How Mattias Krantz Built a Guitar Held Together by Magnets with Strings That Seemingly Float

The guitar strings hover there, kept in place solely by magnetic force. They are not being held in place by any pegs or bridges. That’s the work of Swedish maker Mattias Krantz, and it’s a really incredible sight.Traditional guitar strings require some form of physical point of connection to stay in place and under tension; without it, they go slack.

Krantz experimented with the magnetic repulsion force of tiny neodymium magnets to keep the strings in place. At first glance, attaching a magnet to the end of each string may seem like a good idea. The gap between the string and the body of the guitar appears to be visible, and you may think that this looks promising, but when you strum the thing, the strings flop all over the place, and you can literally blow them aside with your breath. You can pretty much forget about playing it well because the tension is just too low.

You need something with a bit more oomph to get the job done. Krantz ups the ante by using stronger magnets, followed by the strongest commercially available magnets. Some of these things have enough pull to maintain thin metal wires stretched out between strings while remaining hung in mid-air, which is rather amazing to see. However, when you try to add more threads, things get unstable, and the magnets begin clashing and pulling in unexpected directions. Forces begin to necessitate considerably more precise spacing and alignment to avoid the thing abruptly snapping shut on your fingertips.


Early versions had 3D printed plastic bodies, which weren’t ideal because the magnet strength warped and bent the plastic all over the place. Krantz had to switch to genuine metal to get the thing to stay steady. The final design has all of the necessary rigidity to withstand the magnetic forces at play. The strings are attached to the body with magnets that are precisely designed to provide the ideal balance of repulsive and attraction force. The tension is caused by the magnetic pull across an empty area, which is not the most efficient method of operation, but it works. In comparison, direct mechanical anchors would require far less work.


Tuning is another major issue because when you tune one string, the others begin to be affected due to the magnetic fields interacting with one another. Krantz has to experiment with different string thicknesses and lengths to find the optimum mix. Thicker strings have a lower pitch, while thinner strings have a higher pitch, and fine tuning just means finding the proper lengths. After a whole day of tweaking, he finally gets the regular tuning pegs to operate properly.


When you first start playing, you can tell it’s going to be different. The strings feel springy and trampoline-like under your fingers, and adjusting the pitch is as simple as repositioning the hovering magnet slightly. Moving the magnet closer or farther from the pickup alters the loudness, and flicking it produces a natural oscillation for tremolo or modulation effects. Distortion begins to arise naturally from the string movement. You play a difficult composition, and the sound retains that clarity while adding an edge that a conventional guitar would not ordinarily provide. The lingering gap gives depth and harmonic richness to the sound that you wouldn’t hear from a standard guitar.