Awesome Guitars

Burls Art is a master at making electric guitars from unusual materials. He and his buddy Packard created a pair of guitars using layers of stone so thin that light passes through them. They made wooden frames to provide a structure and coated the stone with clear epoxy resin to make it smooth and add strength. LED backlighting adds a warm glow.

Made famous by Michael Jackson, the Steve Porcaro/John Bettis track Human Nature is filled with rich instrumental layering. Somehow, guitarist Kent Nishimura was able to capture all of that nuance with a single instrument. His solo acoustic guitar performance of the track is simply sublime. Listen with headphones if you can.

Do you or a friend play guitar? What do you do with your broken strings? Stop tossing them in the trash, and wrap them around your desktop mummy instead! Fret12’s String Thing lets you DIY mummy with spent and broken strings. The 8.75″ plastic figure has 139 pre-drilled holes that can fit a variety of string gauges.

Previously, Mattias Krantz built a series of unusual compound guitar picks. In this video, the musician and maker ramps things up. After experimenting with a few smaller multi-picks, he built a spinning rig on a fishing reel, then engineered a set of rings that spins 1000 picks in a circle beneath the guitar strings.

Burls Art is back with another unusual handcrafted guitar. For his latest build, he melted 50 pounds of braided copper wire and tin, then poured the molten metal into Petrobond molds to cast its neck and body. He made a mistake with the first casting, but fortunately, metal is easily recycled, and a do-over was possible. The finished guitar weighs nearly 40 pounds.

A while back, we saw a bass guitar made from LEGO bricks. Musician BERNTH built a LEGO acoustic guitar. Other than the neck, strings, and bridge, his guitar is pure LEGO goodness. Rather than focusing on the build process, his video showcases his new song, Memories. We’re impressed he was able to such a rich sound from its plastic body.

While it’s not as well-made as something by a luthier, Bernth’s homebrew harp guitar has more strings than we’ve ever seen on a string instrument. He cobbled it together from several smaller instruments and tuned them all differently to perform his track I’ll Still Miss You. We’re impressed that he can remember how all of the notes are arranged.

Burls Art is back with another creative guitar build. This time, he made a unique electric guitar with a 3D depth illusion with the same technique used to make some wooden cutting boards. Blake and his friend started by cutting maple and walnut boards into strips of varying thicknesses, then stacked, glued, and cut them into wedges to create the pattern.

Mangazi Music has an awesome way of showing off his guitar-playing skills: the neck of his electric guitar shows lyrics and animations in sync with his performance. It appears that he uses a green screen and motion tracking to superimpose perfectly timed graphics onto the guitar, and the results are impressive.

Most guitar players use their fingertips or a single guitar pick to strum. After “accidentally” 3D printing a triple guitar pick, engineer Mattias Krantz thought it might be fun to play with even more guitar picks at the same time. His compound guitar pick looks like it would a pretty good back-scratcher too.

There are electric guitars, and then there’s this thing. SamuraiGuitarist Steve-san Onotera got his hands on one of the weirdest guitars ever, the MCI B-35 Guitorgan. This late 1970s oddity combined a guitar with an electric organ. The hollow-body instrument packs a large circuit board and plays keyboard sounds using sensors between its frets.

Musician Gabriel Guardian shows off Excalibur, a versatile new musical instrument designed by Looyay that combines an electric bass, a keyboard, and digital drum pads in one. Gabriel’s performance of Killer Queen takes advantage of Excalibur’s unique capabilities, and shows off his own multitasking skills. Now, enjoy a little Billie Jean.

Normally, if you want a guitar and a bass, those are two instruments. Inspired by a weird prototype guitar shown in the Beatles Get Back documentary, Mattias Krantz engineered this unique guitar with a cylindrical neck that rotates beneath its player’s digits, allowing its player to switch instantly between guitar and bass strings. It’s also got a motor drive.

While we have gotten some enjoyment from robots playing music, they’ll never replace human artistry. Engineer Michael Kuzma created his self-playing guitar to see how far he could push electromechanical music-making. Samurai Guitarist sat down with Kuzma to hear about its development and to listen to what the robot is capable of.

Traveling with a guitar can be challenging due to its size and shape. While there are some folding guitars on the market, they still take up a good deal of space. Yuji Shimano shows off a unique electric guitar that folds down small enough to fit into a briefcase. The velvet-lined case also has a built-in speaker and guitar amp, so it’s perfect for practice sessions.

We’ve seen guitars made from unusual materials, but this is the first one we’ve seen that was made from leaves. Gitara Maker was inspired to create the guitar after seeing fallen leaves on a camping trip. He built the guitar’s body by stacking flattened layers of leaves with clear resin, shaping it with a scroll saw, and applying top coats for a shiny finish.