Sunday 21 July 2013

RP Custom Guitars Roach-o-caster acrylic-bodied guitar complete with entombed cockroach

guitarz.blogspot.com:
I think the photos of this acrylic-bodied "Roach-o-caster" electric guitar from RP Custom Guitars of Los Angeles say it all. We've looked at a number of see-thru acrylic-bodied guitars before, but the big difference with the Roach-o-caster is that it comes with its own entombed insect cast inside the acrylic body. I don't know about you, but I can't say that I'm too comfortable with the morality or ethics of putting dead bodies of living creatures into a musical instrument, even if it is something as frequently reviled as a cockroach (although I am told that they make very nice pets). The question is, was it already dead when it was put in? I certainly hope so. Even then, there's something quite ghoulish about it.

This guitar, currently located in Berlin, is now listed on eBay.de with a But It Now price of €899.

G L Wilson

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6 comments:

  1. andsteve11:31 am

    The German connection is telling here..... Kidding. Germans are nice, it's those Americans who did this! But this is seriously..... odd. It misght scare a child into not touching daddy or mommy's guitars.... Beyond that ity seems needlessly garish. And it's an idea i REALLY hope they don't scale up. My stepdads asp in a bittle was wierd enough thanks. Not to mention the pregana dissected rat in formaldayhyde which was in a case at the other entrance to my high school's main building.

    On the morality of putting animals parts into guitars..... A good acoustic has a bone saddle and nut, abalone inlay as well. Good violin strings are still sheep gut. And if you object to actual animal parts that must mean you dislike faux animal parts, like tortoiseshell pickguards. I kid, but it weird how much f a role dead animal parts play in out lives.

    Just look at how many uses for a dead pig there are.

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  2. battaolo11:38 am

    Animal products in guitar making? Some are not so obvious as that cockroach...
    Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes (pictured at right), which are dissolved in ethyl alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish. Shellac functions as a tough natural primer, sanding sealant, tannin-blocker, odour-blocker, stain, and high-gloss varnish. Shellac was once used in electrical applications as it possesses good insulation qualities and it seals out moisture. Phonograph (gramophone) records were also made of it during the 78-rpm recording era which ended in the west during the 1950s.
    From the time it replaced oil and wax finishes in the 19th century, shellac was one of the dominant wood finishes in the western world until it was largely replaced by nitrocellulose lacquer in the 1920s and 1930s.

    Rabbit-skin glue is used in the production of the bellows of concertinas, and in other smaller, light instruments—prominently in violins. Its supreme advantages are very fast bonding; and easy debonding with hot water if an instrument must be disassembled for internal repairs. It also has very low creep, which is the tendency of some glues to plastically yield under even low but consistent stresses over time. For example, guitar bridges are subject to high lateral stresses that with the wrong glue can lead it to creep forward.

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  3. cool arrow3:50 pm

    When I saw "Roach-O-Caster" the first thing that came to my mind was Mike Edison's bong guitar.

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    Replies
    1. Gavin Lloyd Wilson6:45 pm

      We've looked at that one on here too. It received some quite negative comments on the old commenting system too.

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  4. Rotter6:51 pm

    Maybe I'm in the minority, but I kind of like the look. If they tint the acrylic, it would look like amber.

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  5. Gavin Lloyd Wilson6:59 pm

    I preferred Henry Kaiser's cuttlefish guitar... and they were plastic too. (Google it).

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