5000 picks/second
June 26, 2024 12:41 AM   Subscribe

Mattias Krantz is a Swedish engineer who modifies instruments mostly by having really dumb or funny ideas, and then being stubborn and persistent enough not to give up where any sensible person would. He has done a number of weird and whacky pianos (including one previously featured on mefi) but has more recently moved on to guitars: a petrol-powered electric, an acoustic strung with Madagascan spider silk, and a spinning necked guitar which he then tries to play. Now his most recent guitar project is all about speed: picking speed, specifically. Here is his concept for a thousand-pick auto-picking guitar, like a hair metal hurdy-gurdy. [MLYT]
posted by Dysk (8 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Here's what an actual musician can do with the spinning necked beast: Spinning Guitar (with a motor) - Rob Scallon
posted by flabdablet at 1:52 AM on June 26 [1 favorite]


a petrol-powered electric hybrid(?) guitar
i ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more [far out]
posted by HearHere at 2:14 AM on June 26


For the lazy, there’s always the Home Depot school of fast guitar picking
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 7:13 AM on June 26


Ridiculous and I love it!
posted by achrise at 7:33 AM on June 26


The thousand-pick guitar is... going somewhere. If he altered the mechanism so that you pressed a lever down to bring a string into the path of the pickwheel then it might kinda be playable.
posted by egypturnash at 8:55 AM on June 26


His creations being kind of terrible is absolutely part of the charm. It's like a little story arc: "why does nobody do this? [much designing, iterating] oh it must be because it's a difficult engineering challenge [more troubleshooting and integration hell, leading to an eventual good design] let's try it [plays the thing] oh no this why nobody does this."
posted by Dysk at 9:27 AM on June 26


The thousand-pick guitar is... going somewhere. If he altered the mechanism so that you pressed a lever down to bring a string into the path of the pickwheel then it might kinda be playable.

Take that line far enough and you end up at the hurdy-gurdy.
posted by flabdablet at 10:56 AM on June 26 [1 favorite]


Take that line even farther, and you end up with an analog synthesizer.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:55 AM on June 27


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