Farottone’s Wall of Guitars
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I started playing rhythm games a while back, almost 20 years ago, with GuitarFreaks. I’m a drummer by “nature” but guitar games were more abundant and more accessible (though I played the heck out of the DrumMania titles) so since early days my amazing wife Barbara started buying for me as presents all sorts of guitar peripherals. I transitioned from GuitarFreaks to the early Guitar Hero games but I really went all in when Rock Band first came out. Very long story short-ish, I amassed a fair amount of peripherals, expansions, etc. for most rhythm games and they are all stashed in my videogame museum that some of you might have already seen on Reddit.
A couple of years ago we started renovating our house, and at that time we had to decide what to do with a room that we mostly used just to play Rock Band on a daily basis. So I came up with an idea: let’s make it a “music room” and decorate a wall entirely with game guitars…
Stage 1: Elation
OMG this is the best idea ever! I mean, I have a lot of guitars, I have a free wall, this is going to be the greatest thing!
Stage 2: Doubt
Mmm, so, I have a lot of guitars… Do they fit all in a single wall? I must find a way to display as many guitars as possible without having the wall look cluttered. But hey, still very doable!
Stage 3: Realization
Regardless of how I arrange the guitars, there are probably going it be around 30 guitars on a single wall. How am I even going to physically hang them all? Well, it turns out that simple guitar hangers are fairly cheap! Let’s count the guitars first: 1, 2, 3… 10… 20… 40. Holy crap, 40 is more than I thought. I’m never gonna fit them all on one wall.
Stage 4: Desperation
“Kid, you’re never going to put even 30 guitars on one wall with those hangers. You can’t punch 60 holes like that in a brick wall and each hole will never be as precise as you want” That’s my father, he knows how to do house stuff, like, you know, hammering a nail. He didn’t use to call me kid even when I was a kid, but the rest is all extremely accurate. He was right: drilling 60 holes or something like that wasn’t feasible. This ain’t gonna work…
Stage 5: Hope
What if I forego the drilling and I use some very strong adhesive? That might just work. Of course this means I can’t hang my wooden guitars, those are too heavy. But hey, that also means I have less guitars to hang on the walls. Now I only need some proof of concept…
Stage 6: Frustration
The great thing about the hangers is that they’re cheap and light. The bad thing is they are hollow on the rear. That means they have no surface to apply an adhesive. I then spend 3 weeks finding a solution of any sort that also includes 3M Dual Lock tape (not cheap…): every solution fails somewhere, either between wall and adhesive, between adhesive and hanger or between the two Dual Lock strips. This sucks.
Stage 7: Wood
Wait a minute: if I attach the hanger on a wooden surface, I can then glue that surface to the wall. That HAS to work. I call a local shop that cuts wood as you want and I get an estimate for 40 of these babies:
A little less than 1 inch in thickness, 4 inches in width. I’m going to paint these a slightly darker grey than the one on the wall and make them a feature! This HAS to work…
Stage 8: Seeing the light
Oh yeah baby, they stick! 3 strips of padded adhesive (not cheap but cheaper than Dual Lock) to compensate for imperfection in the wall surface and these seem to hold perfectly. 80 bucks well spent!
Stage 9: Designing
First I gave the room a different feel by painting the walls. I used a deep red for 3 walls and a light grey for the one that would hold the guitars, to make them pop out more.
As far as guitar goes, the best solution was to have most of the guitars arranged on 5 rows, like this from the top: 6 guitars, 5, 6, 5, 6. So I sorted out my guitars in groups:
- GuitarFreaks controllers: very small compared to the new ones, looking more like toys. I have 4, but one is almost identical to another model so I chose to leave it out.
- Early Guitar Hero controllers: smaller compared to modern peripherals, not as good looking as the Rock Band era guitars. I have 3 of those.
- Early modern peripherals: these are all models from the late Guitar Hero games before Guitar Hero World Tour. I have 3 of those. Since these look less realistic than the new ones, I grouped them with the next group…
- TAC guitars: these are decent-but-toy-like looking guitars.
- Modern guitars: these are all the Rock Band and Guitar Hero modern peripherals excluding bass guitars
- Modern bass guitars: all modern bass peripherals, all for Rock Band
So the final scheme ended up looking like this:
— (6) Basic Rock Band Fender guitars + TBRB’s Rickenbacken guitar
— (5) 3 Rock Band Bass guitars + TBRB’s Hofner bass guitar + Rock Band Fender Mustang pro guitar
— (6) TBRB Gretsch guitar + 4 Fender Telecaster Rock Band guitars + KISS Axe guitar
— (5) 4 modern Guitar Hero controllers + 1 Guitar Hero 6 controller
— (6) 3 early modern peripherals + 3 TAC guitars
Step 10: Enjoy the wall!
I still have to dust them all and I want to take more pictures, but here it is…
Very impressive. Dare I ask how much money you’ve got hanging on those walls?
I have no idea to be honest. It’s 40 guitars, I suppose evaluations are different based on the piece itself, maybe 80/100 bucks each?
what are your favorites?
Good question! LOVE the wooden Logitech, the color is incredible. Above all, the wooden Strats are amazing, you really feel like you’re playing a proper instrument.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif”>This. Is. Epic. I’m envious. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you!
I need one, my guitars suck
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_frown.gif” /> very amazing though ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />Thank you for sharing the ‘making of’ photos as well, very interesting to see. I am happy to see that such a collection does exist and cannot think of a more deserving person than Farottone to be the caretaker.
Keeping the content Canadian since 2017!
SomeOldGuys: https://db.c3universe.com/songs/all/__user/someoldguys
MrPrezident: https://db.c3universe.com/songs/all/__user/MrPrezidentThe bottom left guitar looks to be the Logitech wooden guitar for the xbox360. My favorite guitar to use as well. That is one incredible wall of plastic goodness.
I was lucky enough to get an early sneak peek at the wall. Pretty impressive stuff. You make my corner look bare by comparison.
At one point in time I had maybe 20 different styles, but I’ve cut back more and more since I stopped playing and needed to make space. Boo.
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