Instruments of Torture...

My Old Guitar, it HATES me apparently...

Due to tripping over it one too many times in the last few months, I have been trying to re-learn to play my old guitar this week. Three blisters and a sore throat form screaming in anger at my now useless fingers, brings me to think of the miniature band instruments I made for the puppets.

The first guitar I made was for Mikes puppet, he also has a telecaster shaped guitar similar to mine - but his is an actual Fender, not a knock off cheap one like I have! The shape is fairly easy to recognize and after searching through many toy stores looking for suitable axes, I came to the conclusion I was going to have to make them. Nothing was the correct scale or dimension for the puppets arms, and alot of kids toys are quite heavy which would have caused plenty of problems with performing.

Axe wielding with round safety corners.

I decided that thick balsa wood was going to be my best bet - easy to work with, lightweight and best of all - quite cheap. I took a photo of my guitar head on, and traced the outline of it in Adobe Illustrator. I then measured the distance of the gap between the puppets arms and scaled the outline drawing to that size. All I had to do then was printout the outline, cut and stick it onto the balsa wood as a template to work too.

Three heads are better than one! :D

Once I had the basic wooden guitar shape, I got some coloured card and stuck brown fret boards onto the guitar necks along with some more card for a scratchplate on each instrument. As a finishing touch I used some tin foil glued on for pickups and knobs, I left off strings on purpose as I felt they would get in the way when we played them. On my travels I saw some silver beads in a craft shop and thought they would make excellent machine head tuning pegs.  I simply nailed them on using the pre-drilled holes in the beads and I really like the finished result. Martin's bass guitar was made in exactly the same way, but I sprayed his the correct colour to match his real guitar.

For the drum kit, I was preparing to have to build the whole thing myself. In an uncharacteristic stroke of luck, I found a childrens drum kit on Ebay that couldn't have been any more perfect if I'd tried!

Sometimes, it just does itself. Thank You Lebao!

All that I needed to do was add some black card to hide the performers arm, and then add the logo on the bass drum. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy!
The saxophone was another easy fix. I found a childs toy and hacked about an inch and a half out of the middle, re-glued and sprayed it all gold. All the instruments were done, and the first time they all appear properly is in our Lookin For a Fox video.

Banjo-tastic. Good for Irish and hillbilly in equal measure.

The banjo that John and Tim's puppet use was another build from a plaster filler pot lid on a balsa wood backing. Once the silver paint had dried I cut a circle of white out of an old polystyrene tile I had left from the kitchen set and stuck it on as the skin.

The silver parts and the head stock tuning pegs are the same technique as the guitars, so all my musical instrument have the same 'house style' look to them.

It appears that John also wants his puppet to play the fiddle, as he does in the real band.
We have a few recordings of him 'fiddling' that we want to make into videos... So it looks like I'm gonna have to make a fiddle next!!

John & John.. Soon to be fiddling on a channel near you!