World's First Hollow-Body Concrete Guitar Weighs 20 Pounds and Plays Like a Dream - Yanko Design

"Sure, concrete guitars do exist in the novelty space (they aren't a new idea), but they're typically solid slabs that weigh somewhere between 80 and 90 pounds, which makes them less "playable instrument" and more "sculptural middle finger to ergonomics." What these two pulled off is different. They engineered a semi-hollow body with 3/8 inch concrete walls, kept the whole thing under 20 pounds (19.8 to be exact), and somehow nailed the intonation without any adjustments."

"But here's where the materials science gets interesting. They used a self-leveling concrete mix with plasticizers for viscosity control, then reinforced the whole structure with glass fiber scrim and PVA fibers. The fibers do the heavy lifting here, literally holding the thin concrete together and preventing the kind of catastrophic cracking you'd expect from something this delicate. The embedded wood components stay in the final build, which adds another layer of structural integrity."

A semi-hollow electric guitar was constructed with 3/8-inch concrete walls and kept under 20 pounds (19.8 lbs) while maintaining accurate intonation without adjustable corrections. The build used a self-leveling concrete mix with plasticizers for viscosity control, reinforced by glass fiber scrim and PVA fibers to prevent cracking and provide tensile strength. Embedded wood components remained to improve structural integrity. Precision tooling included a CNC-machined melamine base, 3D-printed F-holes, and foam knockouts for pickup cavities and the hollow chamber to ensure exact neck pocket registration. The concrete cures rapidly—about 50% strength in two days and over 90% by day seven—requiring exact execution.

Read at Yanko Design - Modern Industrial Design News