During the Maker Faire a few months back, I wrote about the new wave of absurdly inexpensive 3D printers, and fantasized a bit about a not-too-distant time when many of us will be printing our own guitar parts at home.
Create Digital Music — one of the music sites I visit daily — has been all over this topic recently. A few days ago, CDM kingpin Peter Kirn posted this excellent article discussing both the current limitations and eventual promise of this emerging technology. And this week Arvid Jense added this fine post focusing on six digitally printed instrument, including the eye-catching Atom guitar picture here. There are more interesting examples of luthier Olaf Diegel’s work at the Odd Guitars site.
It’s hard to get a take on how good these instruments actually sound. Veteran electric guitar tinkerers know that you can slap strings and a pickup on just about anything, and a good player can make it sound pretty decent, and the plastic compounds used in most current 3D printing aren’t likely to be coveted for their acoustic properties. But it’s hard not to be intrigued by this smooth performance from multi-instrumentalist Dean Marks:
So what would YOU print if you had one of these gizmos?