Thursday, May 12, 2005

Guitar case design - do you want innovation?

I started the whole Calder Originals project because I looked at the beauty of my guitar and then looked at the ugliness of my case and gig bag. Ok so the Fender or Gibson original cases have buckets of character from years of use - but they are heavy not that well made, and don't offer the greatest protection.

Anyway I decided that I wanted to carry my guitars in something that was as beautiful as they are.

I am amazed that no-one has done this before - in almost every other area of luggage innovation abounds - cool ruck sacks - cool laptop cases - so why not guitar cases and gig bags?

Part of the reason for this blog is to get feedback on what we've done so far = guitar players tell me do you like the design?

Hard Case elevation photo

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would buy such a product to relace my quickly aging and heavy PRS case in a heartbeat.

The design is quite current and reminds me of the newww models of BMWs comming out.

The only things that would prevent me from getting one is the 'usability' of the product. That is the feel and maneuverability, balance, "and things of this nature."

The SKB poly cases seemed like a good idea, but they always felt like they were on the edge of just falling apart at the seams.

11:40 PM  
Blogger Nick CC said...

Thanks voidref - I like your enthusiasm and the BMW reference fits with our thinking too.

We are making this case to be used - its a high performance working tool - so the feel, maneuverability are all priorities.

For perfect balance regardless of the guitar you carry you can just move your hand back and forward along the length of the handle.

4:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like the design.

Speaking of BMW's, I notice that your case looks a lot like the Ernie Ball / Musicman Bongo bass headstock. The Bongo is a new model that was done by BMW's design group.

An amusing coincidence.

I think it is important to make the cases readily identifiable at a distance of a couple of feet. It is embarassing to pick up somebody else's case. It is irritating to see someone else pick up mine.

My 12-string has a very classy case...that looks exactly like every other Taylor jumbo case I have seen. My dreadnought has an SKB case with a tie-dyed piece of cloth, bearing my name and a cartoon likeness glued to the neck section of the lid. My strat case has an embarassment of stickers and a spray-painted band-name stencil from 1988. There has to be a better way.

Your cases will initially be readily identifiable simply by being the only ones of their type around. After they catch on, however, it would be good to have some means of differentiating them. Perhaps make a panel that can be a different color, or have a section that written information could be inserted into. If you go the written route, please do better than the luggage-tag idea. That one is very common in the industry but it still isn't effective. The failing of a luggage tag is why I now have a tie-dyed bandana on my dreadnought case.

4:46 AM  
Blogger Nick CC said...

Wayne - yes we noticed the likeness between the Bongo design and ours.

Like your idea about being able to id the case from a distance - will add this to the 'to do' list. Thanks

9:45 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

That is one seriously sexy case - from a purely aesthetics point of view - if you made that out of abs etc it would still look hot. Very nice work.

Hayden

6:16 AM  

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