This Designer Guitar Is Made From a Bent Sheet of Steel

One of the first solid-body electric guitars was designed by Les Paul. The new direction in instrument design was not shown to the public for years by the company that manufactured the guitar. It wasn't the first electric guitar. The Frying Pan, a simple, all-metal, cast aluminum lap steel guitar, was the first commercially available stringed instrument. Allan Gittler's guitar is in the MoMA design collection. It's the minimum a guitar needs to be, but it's very difficult to build. My approach was to build something that could be built in a small shop and still have a new perspective on the craft.

The body of the Cosmo is made from a sheet of steel. The shape of the guitar makes it possible for an innovative approach to the placement of the pickups, which capture the strings' mechanical vibrations and convert them to electrical signals that can then be amplified and played through a loudspeaker. This is the reason why you see multiple guitars in different places. The pickup can be moved around and placed where the player wants it.

The accident was a happy one. It was not the intent. The magnetic nature of the pickups causes them to attach themselves to the metal. You can watch and listen to demos of the changing sound on the internet. It has its own character and sound but it's not weird or strange. It's somewhere between an acoustic and electric guitar because of the added overtones.

The $1,935 (1,860) Orbit is the latest creation by Stummvoll and is a baritone guitar. The long scale of the Orbit gives it a precise and powerful bass response in standard B to B or A to A tunings.

The natural microphonic effect of the Orbit is less pronounced than on Cosmo, which makes it more suited to distorted sounds. Take notice.