Zyra
Hollow-body carved-top electric guitar with horn components and tailpiece.
Appearing quite early in my practice (2021), ZYRA is a guitar that taught me a lot in terms of design - and about the creative process in general:
-It was first commissioned by a Montreal guitarist and collector, who clearly stated that he wanted something he had never seen.
-The asymmetrical shape and oval theme were first developed in the first week of drawings. The oval shape is repeated both at the lower-bout, at the waist on each side of the guitar, but also around the neck joint in the double-cut erea. This went well - after two weeks of work, I was almost done.
All that remained was to join the tips (horns) but the idea of creating something new in this place was going round in circles... Here no volute, nor square-ends or Strat-style anything would work, and I didn't see precisely how to achieve something never seen before, literally, as ordered.
The acoustic-type horn such as on clarinet and trumpet, etc. must have appeared by itself:
Credit photos: Nassim Aboutanos
Zyra -
Holow-body electric guitar, 2001 - Andre Instruments no 12
Dimensions: 101 x 37.5 x 8.5 cm
Scale length:648mm
Neck width @ nut 44mm
String spacing @ bridge 52mm
Body length total : 53.15 cm
Soundboard: Sugar maple, vacuum dried
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Back&sides: Honduran mahogany
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Neck: Honduran mahogany, 2-way adjustable truss-rod
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Fretboard: Gabon ebony, with bleached moose horn inlay
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Headstock: Gabon ebony, with mother-of-pearl -Z- inlay
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Bridge: Bleached moose horn
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Tailpiece: Gabon ebony, with steel wire
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Tuning machines: Schaller
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Nut and Saddle: bleached cow bone
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Finish: Tung oil and copal varnish
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Pickups: K&K pure mini, Seymour Duncan Stack Strat
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Strings: D'addario EXL110, nickel and steel
Collection Teti, New Hampshire, USA
- It really came out by chance, after finally a full month of work, sometimes running for a few seconds in despair... This is where the plastic template -oval- was found in just the right place on the paper, coming to link the lines already present. And There you go!-. Everything fell into place, like something that was not planned before.
Since then I have learned to let my designs breathe while making them - that continuous work leads to a charge of energy, which must ultimately find its own path of application. If certain instruments are designed in a few days (Bass Maya, Sun, Moon, and Vibrations, Echoes of Time), others require me to work on them for a long time, to take breaks and do something else, to come back strong with the detail that ties the whole together (Multi, Wurcer-fruit guitar, Kouai).
So recently, when designing my -Blue Guitar- entitled -Blueprint- for the Archtop Foundation, I allocated myself more than a month to first put it on paper, and then I went on and produced two other variations - to finally dissect the whole, simplify...and draw an archtop guitar which will merge elements from this trio of drawings.
The difference between the creation of Zyra (2001) and Blueprint (2024) is that today, much like any musician (or composer) I should say, I recognize the process, I do not look at success from the end but rather focus on building my design step by step - establishing its solid foundation - and work with confidence : -The process doesn't get any easier, just without moments of panic - and recognizing the key role of the trash-bin... it's now more integrated to throw away and redo quickly, without fuss.
See Echoes of Time here, a harp-guitar with a direct -Zyra- and -acoustic horn- influence.