Ever Seen an Electric Guitar Made of 50lbs of Salt?
Just when you thought Burls Art's designs couldn't get any wackier.
YouTuber Burls Art has made a name for himself creating some of the most ambitious guitar designs we've ever seen, from the colored pencil Strat - the video of which now boasts an amazing 31 million YouTube views - to an electric guitar constructed entirely of paper.
Now he's taken it to another level - which we recognize is a tough feat for such a creator - in what he's calling his most bizarre idea yet.
For his latest project, the innovative luthier obtained 50lbs of pink Himalayan salt and used it to create a fully functional electric guitar.
In the making-of video above, Burls Art shows the salt being cut and topped with a layer of epoxy, before being moulded into a Telecaster-style shape.
As you'd expect, the material presented numerous construction problems, including finish and pressure cracking while drilling the string ferrule holes. The YouTuber even abandoned installing a neck pickup for fear of further damage, turning the guitar into more of an Esquire-style than a Telecaster-style.
The guitar is quite the monster, too, weighing in at 22 1/2lbs, so you'd better get in shape before sporting this one on stage.
To demonstrate the axe's full functionality, Burls finishes the clip with a tasty looped fingerstyle performance through a Yamaha THR10.
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Sam was Staff Writer at GuitarWorld.com from 2019 to 2023, and also created content for Total Guitar, Guitarist and Guitar Player. He has well over 15 years of guitar playing under his belt, as well as a degree in Music Technology (Mixing and Mastering). He's a metalhead through and through, but has a thorough appreciation for all genres of music. In his spare time, Sam creates point-of-view guitar lesson videos on YouTube under the name Sightline Guitar.
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