The basic idea behind Ridgewing is to break open the guitar business model with open-source design and fabrication. By making the guitar modular and breaking it up into simple “bite-sized” interchangeable components – headstock, neck, bridge, body, etc. –it becomes possible for anyone to get into the guitar business and put their dreams to work, starting with a one home-made component put up for sale on the Ridgewing store, a new headstock or bridge, say. A Ridgewing player can check it out on their instrument in less than a minute, and if the new part is awesome, its maker might suddenly find themselves with a neat little entrepreneurial guitar component business.

Ridgewing will share CAD drawings, CAD models, off-the-shelf hardware bits, 3D-printed models, an online “Blue-Sky” yak-yak forum, love and understanding. With these, even rough hand-made-on-the-kitchen-table components can be easily outfitted with the precision adjustable joinery bits that allow them to fit perfectly together and be precisely interchangeable with all other Ridgewing components. I just can’t wait to see the untapped guitar design ingenuity in the crowd unfold.

Ridgewing is calling this “The Guitar as Software”. The Ridgewing modular joinery system is the mechanical equivalent of a software operating system like iOS or Android. The various modular components in the Ridgewing system are the mechanical equivalent of software “Apps” running on the ROS. Anyone can try their hand at making a new cooler guitar app, but in this case the app is a living, breathing part of a really interesting guitar that never sits still.

If you are interested in trying your hand at becoming a Ridgewing Maker, let me know at contact.ridgewing@gmail.com.  The link in the above poster doesn’t work yet, but if there is interest that can be fixed quickly enough, and we will start building out a “Maker’s Corner” on the website.

It is entirely possible that getting Ridgewing off the ground by trying to raise a half-million dollars to make a standard starter Ridgewing guitar called the “First Edition” will take too long. The alternative is to get Ridgewing going by starting to sell Ridgewing Maker components through the Ridgewing Store, a bit like Etsy, where anybody can set up shop. But that means we need to recruit a Ridgewing Maker militia. Step up, and help us figure this thing out so we can move forward. There is no time like the present.