Yeah, I scratched my head too . . . but you can’t take your eyes off it. The Extraterrestrial Guitar Thing came from the mind of Swedish designer and experimental instrument builder Love Hultén, and it’s really more of synthesizer rather than guitar. There are no strings, but you have a touch sensitive neck, and the ray gun thingie with metallic rings operates as a pitch or modulation handle.
But There’s More
As if that wasn’t intriguing enough, the black blob in the circle is a ferrofluid display that reacts to sound in real time. Ferrofluid is a type of fluid that contains suspended micro particles of iron, magnetite, or cobalt in a solvent.
It’s actually commonly found in your studio. Due to its high thermal conductivity and heat transfer properties, ferrofluids helps cool your loudspeakers voice coils, but you’ll also find it as lubricant in your hard drives.
Here it’s more of a novelty, but it’s still pretty cool, and you won’t find it on another instrument (at least, not yet).
No Need For An Amp
The Extraterrestrial Guitar Thing houses an Arturia Microfreak synthesizer complete with loudspeaker, so you can thrill your friends at any party.
As far as controls, “The body is equipped with rotary knobs, toggle switches, and buttons arranged in a grid-like manner. These controls allow players to manipulate parameters such as pitch, filter, volume, attack, sustain, and glide. The layout recalls vintage synthesizers while offering modern flexibility. Rather than following the conventions of guitar frets or piano keys, the interface prioritizes tactile exploration and hands-on sound shaping,” according to an article about it on Interestingengineering.com.
Here’s the thing, the device is a one-off built for a private client, so you can’t buy one even if you wanted to. It sure is cool to look at though, and maybe that control rod idea will catch on!
