Open Source Guitar
* Article: Open Hardware: The Open Source Guitar.
- Part one of a series by Ziv Bar Ilan about Open Source Hardware and Zoybar, his open R&D lab for academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers to easily create music instruments and applications.
- Part two
Why Open Guitars?
Fender and Gibson guitars dominate the industry. The Stratocaster and Les Paul electric guitar designs, are 60 years old, but still dominate purchases--for a variety of reasons--but smaller companies are creating innovative designs.
Open/P2P Guitar Business Models
Open versions of existing guitar designs are already here. They're sold as kits on eBay. However things can go further that that. Guitars (and instruments in general) can be designed, manufactured and funded, in an open/p2p way. For instance, wood, can be sourced locally or regionally. And local or regional labor can be networked for production. Tool-sharing, open garage(s)/hackerspaces and Fab Labs can be used to as places to cheaply manufacture guitars. They provide an environment of tinkering, a space to share ideas and designs, and use manufacturing tools like Open Pin Routers and CNC machines.
Differences to Current Businesss Models
Guitars (and many instruments) are predominately made in alignment with neoliberal environmental, ecological, political, economical, social and cultural values. Low wage foreign labor in Chinese, Korean and Mexican factories with harsh conditions, dominate. Generally, higher quality instruments are produced in American, Europe and Japan, but also under the big government/big corporate capitalist models.