A 12-Foot-Tall Electric Guitar You Could Actually Play

What has six strings, frets, plays music… and stands 12 feet high? That would be Chris Riebschlager and the Dimensional Innovations team’s display made for the two-day Boulevardia music festival in Kansas City.

The 500-pound project is comprised of MDF and steel, the body of which was cut out in layers and combined into this gigantic device. The guitar is beautifully painted, and adorned with “strings” made out of 16-gauge wire.

When these strings/wires are touched, a Bare Conductive Touch Board senses this action and sends a message to a Raspberry Pi. The Pi in turn plays a WAV file through an amp located in back of the installation.

Riebschlager experienced some issues with the Pi’s 3.5mm jack, so an HDMI was used as an audio out via an adapter, resulting in “super clean” audio routed to a powered stage monitor.

As there is no input for frets, and the ergonomics of reaching them would make this next to impossible anyway, there are also several arcade buttons on top of the strings that allow participants to pick a chord to play, A through G, both major and minor.

[h/t: New Atlas]