Hand built to play easy
Custom neck design
The minute you hold a Zager guitar you immediately feel Denny’s 60 years of research in designing a neck that feels good no matter what your hand size. Players say it feels “natural” like an extension of your body. It’s slim front to back allowing you to get your hand around it with ease. It’s also wide enough (but not too wide) so that with Denny’s custom string spacing you’re not leaning on adjacent strings creating buzzes and rattles.
Lower string heights
Any guitar builder can lower strings, very few can do it without buzzing and poor sound quality. Few players know that if string height is too low it destroys sound quality. If you look closely at Zager guitars you’ll notice low string heights on frets 1-10 where players spend the majority of their time, but action rises over the sound hole for better tone and easier picking with the right hand. This also allows you to really get into it and play aggressively with no buzzing. Denny also incorporates a custom adjustment setting on his guitars so you can dial in string height specifically for your style of play.
Lower string pressure
When you barely have to press to form chords it makes a world of difference in your playing whether you’re a professional player or just starting out. New players with no muscle in their fingers are all of a sudden forming chords with ease as 50% less pressure is needed to make chords ring true. Advanced players no longer have to “muscle” chords and are able to play longer sets with much greater speed and accuracy. Denny achieves this using a lighter bracing system which actually flexes in the face as you press each string. This also provides more bass and power as more movement in the face produces a bigger sound.
Custom string spacing
Have you ever tried to form a chord and no matter how you adjusted your fingers they were leaning on adjacent strings causing buzzes and rattles? Denny solves this problem by using custom string spacing on his guitars. When you look at a Zager guitar you won’t even notice its spacing until you play it, but when you do you’ll immediately notice chords that were hard or impossible are easy. Just 1/32’s of an inch can make the difference between a chord that rings true and one that buzzes and rattles.
String height adjustment
Denny designs his guitars with a string height adjustment setting that allows you to dial in your guitar to your particular style of play. In this way if you’re a heavy handed player you can set the action higher so you can “get on it” for more power, and if you’re a lighter handed touch player you can dial the action low for greater speed and accuracy.
Solid wood construction
The best acoustic guitars in the world use solid tone woods – it’s as simple as that. If you want the highest quality sound solid woods cure as they age giving them a better sound year after year. The main advantage of solid wood is that it is far more resonant and thus has a far better tone. The other advantage is durability. You want your guitar to last. A solid wood guitar will better handle the normal dings and scratches that result from long-time use.
Genuine Fishman electronics
The industry leader in pickups for acoustic and electric instruments today. Our acoustic electric models allow you to plug into an amplifier or PA system and play them like full electrics essentially giving you two guitars in one. Unplugged they sound exactly like our full acoustics so there’s no acoustic sound loss. They also have built in auto tuners that tune your guitar in a fraction of the time it takes using conventional tuning methods. Our touring artists appreciate this as it saves time on stage and for beginning players the auto tuners actually train your ear so you develop a perfect sense of pitch.
Genuine Grover tuning machines
The worlds finest machine heads.” Original equipment on leading guitar brands Martin, Zager and Gibson. Lifetime warranty. Break a tuner and we’ll replace it free for life.
Hand carved bone nut
Mr. Zager uses only real cow bone nuts on his guitars and hand carves each one for each individual guitar. In doing so he cuts the string notches a millimeter further apart which creates more room for your fingers. Many players think Zager necks are wider but that would make playability worse as a wide neck is harder to get your hand around. Wider string spacing gives your fingers more room so you’re not leaning on adjacent strings creating buzzes and rattles. This not only makes your guitar easier to play but it also gives you more speed and accuracy. Players say they can move faster with fewer mistakes on Zager guitars and this is one of the reasons why. Lifetime warranty. Break a nut and we’ll replace it free for life.
Hand scalloped bracing
The technique of scalloping or shaving the braces can have a huge impact on the power and tone of an acoustic guitar. By reducing the thickness of the brace it becomes more flexible and therefore lets the top move more freely creating more sound. When done by a master builder the brace maintains its structural integrity, while making the top more efficient. The result is faster attack, longer sustain, more bass, more power, and an overall improvement in the whole tone system.
Hand filed soft metal frets
Mr. Zager hand files the frets on all of his guitars and uses a special softer grade of metal in building his guitars that’s easier on your fingers. By filing the frets he achieves two important things. When sliding up and down the neck your fingers will no longer get irritated and sore and you won’t suffer from “string bite” and overall finger fatigue. Secondly, when you file the frets by hand each fret will have the same uniform height. 9 times out of 10 when you have a buzzing string it has nothing to with your playing, it’s because you have a guitar with a fret that’s sitting away from the fret board hitting a string.
Hand applied custom thin finish
Many guitar builders use a thick gloss finish to protect their guitars. While their intentions are good, a thick finish actually harms the sound quality as it muffles a guitars vibration and blocks the aging process. Mr. Zager uses a special high gloss thin finish that provides the same protection as a thick finish but it’s extremely light and elastic and allows movement of the body. This is a crucial point in both the sound of the guitar and its ability to age—which is what makes a guitar sound better year after year.
Handmade Bolivian rosewood fretboard
Many high quality guitar builders these days are using ebony on their fret boards which is a quality wood, but it’s very dense in nature. Mr. Zager uses only Bolivian rosewood on his fret boards which is a little more costly, but he does it for two important reasons. Frets have a higher propensity for springing an ebony (due to its denseness) and to the dedicated ear ebony fret boards actually put off a slightly tinnier sound then rosewood which is tonally richer and warmer in character.
Hand laid pearl and abalone inlay
Abalone and pearl inlay is found on only the highest quality guitars. Laid by hand one piece at a time the color and translucence of each piece changes with different amounts of light.
Hand wound Zager strings
Zager custom strings are designed by Mr Zager exclusively for his Guitars. We have players using all brands and gauges of strings on our guitars with excellent results, but these are the strings our customers like the most. Hand wound daily in our shop in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Perfect quality control
When you buy your guitar direct from the builder not only do you save money avoiding the middle man retail price mark up (usually about 50%), but quality control is higher because your guitar isn’t being sent through dealer networks going through multiple hands in the retail stores. When you buy your guitar from Zager it goes straight from Mr. Zagers hands to you with a 100% money back guarantee.
