The Smash Guitar

When I was 14 years old I went to see Hendrix play at the Xavier University Field House.  The audience had to sit through one of those awful 1970's light shows where some pseudo artiste spills oil on a pane of glass, manuevers the puddle and projects the whole mess on the stage wall using an airport runway light using colored gels.

Finally Hendrix, Mitchell and Redding came on and did a 90 minute set.  Hendrix bashed his upside-down Jazzmaster (which he bought that day in Cincinnati at Hughes Music Store) into one of his Marshall amps.  But he didn't do much damage.

Later that year I went to see Herman's Hermits play at Cincinnati's Music Hall. 

The warm-up band was The Who. Go figure!  At the end of the show Townsend butted his guitar into a rented Fender Dual Showman a couple of times ripping the grill cloth.. 

Agile Ric Copy

The guitar appeared to be a Rickenbacker 360, however the plastic logo was missing from the headstock leading me to believe either the nameplate was damaged from a prior bashing or perhaps it was a copy guitar.

Pete did not do too much damage that afternoon. I suppose he was saving his guitar to ruin in a larger city.

These were the days when I was  playing in a garage band.  There was another band in my town that were our rivals. Their bass player came from a well-off family. This band had more toys than we did. They owned nice lighting system, a Shure Vocalmaster P.A. and strobe lights.

My band had some colored floodlights mounted on a 8 foot 2" X 8' board with a rheostat, a pieced together P.A. with Electo Voice speakers and no strobe light.  The guy that followed us around would flip the light switch off and on for a pseudo strobe effect

The rich bass player with our rivals band purchased a brand new Hofner bass and a new a Fender Bassman with the large cabinet.  At the end of the night this guy would put the Hofner down and pick up an inexpensive Teisco bass guitar.  When the band was near the end of  their psychedelic song this guy smashed the Teisco to bits, threw the pieces on the ground and walked away.  What a drama queen!

Well we can't afford to do that anymore.

If you've recently checked your local Vintage guitar store, those old Harmonys, Kays, Teiscos, Truetones, Cameos, Casinos and others are selling for $200 to $500.




So someone in the guitar biz noticed a need to be fullfilled and has come up with an answer for you Townsend and Hendrix wanna-be's.

A Japanese company called K’s Japan has come up with an electric guitar that’s just made to get destroyed. You can play it through all your sets and at the end of the night in a fevered frenzy, smash the thing to bits.

Impress audiences with your powerful destructiveness and emphasize your musical passion. Chicks will dig you.

The guitar is aptly named The SMASH. You can order this Telecaster style instrument it in black or white.

The Smash has a "Special Empty Body" so it's light and easy to hurl and creates a beautiful smashing sound on impact.  Styled like a Telecaster, the Smash has a maple neck, a rosewood fretboard, dual pickups, and electronics concentrated in the center of the body to minimize dangerous trajectories.






"The guitar will smash with less power than using a normal guitar," the manufacturer declares, ironically adding, "It is not created for the purpose of smashing."  Yeah right! I suppose the lawyers wrote that, since it's advertised intended purpose is to smash the thing.

However make sure your roadie picks up all the pieces because this baby is recyclable. Yep!  You send the smashed instrument back to K's and they reassemble it for you. The the guitar sells for a mere 60 bucks.

The manufacturer claims every part of the instrument is recyclable.

The guitar weighs a mere 2.5 kilograms. Once K's reassembles the guitar they claim it will be given to charity in the Philipines or for a fee they will assemble it and send it back to you to destroy during another set.