Instruments: The Diablo, a guitar for the quadriplegic
March 11th, 2008
This is the Diablo. Yes, the same guitar this post talks about and the same guitar that can be seen on the photos below.
This is going to be a short and sweet update (I’m kind of busy having to adapt with the internship and having to learn Javascript/AJAX real fast (which I will use to try and implement some kind of sweet and really simple function in here), so I don’t take as much time as I’d like). The idea of imagining a quadriplegic playing any kind of music would be foreign or absurd to most of us. However, the man behind Driskill Guitars didn’t stop there and made an instrument especially for a quadriplegic customer of his.
Here is the Diablo, a custom guitar made out of carbon fiber for a man named Kurt:
As you can see, it has a claw that rides down on rails. This claw has a Teflon block inside of it which has a .76″ recess in it. The rod has a ball end on it that is .75″ and that lets it rotate. The claw also has a stainless steel bar that is spring loaded inside of it which does the fretting. The rod hooks up to a 1/4″ movable socket which is welded to limit its movement and has O ring grooves cut into it. The mouthstick then attaches to that with snap rings and has tubing over it to pick and strum the strings. The entire guitar is covered in 12K carbon fiber. It has vertical tuners so that he can tune it with his mouthstick. The tribal design on the body is aluminum and the inlays are medieval paua abalone crosses. The claw rides on shaft rods and Teflon/Freliner bearings. It sounds so cool!!! Like a mean slide guitar.
So let’s not wait more and directly get to the photos:
I can’t even understand how it can be played, but I guess it works. Oh yeah, one more thing, look at the case!
It is 50×25x8.5″ and is made from plywood and resawn 2×4s.
You can find more photos by visiting this guitar’s official page. I think it’s real neat that music can be accessible to disabled people (well, physically at least, not exactly financially), although I guess the guy’s going to have a hard time plugging it or picking it up.