A: It’s a matter of priorities. In our design process, we’re mainly interested in the sound and playability. So you think, what do we know sounds best? How can we utilize the science of sound? And what will give us superior playability?
For example, guitar-builders know if you want good tone, the instrument must be somewhat stiff, so you need a body with good strength longways. It need not be wide nor heavy, but it must avoid flexing, so it must not be too thin. It’s also common knowledge that to get long sustain you run the string ball to the rear of the body, and tilt the tuner head so the string makes firm contact at nut and saddles. So for starters, you build a small but stiff body, with through-body string anchoring and a tilt-back head.
I once saw a guy building a gorgeous guitar, and he installed the pickup where it *looked* good. No experiment, no science. Man, that’s not smart. For ours, we took an instrument and cut a huge hole in it, and put the pickup on modeling clay and moved it back and forth. Sure enough, some locations sound best. So that’s where you put the pickups. You let your ear tell you where it should go. This is just sensible engineering. If your priorities are right, and you go carefully, step by step, you get good results.
Our neck is beautiful, but our body looks kind of clunky. Sorry. That’s just what gave us the best sound and the best playability. When you feel how the instrument rides so comfortably, and how smooth the neck feels beneath your hands, and when you hear how grand your music sounds … you get the point.
It fits with our goals to give good value. And we do.
