Awesome Guitars

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.

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.

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.

Musician and luthier Shane Speal is known for making guitars out of cigar boxes. But his penchant for creating unusual musical instruments goes far beyond that. In this short video, he shows off some of his crazy builds, including guitars made from a boat oar, copper pipes, and a shovel. The exit sign electric guitar is our favorite.

Burls Art has made a name for himself by creating guitars out of unusual materials. This time, he laminated 700 sheets of newspaper to form a wood-like block. The result is an incredibly cool instrument with a vintage look, visible paper layers along its edge and neck, and historical newspaper headlines on its front and back.

Since The Home Depot sells lumber, you’d think it would be relatively easy to piece together a guitar from stuff they sell. But, as BeBeau Builds shows us, the wood could be better, and you can’t find things like strings and tuning pegs there. Still, he and his buddy gave it the old college try and built a fully functional acoustic guitar with nails for frets.

We’ve seen guitars with lots of strings. This is the first time we’ve heard one where some strings are rubber bands. You might think they wouldn’t produce a very satisfying sound, but they play surprisingly well in the hands of a guitarist as talented as Bernth. It helps that he kept the original metal strings in the middle of his Ibanez acoustic guitar.

Thanks to modern technology, low-voltage, electronically-controlled lighting can be integrated into all kinds of things. Immerge Interactive shows off a project they did where they embedded colorful LED illumination into a Fender Telecaster guitar. It works with their software to display patterns in sync with the music.

Radiohead is one of our favorite bands of all time. While some of their music can be a bit esoteric, they’ve produced an equal number of sharp and memorable guitar-driven melodies. Guitarist Bloxsy claims he’s no Radiohead expert, but we think he sells himself short with this excellent medley of classic riffs.

T-Nu from the wonderfully-named Craftastrophe loves to build tiny things. In this video, you’ll see how he made a mini version of a 1958 Gibson Explorer electric guitar with every little detail. It even has real metal strings and teensy fretboards. They built the whole thing by hand and without any 3D-printed parts.

Maker Tim Sway has built a couple of “0% wood” instruments in the past, including an acrylic bass guitar, and another made from Corian. This time, he decided to build something that’s much more reliant on the aural properties of its construction – an acoustic guitar. As you’ll see, it was a very challenging and frustrating project.

Burls Art creates guitars from unusual materials. This time, he made an lap steel guitar from aluminum $1 coins that were once good for a discount at RadioShack. He started by making a sand mold, melted the coins to cast its body, then anodized it in red. We were hoping he would have embedded some unmelted coins though.

An electric guitar sends vibrations to an external, electrically-powered amplifier. Instrument hacker Mattias Krantz thought it would be a good idea to build one that runs on gasoline instead. Rather than install the tiny 4-stroke engine into the amp cabinet, he built the rig into the guitar itself, which looks so much cooler.

Guitar strings are usually made from nylon or metal wire. Musician Bernth wanted to hear what an acoustic guitar might sound like when its strings are replaced with rubber bands. The low-frequencies sound more like a bass than a guitar, but they worked well enough that he recorded a song called Elasticity with them.

You can find all sorts of great household items and furniture at IKEA. But if you ignore the assembly instructions and make up your own, it’s possible to hack together stuff that’s not in their catalog. Tchiks guitars shows us how he used wood from various things from IKEA and turned them into a great-sounding electric guitar.

Burls Art knows a thing or two about making guitars. He created this one by melting 1000 aluminum cans, and casting the metal to form the neck and body of the instrument. First, he had to build a furnace and equipment to work with the molten metal. We love how he could melt it down and start again when it didn’t work right.