Rhodri Marsden on three of the latest must-have gizmos currently putting the prog in progress…
The Cardboard Guitar
Most people, if they found themselves wondering if you could make a guitar out of cardboard, wouldn’t take it any further than that. But not the people at Signal Snowboards, who decided to upturn decades of tradition and make a Stratocaster out of 100 per cent recycled card. “The fact that it plays at all is remarkable,” says one bemused guitarist during the “making of” video, as he ponders the 250lbs of torque that would normally make a cardboard guitar fold in half. PS: don’t try making one at home. It’ll fold in half.
signalsnowboards.com
Wraps Headphones
The question of how to store earbud headphones has puzzled the finest minds since the dawn of history, or certainly since the 1980s. Why do they tangle themselves up when you’re not looking, regardless of whether they’re in a bag, a pocket or a specially provided pouch? Well, this knotty problem has now been solved by Wraps: the headphones you wear around your wrist. Easy storage! Anti-tangle! Stylish, as long as you’re the kind of person who wants to have a pair of headphones dangling around your wrist! I’m in.
Explorer X1
Long-time readers of this column will have detected my world-weary cynicism about high-end music players pitched at audiophiles. The Explorer XI is slightly different, though, because it looks like a hip flask. Look at its sumptuous curves, providing a “comfortable form factor”! The ‘cap’ of the flask is actually a volume knob! Yes, it plays WAV, AIFF and FLAC files – but more importantly, it looks like a hip flask! Such is the public’s love for this idea that it’s been funded on Indiegogo twice over. They’ll be available very soon.
