Six-Necked Guitar: Genius or Folly?

Guitarist has just spent the day with the single most attention-grabbing guitar of all time: the six-necked Hutchins Beast. Our photo schedule is usually taken up with getting gear from A to B (and sometimes via C, D and E) to ensure the sessions run smoothly in order to enable us to keep our ridiculously high photographic standards way up with the very best.

When we unpacked the Beast, we has to prop it up on a sofa we have in our studio and everyone - and we mean everyone - who passed it stopped to just stare. Lot´s of people are into guitars, but just as many are not, but that didn´t seem it dent the Beast´s appeal one iota of a jot.

We´re still trying to work out how to play all six necks at the same time in order to produce our own version of Derek Smalls´ ‘Jazz Odyssey´ but, as you can see from the shot below, we reckon the idea of redesigning some sort of keyboard stand would be a good idea.

Guitarist's Rob Antonello gets to grips with the Beast. "Play Big Bottom!"

To answer our question, the Beast is a work of genius and if you really want your audience to sit up and take notice, strapping one of these one at your next gig will do the job very nicely. Just don´t expect to be able to run around the stage for too long...

The Hutchins Beast will be featured in a future issue of Guitarist.

Enjoy the guitar's appearance on BBC News here.

Visit Hutchins guitars here.

Any fan mail for The Ant (girls...) can be sent here.