Guitar Noize - guitar news, crazy guitar designs and cool guitar videos

The Koopa Troopa, based on the kappa, a mythical creature, was conceived in Mario Bros. as an enemy that could only be defeated by hitting the floor underneath it (to stun it) and then going up onto its platform to deal the final blow. via Wikipedia.

Well what a great way to kick off the 2010 Crazy Guitar Designs category! The creator explains that, “The guitar is right handed. I play it so the Koopa is on its back (it’s been stomped). When it is on a guitar stand it’s walking about. Just pretend Mario jumped on the Koopa Troopa and chose to hold it for too long so it’s escaping.”

Hey Koopa Troopa guitar meet the NES Paul.

via Geekologie

If you are looking for a unique guitar design and have a few grand to spare look no further than Peter Malinoski’s Art Guitars, these colourful guitars use transparent finishes to let the natural wood grain of the White Ash body show through, also the pickups and hardware are mounted onto an oiled quilted soft Maple section that makes for a very interesting design. I’m talking about the green guitar known as #48 which also features an Olive fretboard, Bone nut, thru-body strings, Gotoh mini tuners and Malinoski built-in type 2 humbucking pick-up system with bridge transducer. This guitar is currently on sale for $3600, check it out here.

The guitar pictured top, Guitar #20, is an early experimental model that is used in art shows. The neck is thicker than normal because there is no truss rod. It kind of looks like a piece of fruit or a vegetable or something and that headstock is just bizarre!

Not only does Peter showcase his guitars on his website but he also shares with you how to build your own guitar, check out the How To section which is divided into 2 parts, How I make a neck and How I build the rest of the Guitar. There are no trade secrets given away, it is more of an photo overview but still very cool to see the process.

So for more info on these unique and in some cases bizarre guitars check out Peter MalinoskiArt Guitars.

Yes you read that right Gibson have released yet another signature Les Paul, I’ve lost count how many there are now but this one is a little different from the norm. Buckethead has been for a long time, I remember the crazy guitar lessons he used to do for Guitar Player magazine which involved learning how to sound like a Rollercoaster, entertaining and very difficult. Buckethead was also the guitarist in a band called Praxis which somebody introduced me to in college, it may have even been fellow Guitar Noize contributor Paul who gave me the cassette I can’t remember but he will agree this was some of the most impressive, confusing, amazing and hilarious music you will ever hear thanks to the fantastic band lineup which included Bootsy Collins.

Anyway Buckethead churns out albums quicker than you can download them, he has released 28 solo albums since 1992, this year he has released 4! Buckethead is also much more famous these days with a younger generation thanks to Guitar Hero. Now Gibson have released his personal specification guitar which includes arcade button kill switches for his rhythmic muting effects, as well as a coil split push/pull tone pot. The guitar has an oversized chambered body to fit Bucketheads’ large frame fitted with a Mahogany neck which is carved to its own custom profile that runs from .870” at the nut to .955” at the 12th fret, and is designed for the ultimate combination of speed and comfort and has a 27” Scale length which increases neck tension for improved accuracy and precision. The fingerboard is Grade A Ebony with a 12” radius and features 24 frets.

This guitar sounds like a bit of a monster, I would like to see it person. I don’t personally like the kill switches I think they look tacky but then this is for someone who wears a KFC bucket on his head! Check out more info and photos over at Gibson.com.

Buckethead official site

I found this guitar over at the Boutique Guitar Resource website and just had to add it to my Crazy Guitar Designs category, it is certainly one of the most fitting guitars to grace the category recently for a few reasons. Firstly the most obvious design features which give the guitar its name, the African Elephant head which sits atop the headstock carved into the Walnut with Osage Orange tusks and the Indian Elephant trunk which is carved from the top horn of the Poplar body. The other crazy design features are the side fret markers, Elephant Six logo and Blindworm Guitars logo all of which are made from a Meteorite collected in NW Africa. But that is not the only crazy design feature, Dinosoaur bone fragments fill in the upper elephant’s eyes and the Blindworm snake’s eyes. Now that is something you don’t hear a guitar manufacturer say everyday!

For more photos head over to the Elephant Six product page

Bell Custom Guitars’ product range mainly consists of hybrid guitar designs that fuse traditional wooden materials with Plexiglass, many of the guitars in the product range cost upwards of US $2500 which is why Bell Custom Guitars have introduced the SS Series with simplified body contours to lower production costs without losing the look or tone of the higher priced instruments. The guitar shown to the left is the SS-V which features a Maple/Plexi body, vintage humbuckers (although no brand name is mentioned), a Tune-o-matic bridge, a 22 fret Rosewood fingerboard and set neck construction and all for $1300. Also available in the series is the SS-E which is an Explorer shape variation in white with gold hardware and there is a slightly cheaper version by $100 called the SS-ER which features Chrome hardware and a Mahogany/Plexi body.

To see the other ranges available check out Bell Custom Guitars website, Follow them on Twitter or check out some video samples on their YouTube Channel.

This is by far one of the craziest guitars to be added to my Crazy Guitar Designs category, in fact if I didn’t know whose guitar this was I would hazard a guess at Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel, although it is a little nerdy for him he would probably prefer a Scalextric Guitar (hey I’m trademarking that idea right now so don’t even think about it!).

So the gentelman above is Mr Masayoshi Takanaka previously featured on Guitar Noize playing his rather bizarre Surfboard Guitar and seeing as we had a Surfboard guitar yesterday I thought it was time to revisit Masayoshi Takanaka’s bizarre guitar collection. I can’t read Japanese and don’t really trust Google translate enough to know what the real name of this guitar is but it would appear that it is some sort of model railway and it looks incredibly uncomfortable to play, although compared to the Surfboard guitar it is probably a piece of cake!

Here is a close up:

And finally a video of Masayoshi Takanaka playing this guitar

Thank you to Guitar Noize reader Sushi-Guitar for the links and info on Masayoshi Takanaka.