cardboard electric guitar

This is pretty cool – a cardboard company and Fender Guitars got together to make a one-off cardboard guitar. And sure, it’s promotional video, but it’s an cool looking end product.

"Cardboard Guitar Stratocaster Fender : Cardboard Chaos" (Watch on YouTube)

I love how you can see through so much of it:

They don’t tell you much about engineering for strength, but I have some thoughts, because where you can’t see through it tells you a lot about how they made it work. You can clearly see the truss rod, common to all metal-strung guitars. But there’s also a keel added in back:

And the one through-shot of the head shows how – surprisingly – the tuning knobs may have a backplate, but they do not seem to be attached to the neck bracing. That’s just the cardboard.

I’m more curious about the sudden change in the finish between shots, right after they’ve sanded the body into the shape they want. They put a lot of something into it, and I really doubt that’s just lacquer.

Before

After

Hardeners, maybe? I don’t know. But I don’t see how it keeps the edges of its form across plays without some sort of chemical additive. And I’m really curious about the string bending being done by some of the players – doing that against that texture looks really messy, but they’ve got it going – is it just fret pressure and nothing on the board, or is the top layer filled with something transparent?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m for it. I think it’s Neat, with a capital N. Frankly, I think it’s gorgeous, and I can only imagine how little it weighs. Getting a bass built like that might be amazing, if the cardboard has been made durable enough. I’m just wanting more details on what it took to make it work.

(h/t to George P. Burdell III on Facebook for the link)

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pick your conspiracy theory

So which blame-shifting conspiracy do you think the GOP base will settle upon after Trump? The two contenders:

• "Bitch set us up" - wherein the Clintons got Mr. Trump to run in order to destroy the party

and

• "We wuz robbed" - wherein Mr. Trump had a 'rigged' election stolen from him

Note neither of these accept any responsibility at all for his overwhelming voter victory in the primaries, so that's the most important requirement met. Right now, "Bitch set us up" appears to be in the lead, I think in part since it has a convenient and already-well-hated woman to blame. But does it have staying power?