likes those comfy curves and cuts that are common on ergonomically superior electric guitars so its almost criminal not to use the material to that end. Well there I go again sounding like a salesman so I better stop while I am ahead. The future may hold more traditional designs for Blackbird but I guess we just needed to get our unfettered design solutions out there first and attempt to solve age old guitar problems.