This Handmade Guitar Features an Infinity Mirror

I have a confession to make: when I was young, I had no intention of working with technology; I wanted to be a luthier. I’m an almost impressively poor guitarist, but I have always had a deep admiration for the craftsmanship that goes into building guitars. Even the simplest of guitars are wonders of woodworking skill that look absolutely beautiful before you even hear how they sound. Burls Art is a YouTuber who builds artistic guitars that are anything but simple. In his newest video, Burls Art demonstrates how he crafted a gorgeous handmade guitar that features an infinity mirror built into the body.

All the guitars showcased on the Burls Art YouTube channel are unusual, from a variety of styles constructed out of colored pencils to a carbon fiber acoustic to an electric guitar made from an old shovel. Burls Art even built a guitar body using salt, which we assume is a favorite of deer musicians. This, however, seems to be the first guitar that incorporates electronics other than the standard pickups. An infinity mirror is an effect creating by sandwiching one or more light sources between two mirrors, at least one of which is a one-way mirror. This causes the light to reflect back and forth endlessly, which is trippy to look at.

In this case, the entire body of the guitar is an infinity mirror. The construction process started off in a fairly standard manner, with Burls Art marking off the shape of the double-cutaway body on a chunk of wood. That was then cut out with a band saw and then holes were drilled for mounting the neck. After that, things took an unusual turn. Burls Art used the band saw again to remove most of the wood from the interior of the body, leaving behind just an outer perimeter about an inch and half thick. Two acrylic plates were then covered in one-way mirror film and attached to both sides of the wood body, with a string of LEDs inside.

The entire guitar, aside from the hardware and top acrylic plate, was then painted a cool spacey silver color. When the LEDs are turned on, the infinity mirror effect results in a futuristic vibe. The sound is similar to what you’d get from a typical semi-hollow body guitar, but with a bit less warmth and resonance as a consequence of the acrylic plates in place of wood. Still, if Jack White can get away with playing entirely plastic guitars, we think this infinity mirror guitar should work just fine.