We’ve all strapped on an electric guitar once or twice that we’ve felt is just a bit too heavy on the shoulder.
But you don’t know heavy until you’ve picked up and plugged into Crafted Workshop’s concrete guitar, a Strat-like six-string with a body formed entirely of, well, yeah – concrete.
How did Crafted’s Johnny Brooke do it?
As he chronicles in the above video, it wasn’t easy.
The first step was to create a silicone mold for casting the concrete. He did this by using a cheap guitar body as the basis for a form, and then surrounding it with cardboard-reinforced aluminum flashing.
He then poured a full gallon of silicone into the form, letting it cure until he had a mold for his guitar body.
From there, he mixed concrete with water until he had something akin to “pancake batter,” and poured it directly into the mold, making sure to vibrate out any bubbles and smooth over the surface.
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Brooke then allowed the concrete to set for several days, after which he removed it from the mold and let it sit for… 10 months.
(Image credit: YouTube/Crafted Workshop)
After that, he essentially went about things as if it were a standard guitar build, albeit with a bit more masonry drilling involved.
Brooke sanded and sealed the body, mounted the components, shaped the headstock to Strat-like perfection and installed a Mad Hatter Terminator System with an HSS pickup configuration.
Last but not least, he drilled in locking strap buttons – a not-insignificant detail given that the “boat anchor of a guitar,” before electronics, weighed in at more than 19 pounds.
Then he strung it up and plugged it in. How did the concrete guitar sound? It rocked! (Brooke’s pun.)
More specifically, Brooke concluded, “I know a lot of you are probably asking how a guitar made of concrete sounds as compared to versus a guitar made of wood. Honestly, I don’t think it sounds any different.”
He continued, “I’m in the camp of people that think tonewood doesn’t really make any difference in electric guitars. It’s really all about the pickups, the amp and, of course, the player.”
Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.
