Internal Combustion Guitar vibrates your hands, soul

The Woody B Internal Combustion Guitar claims to "vibrate your hands, rattle your bones, and speak to your soul." Exactly how and why it does this is complicated. In essence, it tries to recreate the resonating feel of playing in front of an amp, without having to play in front of amp.

How it works

You'll need two amplifiers to get started: one standard and one small 6-watt model.

Internal combustion guitar

Internal combustion guitar

Touching the strings will send a signal to the small amp, the guitar's "proprietary driver system" then pumps the conditioned signal back inside the body, where its "internal power driver" re-energizes the signal even further. This causes your guitar, strings and fingernails to resonate before the "harmonically enriched" sound hits the second amp.

You can control the strength of the signal with the power throttle knob.

The Internal Combustion Guitar comes in two models: the V8 and V12. Both feature alder and mahogany bodies, Alumitone Humbuckers, bolt-on maple necks and a choice of three finish options and fingerboard materials. The V12 also comes with a Roland Hex MIDI pick-up.

Internal combustion guitar

Internal combustion guitar

Don't just play, ride

In this video demo, Woody Bruce (B) compares the playing experience to that of driving a car: "It's the guitar that you don't just play, you ride." Considering car manufacturers spend an insane amount of cash trying to eliminate bumpy rides, making a guitar vibrate does, in theory, sound like a lost cause.

Woody's other selling point, though, is that recreating the feel of playing live at bedroom-friendly volumes is a lot healthier on the ears. Yours, and your neighbours'. Prices start from $2450.

Tom Porter worked on MusicRadar from its mid-2007 launch date to 2011, covering a range of music and music making topics, across features, gear news, reviews, interviews and more. A regular NAMM-goer back in the day, Tom now resides permanently in Los Angeles, where he's doing rather well at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).