Pretty cool. I’d love to hear a real solo on that sucker.

From the creator, jeff-o:

The Prism is, quite simply, the best laser guitar on the Internet. At least I think so. I hope that you take these instructions and not only make your own, but improve on my design!

I suppose I should clarify what the Prism is: It’s a bit like a guitar with some synthesizer mashed in. It has aspects of a theremin and a laser harp thrown in to boot. In short, it’s not like anything else, and you can use it to make some really neat sounds. Anything from cold Sine and harsh square waves to heavily distorted noise.

At its heart the Prism features a VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator), based around the very shiny XR2206 monolithic function generator. The octave range is selected by blocking one of four laser “strings,” and the pitch is controlled by the position of the musician’s hand on the fretboard. The musician has the option of selecting a sine, triangle or square wave. The sine and triangle waves can be skewed using a separate Skew control.

It also has two other controllable oscillators, one acting as an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) and the other acting as a Sync generator.

I designed the Prism to plug into any regular guitar amp, with no computer required. In fact, there is no programming involved at all in this project! It is just as portable as a regular guitar, and meant to be used at gigs or wherever else an “alternative” instrument is needed!

(via instructables.com)

He’s now taking custom orders, so if you’ve got a some plates that mean something to you, you might want to think about having him build a couple of guitars. He’ll even let you choose your own guitar style.

“Sometimes people say, ‘I live in Texas and I’m moving to Louisiana. Can you make a guitar with these?’” says Geiger, and he transforms them into a piece of visual art that has special meaning to the customer. “Others” he continues, “bring me their license plates and say, ‘Here, I don’t need them, you use them. Make something special.’”

Peter’s work has found its way into two North Carolina art galleries.

(via modernguitars.com)

• Urban’s favorite Fender Telecaster guitar was flown to Shishkov so he could duplicate the neck and measure all electronic components.

• Urban didn’t want small square mirrors, but rather he insisted on the shattered pattern.

• It took about three months to build the guitar, which has about 160 pieces of mirror on it. (But to make that many perfect pieces, Shishkov had to cut about 600 to allow for mistakes. He told me, “It was all cut by hand, but to cut exact curved lines that you have drawn on the glass is like trying to follow the curvy line on the ice when you are ice skating. If you’re slightly off, you’re already wrong. Glass is an unforgiving material.”)

• And, he said, the true enemy in the process was that the weight of the glass is heavy. So he had to use the thinnest but strongest mirrors that money could buy: 1/16 of an inch glass, which is about as thin as a nickel.

• The elliptical sphere surface top has a slight arch to further disperse the reflections of the mirrors. And the light ash wood for the body was milled to reduce the thickness and weight. “When the guitar’s body was ready for the glass work, it weighed under 2 pounds,” Shishkov said. “It was the lightest body I had ever held in my hands.”

• Shishkov told Fender execs, “If anyone will ask for another one like this, tell them it’s $100,000.”

This year, Howe and C.F. Martin & Co. collaborated to create a new model inspired by the early 1980s MC-28, the one Martin that’s been a mainstay in Howe’s guitar rack for decades. The MC-28 is notable for its grand auditorium cutaway body, oval soundhole, 22-fret fingerboard, and superb tone, and Howe suggested it be the starting point for the MC-38 Steve Howe Special Edition.

Retaining the East Indian rosewood of its inspiration, the MC-38 also features a Carpathian spruce top that provides remarkable responsiveness and power. Forward-shifted 5/16-inch scalloped top braces enhance clarity and dynamic range. Style 42 abalone pearl snowflake position markers begin at the fifth fret on the African black ebony fingerboard, with Steve Howe’s signature inlaid in mother of pearl between the 21st and 22nd frets. White Style 45 bridge and endpin are inlaid with abalone pearl dots. A mother of pearl Yin/Yang symbol is nestled on the polished ebony head plate. The low profile 111/16-inch (at the nut) neck with a square slotted headstock and diamond volute is carved from genuine mahogany.

I really like the looks of this guitar. It’s got a touch of Maccaferri to it that I like. Entry deadline is Sept. 30, 2009.

Not an entirely new concept, of course, but I sort of like the headstock.

(via stylecrave.com)

After buying it at Ikea, this butcher block just sat there for 2 years and I wasn’t quite sure when I would use it. I needed an impetus. Then I read somewhere a quote from Brad Paisley. He said “a Tele is nothing more than a cutting board, a baseball bat and strings”. Well that did it for me. I knew what the next Z guitar was going to be, I already had my body wood. I wanted to meet Brad’s challenge. So here it is Brad, your cutting board is ready to play. Show what a real cowboy you are and stop playing your kit guitars and play a real hand made guitar from a real cutting board. It will be the best Tele you have ever played and will ever play. Luckily you do qualify for a Z guitar and so does your friend Keith Urban. You have both been pre-qualified.

Someone get a hold of Brad, tell him I want to talk to him and don’t forget to mention that I’m much nicer in person. I am always looking for players but never pay anyone to play my stuff. PRS has to do that, I don’t…

Check out the full story at Zachary Custom Guitars. There are lots and lots of great pictures.

But while Cigar Aficionado comes from M. Shanken, which also publishes Wine Spectator, Guitar Aficionado is from a more rocking family of magazines. It sprang from Guitar World, part of the magazine company Future US; that magazine, in its June issue, includes the music and lyrics for AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and Cannibal Corpse’s “A Cauldron of Hate.”

Greg Di Benedetto, the publisher of both guitar magazines, said Guitar Aficionado was aimed not at young hard-rock fans, but buyers of $6,000 guitars who would also buy expensive liquor, cars and watches.

Along with coverage of guitars, it includes stories on Aston Martin automobiles and the West Hollywood hotel Sunset Marquis (both are advertisers in the issue, which Mr. Di Benedetto said he did not see as a problem; it was “product placement,” he said.)

I say, why not? Nothing wrong with guitar porn.

The Citron AEG-12 is a 2/12″ thick, mostly holllow Acoustic/Electric 12-string guitar, whose body is Mahogany, with a Sitka Spruce top, one-piece Mahogany neck with Ebony fingerboard. The bridge is Macassar Ebony with a wide custom-compensated bone nut, and strings go through the body. The pickup is a Citron single coil P90 style that I personally wind by hand to my own spec. The Alnico 5 magnets are of a different size than usual. The controls are master volume, blend (between the magnetic pickup and the Piezo under the bridge saddle by EMG), tone for the magnetic pickups, treble/bass cut and boost for the Piezo by EMG, and a mono/stereo switch that gives you the ability to separate the outputs of the magnetic and Piezo circuits (use a guitar amp for the magnetic pickup, and a really clean amp for thePiezo; separate effects, etc). The guitar runs on 18 volts. This guitar sounds huge.

(via Harmony-Central.com)

Robin Rose is a long-established painter specializing in ‘encaustic’ works, but back in 1979 he played guitar and synth for new-wave/punk band Urban Verbs (Warner) and regularly performed at clubs like CBGB here in NYC.

For Robin’s new exhibit, titled “Cypher” (April 7-May 17, American University Museum, Washington DC, info/pics), he changes gears and revisits those roots.

“Ascendant” (below, starting top-right) captures the skyward joy that comes when you catch a good groove. Gearheads, from top to bottom: that’s a 1965 Fender Stratocaster with reverse tremolo, gold guitar cable, Marshall 800 Lead Amp Head, 1960 Slant speaker cabinet.

Ted also makes some interesting wooden picks. I wonder what they sound like?