2026 NCDA, 2nd Award (Province Level): A Guitar with a Tension-Balancing Sliding-Block Folding System 一种具有张力平衡滑块折叠系统的吉他

In the field of portable stringed instruments, including travel guitars, prior-art products are generally configured to reduce the overall carrying volume during transit, commuting, or temporary off-site scenarios, thereby enabling users to practice or perform in non-stationary environments. Although portability constitutes a primary design objective for such instruments, it must be reconciled with competing design constraints, including weight, structural integrity, acoustic performance, and ergonomic suitability. In view of increasing travel frequency for professional performance engagements, business travel, and other mobility-related purposes, a growing market demand has emerged for travel guitars that are conveniently portable and capable of rapid assembly.
Skilled guitar performance is contingent upon highly refined neuromuscular memory; specifically, sliding techniques require accurate kinesthetic perception of the distances between successive frets, while bending and vibrato techniques depend on string tension and fingertip tactile feedback that substantially match those of a standard full-scale instrument. Accordingly, to provide an effective practice surrogate, a travel guitar must preserve a standard or substantially standard effective scale length, the attendant fret-spacing geometry, and comparable string tension characteristics. Mere dimensional reduction is inadequate to achieve this objective. An instrument that deviates from these critical physical parameters is unbale deliver the authentic haptic and proprioceptive.
Accordingly, there is a pressing need for a foldable portable guitar that fundamentally reconfigures the storage structure to achieve substantial reduction in both overall volume and longitudinal length, while simultaneously preserving a standard scale length, authentic string tension, and tactile string feedback, thereby satisfying the practical requirements of traveling guitarists, for immediate practice and skill retention in mobile scenarios.