To avoid the chiropractor...

****A post for my class on hacking. The assignment this week was to hack something. I was having technical difficulties, so had to post it here too.

This is a hack that I have been thinking about for a few years, but never got around to doing it. And…I hope that this counts as a hack.

My guitar case is really heavy. This is not so much a problem in Los Angeles, where I can drive and park relatively close to the venue at which I have a show or a performance. However, when I was living in New York, I didn’t have a car, and spent a lot of sweat and muscle (or lack thereof) lugging my guitar up and down the subways, often walking up to several blocks at a time to get to different venues. During these times of sweat (literally, in the summer) and tears, I thought about how great it would be if my guitar case had wheels. I’m a rather wimpy person, and having a heavy guitar case that I have to carry is just…not fun. Showing up to a show sweaty and out of breath doesn’t lead to a good show.

Of course, there are sites that sell guitar cases with wheels for $250-$300, here and here. That’s a lot to spend. My guitar case came with my guitar, and it is a nice, hardshell case. If I were really cynical or really paranoid and suspicious, I would say that companies are doing this to get guitar players to buy an additional case with wheels, but I don’t really think that’s the case (no pun intended). I think putting wheels on a guitar case just isn’t a top priority for case makers. After all, not everyone is as wimpy as I am. But there clearly are economic implications here, however slight they are.

Moreover, guitars come in different shapes and sizes. Even if you were to buy a case with wheels, there is no guarantee that your guitar will fit into it. Different guitar models have different styles of bodies. My first guitar had a jumbo body, and did not fit into standard guitar cases. The guitar case that I did this hack on is specific to the body shape and size of my Taylor 312CE, which has what is called a Grand Concert body, not a very popular body style/size for any guitar.

So, I figured, with the excuse of this class assignment to hack something, I would try to solve this problem that has been plaguing me for over 3 years, by adding wheels to my case.

I have recently learned to skateboard (or, longboard, really), and a skateboard has parts that can be taken apart – namely, wheels. While I did not take apart my board, I purchased trucks and wheels, but stupidly forgot to get bearings, and didn’t want to spend more money buying them. I just took some painter’s tape and made bearings (that work!) to make sure the wheels didn’t slip off.

Painting tape to the rescue!

Because I don’t want to do too much modification to my actual case, and because I didn’t want to spend too much time doing carpentry or welding work, I merely used mounting tape to attach the wheely contraption to my guitar case…

And voila! Wheels!

The trucks, tape, and wheels altogether cost $30 seems like a paltry amount to spend on this hack to give my case wheels than dealing with all these other factors. Plus, the wheels stay out of the way of the case opening and closing and laying on its side.