Tuesday 3 May 2011

Hohner Guitaret: when guitar was almost dead (1963)


In 1963, Ernst Zacharias, the musical and engineering genius behind Hohner's many electro-acoustic creations in the 1960s  - including the Clavinet made famous by Stevie Wonder on Superstition - anticipated electric guitar's quick obsolescence and proposed the Guitaret, an amplified lamellophone - aka a thumb piano - to replace it. 

For some reasons, it went out of production two years later, but some of these intriguing instruments survived and are still used by some musicians - the most notorious being Warren Ellis whose sense of coolness when it comes  to music instruments is highly appreciated at Guitarz

You will find here a video demo of the Guitaret that shows how surprisingly playable it is - but something tells me that Jimi Hendrix may not have found it so exciting as a guitar... 


Bertram

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