Awesome Musical Instruments

With enough skill and epoxy resin, you can make a guitar out of just about anything. Maker Noe Hervas shows off a colorful electric guitar he built by cutting a custom wood mold, filling it with stacks of guitar picks bathed in clear resin. At least he saved one pick to play it with.

Last time we checked in with Davie504, he was performing on a bass guitar with a single string. At the end of that video, he promised he’d play a 69-string bass, but we weren’t sure if he was serious. Well, not only did he come through on his promise, he broke a world’s record for the most strings on a bass.

The kalimba is a small musical instrument that’s played by thumping your fingers on its springy metal keys. But the same idea can be DIYed using a bunch of popsicle sticks, screwed in place at varying lengths along a board. Mr. Mash shows off his homemade instrument, along with an abridged version of his how-to video.

The Mavis is a build-it-yourself analog synth kit that embodies the spirit of Moog. The compact instrument has a 24-point patch bay, an analog oscillator, a voltage-controlled filter, a 4-stage envelope generator, and a sample-and-hold circuit. It easily integrates with any Moog semi-modular or Eurorack system too.

Masters of Craft walks us through the painstaking process of restoring a 19th-century violin that came to them in a distressed and unplayable condition. The vintage Stradavari replica required heaping helpings of TLC, but the result is impressive.

Fans of 1980s metal might recognize some of the crazy multi-necked guitars in this video by Rob Scallon. They’re part of Michael Angelo Batio’s extensive guitar collection. Batio is known as the fastest guitar player of the era, and Rob is like a kid in a candy store when gets hands-on with some of these wild instruments.

Rob Scallon sat down with fellow musician Salieu Suso to learn about an instrument rarely seen here in the States. The Kora is a traditional Gambian instrument with 21 strings and a resonating chamber made from a gourd. It produces a soft and calming sound, and clearly influenced the design of later string instruments.

Musician and inventor Nicolas Bras is known for his weird homebrew musical instruments. He recently put a band together to perform live on these unusual music makers. For his “Trash Orchestra,” Nicolas was joined by fellow musicians Vinz Vonlanthen, Nicolas Strazzini, Andrei Pervikov, and Máté Drippey.

We’ve always been wowed by the craft of Kumiko. Inspired by the elegant Japanese latticework, Make With Miles created a unique electric guitar with a body that incorporates the technique. After cutting and assembling the wood, he filled the openings with tinted epoxy for contrast. He also made a matching amp.

Musician and inventor Nicolas Bras shows off another one of his unusual musical instruments. By grafting together multiple pieces of PVC pipe, he created a wind instrument unlike any we’ve heard before. The addition of a loop pedal turned his improv performance into an EDM track.

We’ve heard how partially-filled drinking glasses can be used as musical instruments before, and musician Fin Draper knows how to get the most out of them. Listen up as he creates a groovy beat with a beer bottle, water glass, beer glass, three tumblers, and a rocks glass, accompanied by a bass drum.

At NYC’s MoMA, composer Dorit Chrysler used the movements of iconic Calder mobiles to control Theremins, musical instruments played without physical contact. As the metal sculptures moved, they produced sounds by affecting the electromagnetic fields of the Theremins, resulting in a musical “collaboration.”

Want a grand piano for your house, but don’t have enough room for one? Why not 3D print a mini version? Breaks’n’Makes shows off a tiny grand piano model he built based on a design from Mechanistic. It’s fully functional, with keys, hammers, and strings, and it even tiny working casters that it rolls on.

Musician Rob Scallon has been working on a series of DIY instruments that can be assembled quickly and inexpensively. For this build, he and his buddy Simon created a makeshift piano in less than a day, using a bunch of spare guitar strings, tuning pegs, door stoppers, and other bits and pieces from the Home Depot.

This insane three-headed instrument is the brainchild of musician Steve Vai and guitar-maker Ibanez. It combines a fretless 12-string neck, a half-fretless bass neck, a seven-string guitar neck, plus an electric harp at its base. This beautiful beast was designed by Moti Kashiuchi and crafted by Kazuya Kuroki of Ibanez Japan.

Musician Rob Scallon was searching around for interesting guitars and accessories, and came across this oddity from Chibson called the Whammy Davis Jr. It replaces a whammy bar with a 4-foot coil of metal that produces a warbled sound. It’s not something that belongs on every song, but it is a cool analog gimmick.

We never heard of a portative organ before, but it’s a type of small pipe organ that uses a bellows to push wind through its pipes. Nippocast spent a year building such an instrument from scratch and boiled down his efforts into this 20-minute time-lapse video. You can hear how the finished organ sounds here.

Inventor and musician Nicolas Bras continues to expand his collection of unconventional musical instruments with a gizmo that looks like a guitar had a chunk taken out of it. Nic assembled a pair of bass guitar pickups and eight lengths of piano wire on a wooden block, resulting in a wonderfully weird and unique sound.

Inspired by the machines of Wintergatan, Daniel de Bruin, and Matthias Wandel, fellow maker Ivan Miranda created his own musical marble machine. He designed and built it from scratch using 3D printed parts, a resin drum, and an aluminum frame. The ball bearings make notes by falling onto a MIDI controller keypad.

A hurdy-gurdy is a musical instrument that makes sounds by rubbing a spinning bow against its strings. Vinheteiro made a low-budget approximation of the instrument by combining a fishing reel with an acoustic guitar. His version only has one string, and the sound it produces is like a kind of traditional Asian music.

Vineteiro follows up on his comparison of inexpensive vs. fancy-pants pianos with another round of very different musical instruments. After the jump from the $40 hunk of junk to the $600 used upright, the shades of grey become fuzzier and fuzzier to our untrained ears.

There’s a musical instrument called a steel guitar, but it’s named for its metal slide, and not the material it’s made from. But metalsmith Paul Pinto decided to actually make a guitar out of the weighty metal. Watch as he cuts, welds, forges, and grinds a steel plate into a beautiful chrome-plated instrument. Now how does it sound?

This unique electric guitar features swappable pickup and control modules, letting musicians change the sound of their instruments on the fly. The handmade guitar is made from walnut, ash, or cherry wood, and comes bundled with two pickup modules and a standard control module. Additional pickups go for $199 each.