Hemp fibers as a guitar building material
Will guitars soon be made of hemp fibers? Industrial designer Jakob Frank, a graduate of the Faculty of Design at Pforzheim University, experimented with the natural fiber for his final thesis and designed a new type of guitar.
The corpus of the prototype is made from a fiber mixture consisting exclusively of hemp fibers and water. Evaporation makes the material as strong as hardwood, but an extreme shrinkage process sets in during drying. This creates deformations that make it difficult to produce concave surfaces and bodies. Frank repeatedly adapted the silhouette of the guitar accordingly.
The instrument has a specific sound and, according to the Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences, is designed to compete with conventional guitars.
Frank wants to further perfect the prototype and produce a revised version of the guitar. Together with business experts, the industrial designer is also examining the commercial viability of the concept. Due to its novel and unconventional design, the "canna guitar" could be of particular interest to guitar lovers, collectors and experimental players.
