This is video, 3D Printed Guitar Orchestra, highlights the potential of 3D printed instruments. In the video, Dave Marks plays a new arrangement of the 3D Printshow Theme, featuring Olaf Diegel’s ODD 3D Printed guitar. This arrangement features multiple harmonised parts, played with Ebows and a variety of effects to create the sound of guitar orchestra!

This ties in with one of our predictions from 2010 for electronic music making in the next decade:

You’ll design your own instruments – in the last few years, synth “hot rodding” has grown in popularity. You can get Roland TB-303?s with mods, keyboards with customized paint jobs and custom LEDs and end panels in the exotic woods of your choice. This is going to go mainstream in the next decade, with gear manufacturers offering you the option to order your gear completely customized. Advances in manufacturing technology are going to push this further though. In a decade, you’ll design your own instruments, you’ll test them out virtually and they will be “printed” to your specifications.

While this video example is a custom guitar design, some synth designers are already creating synthesizer boards virtually and getting fully populated circuit boards ‘printed’ on demand. And the Livid Elements line now lets you build custom MIDI control surfaces.

We’d like to see examples of 3D printing applied to custom synth gear. If you’ve seen other examples of interesting custom synths, let us know!