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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

I think Fender are idiots for doing this but I also wonder why companies copy the body style so slavishly. You would think makers of musical instruments would be a little more creative themselves.

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It's a pretty restrictive design space. The Stratocaster shape is based on the centuries-old shape of acoustic guitars. The lower dip of the "hip" of the guitar shape serves a practical purpose, in allowing it to rest on your leg when playing seated. The upper dip mirrors the lower hip aesthetically and removes weight. The cutaways in the upper bout allows you to access the higher frets. At that point there's not a whole lot of design variation left without sacrificing some functionality (eg the Flying V shape is not really playable while seated), and honestly most of that design space has already been explored, too. The strat shape is so common because, well, it's a really good and obvious design for an electric guitar, which is why it was one of the very first. If you stray very far from one of the handful of established designs, you pretty much just end up with a worse guitar.

Upvoted because you've captured the overall point pretty well, but I will say that the Flying V can be pretty dang comfortable seated if you hold in the classical position (i.e., resting on your fretting side thigh). I almost always play standing anyway, but when I do sit, I usually rest the guitar (acoustic or electric) on my left leg anyway because I find it more comfortable.

As with most things guitar, it's mostly about what works for the individual player.

This is why the materials from Fender keep trying to emphasize that the strat shape was an explicitly creative decision and not a functional one, because if it's primarily a functional design, they've got nothing (see how there's only so many ways to design a shovel, you can't sue someone for copying your shovel design)

Indeed. The lineage is pretty clear:

Spanish Guitar -> Dreadnoughts with Cutaway -> Flat Solid-body Telecaster -> Flat Precision/Telecaster Bass -> Contoured Stratocaster

The asymmetric body shape was a very clever design out of necessity, as the long-scale Precision bass needed a longer horn at the top in order to avoid neck dive.

Interestingly, the only trademarked part of the Stratocaster, the neck shape, was copied from a Bigsby model, which is based on a Violin Scroll Shape.

> the Flying V shape is not really playable while seated

it needs to be played in a classical position (with a footrest ideally) but it's more ergonomic than the standard strat position.

It's the same reason why bikes all look the same. There's only so many ways to design around a set of constraints.

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