Behold: a guitar shaped like an 8-bit Nintendo Famicom (NES) console with a pair of controllers! Aside from a few alterations, the body is nearly to scale with the game machine.
Let’s take a look to see how the designer going by the name Mitsumatsu made this monster musical machine.
Realizing that this was more of a novelty guitar, Mitsumatsu didn’t worry too much about the wood used. About 30 dollars’ worth of poplar and lauan wood was gathered for this project.
The basic body was shaped from the pieces of poplar. And some decals were printed out matching the old Famicom’s autumn foliage color scheme.
The body had the Famicom features carved into it along with a section for the neck to attach.
Two controllers were prepared. One was made by attaching a piece of katsura wood to a premade guitar neck. Another controller and sets of buttons were cut out.
With the parts sculpted it was time to sand, seal, and paint. Getting the colors right was the most important step.
When everything was dried it was time to add the decals.
After a long period of wet sanding and polishing to give it that brand new plastic shine, the pickups, tuners, etc. were installed.
While screwing everything together disaster struck. Mitsumatsu had cut out the base of the Famicom (back of the guitar body) upside down. After laughing for “12 minutes and 35 seconds” they decided it was too late to go back and pushed on with the mistake.
Finally the neck and extra controller were added. The guitar was stringed up and tuned…
It worked! The Family Comguitar is complete and functional! Here’s how it matches up to a guitar-shaped guitar and a real Family Computer. Altogether it cost 8,350 yen (US$88) to make.
This was just a summary of the construction. You can see all the details about this guitar plus others they made on Mitsumatsu’s website.
Before everyone starts flooding Mitsumatsu with requests to buy this one-of-a-kind instrument, it was already sold off for an undisclosed amount. The reported buyers were Japanese 8-bit musicians, YMCK.
If anyone was going to buy it, I’m glad it was them.
Source: M’s Air Haikyo via Anakurosense (Japanese)
YMCK: Official Site
Video: siumeister