A Copper Guitar Weighing 18 Kilos: Burls Art in Action Again
YouTuber and now experienced guitar maker with the nickname Burls Art is once again making his presence known, this time with a unique Telecaster that gives new meaning to the term “heavy metal”. After instruments made of newspapers, cans, skateboards, pencils and other unconventional materials for guitars, he presented a guitar for which he used cut copper wires in combination with tin. The result is the compact Steampunk Bronze – with its final weight of 18 kilos.
The whole process began with producing the copper neck using a Petrobond sand casting mould. The first prototype, however, did not have the necessary rigidity, as copper is a relatively soft metal, so a large lump of tin added to the copper base in the melting furnace came into play, thus achieving greater mechanical durability. The body is cast from a similar compound, and received a standard hardtail bridge, two Custom Lace Horsepower humbuckers and matching controls. Due to the weight, no strap buttons are installed in the guitar's body.
Even so, Burls Art found that playing this Telecaster sitting down was not a pleasant experience: “Honestly, playing it, it feels like it starts to cut the circulation on my leg after a couple of minutes. It’s kind of a shock to the mind because visually it is such a small guitar,” muses its creator, who witnessed a guitar stand collapse under its weight. “Although it does function like a normal guitar – and if it weren’t for the weight I’d actually say it plays pretty well – it’s probably the first and last of its kind. But it does look cool so I’ll give it that.”
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