Done with console guitar games and ready for the real thing? Good for you. If you don’t wish to abandon your gaming roots completely, you should steer clear of the usual brands and wax your string-bending prowess with something like this: a Famicom Guitar. Take that, Les Paul and Fender.
Why pay for a guitar that looks bad-ass when you can make yourself one that’s styled like it’s straight out of a kid’s wet dream back in 1985? Sure, it’s not a real Famicom on the body (that will probably sound disastrous), but it definitely looks close, doesn’t it?
I’m not sure if it’s a kit of some sort available in Japan (I don’t think it is, though I can’t read Japanese, so I’m not sure), but it’s a very cleanly-built instrument. The dimensions aren’t quite the same as an actual Famicom (the original size just won’t work as a guitar), but the whole thing looks picture perfect.
If you can understand Japanese text or are willing to suffer through one of those automated translations (seriously, those things are horrible), the site below details the materials and instructions for building the Famicom Guitar, along with plenty of photos of the woodworking involved. Most of the body is painted, although the controllers appear to use printed-out decals.
How does it sound? I don’t think anyone cares. We all just want one (I’d rock it even if it sounded like tin cans). You can also see plenty of other DIY guitars on the same site if you check out the homepage.
[Famicom Guitar via Albotas]