Magnetically Levitated Guitar: When the Limits of Physics Are Redefined

In the world of online creators, “modding a guitar” stopped being news a long time ago. But a guitar whose strings don’t touch the body at all—held in mid‑air purely by ultra‑powerful magnets—is the kind of idea that makes both engineers and musicians frown in disbelief and lean in with fascination. What looks like a reckless experiment ends up pushing right up against the limits of physics, while unexpectedly hinting at where the future of electronic instruments might be heading.

Mattias Krantz, a Swedish engineer‑musician known for his inventive engineering projects, is also a widely followed YouTube creator. His videos often blend humor with technical experimentation. This time, he set out to build a guitar whose strings are suspended entirely by magnetic force.

✦ An experiment that began with strings “so loose you could blow them away”
The video opens with Krantz tying small magnets to guitar strings—only to find the strings were so loose he could literally blow them aside. That single moment reveals the core challenge:
to maintain a visible gap between the strings and the body while still generating playable tension, the magnetic force must be dangerously strong.

After switching to the strongest commercially available magnets, a new problem emerged:
the magnets were powerful enough to crush wood—and potentially a finger.
His remark, “they can definitely break your finger,” is both a warning and a measure of how extreme this design truly is.

✦ When all strings share a single “floating point”
The real breakthrough came when he mounted all the strings onto one massive magnet.
This allowed the strings to sit close together without repelling each other, but it also introduced an unexpected side effect:

“Tuning one string changes all the others.”

It’s pure physics: when every string is anchored to the same floating point, any change in tension affects the entire system.
To overcome this, Krantz had to reinvent the tuning process:
• adjust pitch first through string gauge
• then fine‑tune using string length
• and only at the end use traditional tuning pegs

This three‑stage tuning method feels more like an engineering protocol than a musical routine.

✦ Redesigning the guitar: from plastic to metal
When he built a new body for the floating‑string guitar, the magnets once again exceeded expectations—
the plastic frame bent under magnetic force “like it was doing yoga.”
He eventually had to rebuild the structure in metal to withstand the extreme tension.

The finished instrument looks almost surreal:
strings hovering in space, magnets trembling, the entire guitar seeming to breathe.

✦ Why does it sound so unexpectedly good?
One of the biggest surprises is how pleasing the instrument sounds.
The reason is simple:
the magnet itself becomes a second performance interface.

• Push the magnet sideways → dramatic pitch bends
• Push it forward or backward → changes distance to the pickup, acting like a manual volume pedal
• Let the magnet vibrate → produces a unique tremolo‑like effect

These are expressive possibilities a traditional guitar simply cannot offer.

✦ DIY engineering is redefining instruments
This floating‑string guitar isn’t a product—it’s a signal.
In an era shaped by AI, 3D printing, and advanced materials, the boundaries of instrument design are being rewritten.

It reminds us that:
instruments don’t need to follow traditional forms;
sound doesn’t need to obey established mechanisms;
and innovation often begins with something that seems unreasonable.

The guitar remains dangerous, difficult to tune, and impossible to mass‑produce—but it achieves something far more important:
it proves that the future of musical instruments is still wide open.

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