Submitted by guitar-list on
Have you every wanted to make your own guitar but have been put off by your lack of wood working skills? A Zoybar could be the solution. It is a modular guitar construction system that simply bolts together.
It is built around a central bar. The headstock and tuners, the body wings, the pickups and electronics, bridge and even the neck and fretboard all bolt on to the bar. This means that every one of those components is inter-changeable, so you can experiment with lots of configurations. You can go from fretted to fretless, change the pickup positions and configurations, go from 6 to 12 strings, change the scale length, change the body shape all in a matter of minutes.You can even bolt Zoybars together allowing you to have multiple necked instruments.
The Zoybar is the idea of industrial designer Ziv Bar Ilan (whose name is also built around a central bar), who wanted to create a comfortable and and playable instrument that was easy to assemble but efficient to manufacture in small numbers. The Zoybar will be launched in December 2008 at www.zoybar.net, where you can buy the Zoybar kit at an online shop and share your creations with the Zoybar community. There is also a developers and hackers contest with prizes of three full Zoybar Hardware kits.