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Since the rise of Strandberg, the ergonomics of a guitar have come increasingly into question. Choice of contours and ease of playability are now major considerations for all firms kickstarting many revisions.
But for Ryan Wizner, former Special Operations Ranger turned CNC machine specialist, “ergonomics” is more than just a buzzword. He was one of the first US soldiers to land on Iraqi soil in the wake of 9/11, and his body hasn’t been the same since.
“By the time I came home, my back was a trainwreck,” he says. “I had a bulging and dehydrated disc and spinal misalignment. It’s been self-care for the last 25 years. I’ve come up with a multitude of stretching and workout systems, and I’ve alleviated most of it. But it’s always there, ready to put me down for a couple of days.”
Playing guitar, for Wizner as it is for many, is more than just a fun way to pass the time – it’s a key pillar of his mental health. But he can only play for 45 minutes before the pain is too much to bear. So he’s taken matters into his own hands, and his wild-looking Ghost Lab Acoustics HyperNova 2.0 is a radical electric guitar design.
“I'm an avid cyclist – those fruitloops are always very tightly knit about what every muscle is doing,” he says. “So I applied that logic to the guitar. I’ve tried Strandbergs and other ergonomic guitars, and they were all close, but they weren’t it.”
Covering Preston Reid’s Blasting Cap five years ago – a song that features some rather deft over-the-fretboard tapping and other trickery – exacerbated his need for a better solution. The HyperNova 2.0 aims to cancel posture issues and muscle tensions that guitar players are often unaware of, but, he says, equate to wasted energy.
Using a one-to-one Brother printer to cut out cardboard shapes, he’d had his wife film him “playing” the guitar to figure out the right posture. He found that, that if you move the guitar away from your body by 15 degrees, your shoulder and elbow will align. If you have it closer to your body, and your elbow is pulled behind your shoulders, creating unwanted tension.
“If your elbow is aligned with the center-line of your shoulder on both sides, and your arm is at 90 degrees or lower on both sides, that's where everything opens up and comes together,” he says.
“I think people misunderstand – the HyperNova is not replacing anything. I still have all my other electric guitars, and I still want to buy a PRS and a real Les Paul one day. But when it’s time to grind that new song for hours on end, I want to use only my fine motor skills and my fingers. That's where this guitar comes in.”
At the heart of Wizner’s design is a dual-leg support geometry – this baby won’t move once it’s resting between your legs – to encourage correct posture and accommodate a wide range of body types. There’s a lowered string-plane to reduce shoulder strain, and forward-mounted volume and tone controls that are “right in the line of strumming.”
“I understand that you want it quick to get access,” he says. “But my thought was, ‘Let’s have the left hand do that work, because the right hand can keep making adjustments mid-song.’”
As the model name suggests, this wasn’t his first attempt. “The first prototype failed miserably! That’s how engineering goes. Within five minutes of playing I knew it wasn't it. So I went back to the drawing board.” But his commitment and attention to detail are abundantly clear in the final build.
Version 2.0 has swapped carbon fiber for more traditional woods, after Wizner accepted he’d come up wtih one too many innovations for the market. The wood comes in 32mm-thick blocks from a local sawmill – birdseye maple for the centrepiece and bolt-on neck, padauk, and wenge and purpleheart for the armrest contour and upper bout. They’re fused together with the adhesive that Formula 1 teams use.
Interestingly, Wizner feels that the union of hardwoods helps the guitar’s sustain: “When you’re striking a note and the vibrations are moving through the instrument, it’s moving across all these little hard spots – the natural knots in the woods – and it’s fracturing and breaking up. I feel it creates a really lasting sustain.”
Session musicians would really benefit from this; beginners too. You barely notice it, so you can concentrate on making music
The neck is modelled on Ibanez’s fast-playing Wizard III, and the instruments are stocked with EMG 81X/60AX humbuckers, which can be swapped out without soldering. Sperzel tuners and a Guyker tremolo also feature, after another well-known brand failed the longevity test.
“The finish wore off within a couple of weeks, whereas the Guyker components didn’t,” Wizner says. “I'm also using Thomastik-Infeld strings and Duracell batteries. Every component is the highest end that I can manage.”
The inverted V has an almost Lego-like assembly so that swapping parts is effortless; he encourages players to season to taste. Swapping a hardtail bridge for a tremolo, for instance, is as easy as you like.
Of course, at $3,299 apiece, the price will turn some off. But with 30 hours of labor going into each build, and the quality of the collective components, Wizner says his margins are “razor thin.”
He explains: “I want to get this in people's hands,” and reports that he’s already eying up acoustic guitar, extended-range and bass designs, as well as one day giving the cello the same treatment.
“This isn't just for people who have back issues. It highlights an area that most people just kind of deal with,” he continues. “Session musicians would really benefit from this; beginners too. You barely notice it, so you can concentrate on making music.”
- See Ghost Lab Acoustics for more.
