I am currently in Berlin, Germany, to attend Linux Tag. I came in early to be able to spend some time with my mom over the weekend.

This morning, I went out and put a resounding tickmark against an item long outstanding on my wishlist – I bought a new acoustic guitar, to add to my existing harem.

But I am a geek.

So I didn’t just buy *any* guitar, I bought the “Yamaha Silent Guitar”, the SLG-100 S. Go read the link to figure out why I chose this one. And if you need even more information, check out this service manual.

I have wanted one ever since I saw Sting play one at his concert in Bangalore in 2005. and now I finally own one.

It is everything I had hoped it would be – feels great, is really light (less than 2 kg), sounds fantastic. Totally silent, yet deafeningly loud.

I can’t wait to find a screwdriver to take it apart.

[Update] A few people got back to me with “I don’t get it – it looks like a normal guitar, what’s so special about it?”

I apologize, I forgot that not everyone tunes into stuff like this with the ease that I expect.

For those who didn’t get the part about the body – there isn’t any. The “body” is just a frame (that is actually detachable) and hollow. This picture of Andrew White should make it clearer.

The guitar simulates the body with a nice big, fat DSP that also produces some fantastic-sounding reverb, and allows for tone control. A line-in feature allows you to plug in a CD/MP3 player and “play along” on headphones or over an amplifier.

And it collapses into a small package that looks suspiciously like an AK47 in its bag – this point is going to catch me some grief as I take it along as hand-baggage on my flight home.