If you can build a foosball table, a desk or an entire full-scale chapel out of cardboard, perhaps it’s not too surprising that this notoriously flimsy material can form the basis of a working Fender Stratocaster guitar. Signal Snowboards previously teamed up with Ernest Packaging to create a corrugated cardboard surfboard, and now they’ve built a custom Strat that even impressed the expert guitar techs at Fender.
The way the cardboard is assembled and shaped makes it surprisingly structurally sound, which is a good thing considering the strings put about 250 pounds of torque on the neck of the guitar. Once it was all glued together, Signal took it to Fender and had their techs cut it into shape and add three 50s single coil pickups, a Stat scratch plate and other Fender components. When held up to light, the body and neck of the corrugated Fender is nearly see-through.
Check out this video to watch the entire building process and listen to the cardboard Fender in action. “The fact that it plays at all is kid of remarkable, honestly,” says Dennis Galuszka, Fender Master Builder. “It’s cardboard.”
