“I think it sounds okay for a guitar made out of shelves, a chair, and a baby cot”, says YouTuber tchiksguitars.
There’s probably nothing IKEA won’t sell. They’ve got everything from furniture to food within their four large walls, and you wouldn’t be the first to wonder whether they’ve begun selling electric guitars too (they sell speakers, though), but turns out that’s the one thing they don’t sell. Or rather, they don’t sell ready-made. They do, however, sell the materials you need to build a guitar, as YouTuber Tchiks Guitars has rather kindly demonstrated. Made using materials and accessories found in IKEA’s warehouse section, Tchiks Guitars calls his final product the Vecnå, and even demoed it along with guitar pedals made from IKEA parts too! He calls it “the Ultimate IKEA Hack”, but it’s mostly some ingenious creativity and craftsmanship.
Designer: Tchiks Guitars
The Vecnå (pronounced exactly like the monster from Stranger Things) features a pretty clean, minimalist design with a white body with a cutaway design, wooden knobs, and an f-cut on the top that reveals the hexagonal filler inside the guitar body. The guitar’s bill of materials includes a host of IKEA products along with some standard store-bought components and parts. The neck is repurposed from the top of the STUVA baby crib, while the fretboard uses the MÅLERÅS picture ledge. The body uses veneers and inner filler from the LACK shelf, while the edge has wooden parts from the HENRIKSDAL chair. The knobs are creatively repurposed from the APTILIG chopping board, while the strap buttons use insert-knobs from the KALLAX shelf. Finally, the plate into which the jack is plugged is creatively upcycled from the LILANGEN door handle.
The rest of the guitar uses standard parts, from the frets to the Lace Alumitone pickup (which lights up when powered) and even the keys and strings. Tchiks even created a set of matching pedals made from IKEA products too!
The guitar started out as a joke with the Belgium-based self-taught woodworker going upstairs and telling his wife “I’m gonna make a guitar out of Zoé’s old bed”. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and asked me “why”. That was enough for the 34-year-old proprietor of Tchiks Guitars to actually set out to see if an IKEA guitar was actually feasible. Turns out, it was more than just that. The guitar looks incredibly classy, with a Scandinavian design touch… and sounds rather wonderful too. I just wish he would ditch the hexagonal paper filler material and make the guitar a semi-acoustic one with a proper inner acoustic chamber!
You can see the process images below, and even get a small taste test of the guitar in action right at the end of this article!
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