What if you were to eliminate the unwieldy parts of a guitar but maintain its resonant sound and the same exact way of playing, in order to make the instrument are more convenient traveling companion? It might sound ridiculous or downright impossible, but that’s exactly what designer Orit Dolev has done with NOMAD, a compact digital instrument with pressure-sensitive frets and flexible rubber strings to replicate the traditional guitar playing experience.

Dolev came up with the idea for NOMAD after taking a long journey through Asia and South America, where she imagined her guitar would offer a handy and powerful way to make new connections across language barriers. She quickly learned that getting around would be frustrating, noting that she couldn’t just shove it into her backpack, and the strings were constantly breaking and getting out of tune.

Designed to encourage mobility, the NOMAD features a wooden neck for a familiar feel in your hands. It pairs up with an app to play a wide variety of sounds, and you can turn the frets on and off to switch between acoustic and electric guitar modes or even to entirely different string instruments, like sitars. Hook it up to headphones so you can play on train rides or in hotels without disturbing anyone, or play through the accompanying portable amp, which doubles as a case cover.

“Technology is constantly changing the way we are living,” says Dolev. “Powerful mobile devices and widespread connectivity are serving as fertile ground for a new generation of nomads. From urban work-from-anywhere lifestyle to digital nomads roaming the globe freely, new cultural movements are rising. We are more mindful of the objects we surround ourselves with, striving to travel light and collect experiences more than things. Own less, explore more.”

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.”