“I think it sounds okay for a guitar made out of bookshelves, a chair and a baby bassinet,” says YouTuber tchiksguitars.
There’s probably nothing that IKEA won’t sell. They’ve got everything from furniture to food within their four big walls, and you wouldn’t be the first to wonder if they’ve started selling electric guitars too (they do sell speakers, though), but it turns out that’s the only thing you don’t sell. Or rather they don’t sell ready. However, they do sell the materials you need to build a guitar, as YouTuber Tchiks Guitars has kindly shown. Made with materials and accessories found in IKEA’s warehouse, Tchiks Guitars calls their final product Vecnå, and even presented it with guitar pedals made from IKEA parts as well! He calls it “the ultimate IKEA Hack,” but it’s mostly clever creativity and craftsmanship.
Designer: Tchiks Guitars
The Vecnå (pronounced just like the monster from Stranger Things) features a fairly clean, minimalist design with a cut-out white body, wooden knobs, and an f-cut on the top that reveals the hexagonal filler inside the guitar body. The guitar’s materials list includes a number of IKEA products along with some standard store-bought components and parts. The neck has been repurposed from the STUVA cradle top, while the fingerboard uses the MÅLERÅS fretboard. The body uses veneer and inner padding from the LACK shelf, while the edge has wooden parts from the HENRIKSDAL chair. The knobs are creatively redesigned from the APTILIG cutting board, while the strap buttons use insert knobs from the KALLAX shelf. Finally, the plate to which the jack is attached is creatively recycled 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 frets and strings. Tchiks even created a set of matching pedals from IKEA products!
The guitar started as a joke with the Belgium-based self-taught carpenter walking up the stairs and telling his wife “I’m going to make a guitar out of Zoé’s old bed.” She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and asked me “why”. That was enough for the 34-year-old owner of Tchiks Guitars to really start to see if an IKEA guitar was actually possible. It turned out to be more than that. The guitar looks incredibly classy, with a Scandinavian design twist… and sounds rather great too. If only he would ditch the hex paper filler and make the guitar semi-acoustic with a proper internal acoustic chamber!
You can see pictures of the process below and even get a little taste test of the guitar in action right at the end of this article!
