Bad, bad guitars

His playing is fine, but his performance is a bit wooden
His playing is fine, but his performance is a bit wooden

Conventional wisdom dictates that we ought to be encouraging you to spend sizeable wedges of your hard-earned on drool-worthy musical instruments and noise-making gadgets.

That said, sometimes here at MusicRadar we're in the mood to get all lo-fi on your collective ass.

Although there's precious little explanation for it, get ready for conclusive proof that with a plank of wood, rudimentary electronics knowledge and a tiny amount of ingenuity, you can make a very poor sounding 'guitar' indeed.

Behold, The Electric Junk Guitar Workshop.

Of course, some musicians have managed to use this kind of primitive instrument with a little more finesse. Not convinced? Check out Seasick Steve on his one-string Diddley Bo'.

If that's just too lo-fi for you, you may wish to revisit mid-nineties grunge-pop trio The Presidents Of The United States Of America. Two-string 'basitar'? Check. Three-string 'guitbass'? Check. A handful of quality pop nuggets? Damn straight.

(via Synthtopia)

Chris Vinnicombe worked with us here on the MusicRadar team from the site's initial launch way back in 2007, and also contributed to Guitarist magazine as Features Editor until 2014, as well as Total Guitar magazine, amongst others. These days he can be found at Gibson Guitars, where he is editor-in-chief.