News And Updates

More and more of you guitar builders out there are asking for permission to use my designs, which is encouraging. More and more completed builds are also starting to surface on YouTube, on forums, and even as commercially available guitars. And most of you handle the intellectual property side of things well.

As I’m sure you are aware, my designs are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. This means that you have to state that you are using the design with permission from me, provide a link to my website and include my e-mail address. You also have to make your own enhancements/modifications available under the same license, so your website/YouTube video description/forum post should clearly state that others may use your modified design.

For more information scrolling to the bottom of this page and click the Creative Commons logo or link. When you do, you will get a page like this:

Regarding what you write, there is admittedly some confusion, since I changed the name of the legal entity that the business is operating under from “Strandberg Guitarworks” to “Strandberg Guitars AB” when I converted it into a limited company in 2012. Facebook will not let me change the name of the page for example.

But here are a few facts: .strandberg* is a registered trademark owned by me Strandberg Guitars AB. You should never use this except when referring to the guitars that are in fact built featuring this brand. When you are referring to them, you should always use it though.

Other trademarks owned by Strandberg Guitars AB are EndurNeck, GrooveNeck and EGS. If you ever feel the need to refer to these names, you must also state that they are trademarks belonging to Strandberg Guitars AB. EndurNeck is patent pending so is subject to a separate license agreement and is not licensed under Creative Commons.

Thanks in advance for respecting these rules and for contributing to the ergonomic guitar community!

Strandberg Guitarworks Is Dead – Long Live Strandberg Guitars AB
To keep up with demand and the ever growing wait list, and to be able to make the kinds of commitments needed to grow the business, Strandberg Guitarworks, which was a sole proprietorship, has been incorporated into a limited company with the name Strandberg Guitars AB.

Strandberg Guitarworks was chosen as one of eight companies to take part in a business incubator program at Uppsala Innovation Center during the spring of 2012. While taking part in this program has taken considerable time away from actually building guitars, it has put the business in a place where it has a well supported plan to grow and to continue delivering fantastic guitars. Obviously, this is a very exciting development and you will have a lot to look forward to!

This website will continue to exist and be updated with new designs, ideas, pictures and drawings – still under Creative Commons licensing, and remain the location for hardware sales. The strandbergguitars.com website will remain as-is – dedicated to the guitar part of the business.

The waiting list is undergoing a cleanup and consolidation in preparation for publishing at the strandbergguitars.com web site. Each person on the wait list has been asked to respond to a questionnaire that includes asking for permission to do so, and other questions more related to planning. The initial message was sent out on March 26, and since then, three reminders have been sent out. One was duplicated from the thestrandbergs.com e-mail account, just in case strandbergguitars.com happened to end up in junk mail. In addition, messages have been posted on Facebook and sevenstring.org forums. Those of you that I could find on Facebook have been reminded through a Facebook message. Only three people have responded that they wish to drop off so far, which is good news in terms of the interest.

Nevertheless, eleven responses are still missing. Regrettably, if you are one of these eleven and you do not respond by tomorrow, your spot is lost.

For the rest of you – the wait list will be published in a few days along with some other updates.

Check out an interview with myself at guitar-muse.com

Here are a few pictures of the final guitar stand. There was no good-looking plywood to be had in town, so I had to settle for this material which is called “OSB” or Oriented Strand Board. It’s cheap, durable, and I would imagine is kind of ecologically sound since it’s made from waste wood. Having said that, it might well contain awful glue compounds or have been shipped from across the globe… The weight turned out to be 490 grams (a little over 1 lb) which is well below most, and they are easy to pack.

I did make a few spare ones for the .strandberg* owners that I will meet at NAMM. Future orders will also have the option of including a stand and those of you that own a .strandberg* but don’t have a stand can purchase one.

Another year has passed and what a year it has been! It is now four years since the development of the Ergonomic Guitar System started, but it was this year that the guitar making part really took off. Since Tosin Abasi and I met at NAMM, the videos of him playing his .strandberg* guitars and doing other demos have well over 250,000 views. During 2011, #6 – #12, and #15 – #17 were delivered and #13 and #14 are being completed right now. 50 or so sets of bridges have been sold to other luthiers. There is a wait list of over 70 guitar orders. What this means for 2012 is full steam ahead! With NAMM 2012 just around the corner, bass hardware has just been announced, and a whole new line of guitars will be announced shortly. Aside from endorsees Chris Letchford (Scale the Summit) and Misha Mansoor (Periphery), I am thrilled to welcome on board Al Mu’min (the HAARP Machine) and Dustie Waring (Between the Buried and Me). Thank you everyone who has supported Strandberg Guitarworks during 2011. Here’s to a great 2012!

Sales of hardware is currently on hold due to high demand, as odd as that may sound. Here’s why:

The cost of manufacturing a batch of hardware is basically driven by four (five) parameters: (programming machines, one time cost), machine setup, material cost, time in the machines and amount of human intervention/manual labor. If you are a Floyd-Rose or Ibanez, production runs of many thousands of units make it worth automating processes completely and having dedicated tooling and machines set up and ready to go. Optimizing all the steps and spreading the one time costs out over a large number of units cuts the cost and you as a customer can purchase a high quality unit at a decent price despite several points in the distribution chain having taken their cut.

The EGS hardware has the same costs of programming and the same setup cost for the machines for each batch but there are several differences, most notably that the costs are distributed across a much smaller number of units. The volume does not warrant complete automation, which means that there is manual labor going into the manufacturing process. By only selling direct with a low margin, costs are cut as much as possible. The batch sizes of manufacturing are kept as large as the business allows to minimize the setup cost per unit manufactured. Quality is never compromised though.

The situation today, at the end of November 2011, is that the stocks of guitar hardware are so low that the near term .strandberg* guitar backlog needs all that remains. There will be hardware available again, but it will some time before the business can bear the investment of another batch, especially considering that bass hardware is in the works. Note that if you are looking to order a large quantity, the situation changes completely – in this case, a new batch can be initiated more or less immediately.

Hopefully the reasons can be understood, and it will be worth the wait for you. Keep watching this space for announcements about availability.

As a complement to this site, and more product centric with respect to the .strandberg* guitars, are very pleased to announce the launch of a new website, strandbergguitars.com.

Please check it out, and in particular, feel free to use the social media integration with Facebook and other sites. This functionality will evolve more over time.

This site, guitarworks.thestrandbergs.com, will continue to exist and continue to serve the purpose of a development blog and progress updates of on-going builds.

Here are some opportunities to meet Ola Strandberg and try out a .strandberg* guitar in 2011:

- Buenos Aires, Argentina, 27-31 July

- São Paulo, Brazil, 1-4 August

- Stockholm, Sweden, 1-2 October

- Toronto, Canada, 16-19 October

- Boston, MA, around 27 October (tentative)

Feel free to get in touch if you would like to set up a meeting!

It is with great pride and joy that we can today announce jointly that Strandberg Guitarworks is the first licensed user of Rick Toone’s patented Trapezoidal Neck Profile™ (TNP™) and Intersecting Plane Neck Profile™ (IPNP™) technologies.

The TNP™ has been used on a few builds already (#3, #6) and has been extremely well received by the musician community. In addition to its excellent ergonomics, I have found that the design makes for a more stable neck that also sounds exceedingly good. In build #8, commissioned by Tosin Abasi, Rick Toone has been engaged to work directly with Tosin to adapt the design to his exact specification.